Golden Axe for MS-DOS featured smooth horizontal screen scrolling in EGA mode about a month before Commander Keen.
#DOSGaming
@SHODAN@mas.to@dosnostalgic For someone not in the know, what was the issue with scrolling on IBM PCs and clones at the time?
@SHODAN Mostly just bus speed bottleneck. You couldn't read/write the 4 separate planes of video buffer fast enough to move an entire screen's worth.
@dosnostalgic That's interesting as someone who's always been fascinated by how the IBM PC platform became the video game powerhouse from what was basically an office machine at first.
@SHODAN I recommend reading Fabien Sanglard's Wolfenstein 3D book. It's not too technical (at least not as much as the Doom one,) and it highlights a lot of optimization challenges right upfront.
And the PDF is free:
https://fabiensanglard.net/three_books_update/index.html