Wacky Wednesday: The “Doom”ed Trilobyte

Michael Crisman writes, "Prior to the 1990’s, people looked at the IBM PC as a joke of a gaming machine. Long diskette load times, clunky processor speeds, and a choice of CGA or EGA graphics were no match for the fast-moving sprites of the NES or arcade-quality graphics of the Sega Genesis. But 1990 saw the release of Wing Commander, a fast-paced space combat simulator that pushed the systems of its time to their limits, and suddenly gaming on the IBM PC didn’t seem like such an outlandish proposition. When Rand and Robyn Miller served up Myst in 1993, the flood gates opened as the storage capacity of the CD-ROM made almost anything seem possible. Quick to jump on this ability to store phenomenal amounts of data, including full-motion video, Trilobyte Software developed The 7th Guest, a horror-themed multimedia adventure that sold over two million units in an era where five-figures was considered successful for home computer software, and six-figure sales numbers were fantasies on par with Trilobyte’s creation itself. Waiting in the wings to steal their thunder was a little company called iD Software, working on a project called Doom."