I only stumbled on this thread just now, but here's what I can fill you in about (warning - GIGANTIC WALL OF TEXT):
hifidelitygaming wrote:1980-1987 pre-VGA/soundcard games - "everything before Kings Quest 4" might be a way to put it since that really started the whole reason to have soundcards in your PC thing... what games stood out in the CGA/EGA era? Flight Simulator I know was a thing... there were the early Sierra games like Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, Hero's Quest, Police Quest, Kings Quest... early Ultimas.. but what beyond this? That's about the extent of my knowledge at the time. What other gems should I look back into?
This era is often overlooked, because at the time it was felt that PCs were inferior to other popular consoles and home computers for gaming (which was generally true). But that's a shame, since there are many little hidden treasures to be found. A minor nitpick though: the PC first came out in 1981, so that's when that era officially starts 😉
You can't really talk about early '80s PC games without mentioning Windmill Software. Their arcade-like games were notable for always trying to push the envelope, and squeezing more out of a first-generation PC than was thought possible, using clever low-level tweaks; but most importantly, they were incredibly fun. Windmill's "flagship" game was obviously [url=http://www.digger.org"]Digger[/url], but Conquest (a Joust clone), Styx and Moon Bugs were also up there.
Seeing their name on a game back then was almost an stamp of assured quality in itself, and their titles were certainly a notch above most "official" arcade ports, which (at the time) generally didn't take the conversion to PC too well. Windmill wasn't Sierra, but certainly had a sort of cult following - see here for more than you'll ever want to know about them.
If you're into RPGs, there was more to this genre than the early Ultimas. Wizard's Crown is an excellent example, but Telengard and the Dunjonquest series should also be mentioned. ICON: Quest for the Ring was another odd little RPG, more famous for its technical triumphs over the CGA's limitations than for its gameplay, but also featuring neat real-time combat which you didn't see very often back then. Since you're interested in what things were like "at the time", maybe you'll enjoy this interview with the game's creators.
Tangential to RPGs, you also had the famous dungeon-crawlers like Hack and Rogue, not to mention text adventures / interactive fiction - especially the Infocom classics. I was never too big on those, maybe because English isn't my first language and I was just a kid when they were popular, but they're well-known and widely documented elsewhere if you feel like digging into it.
Sierra certainly held the throne at the time when it came to graphical adventures, but they weren't the only ones. Of course you had LucasArts (known as "Lucasfilm Games" back then) beginning to challenge them with Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, but older titles exist from other publishers, such as Below The Root (a unique adventure game styled as a realtime platformer; not quite "point-and-click" yet, but it foreshadowed the Lucasarts interface with its menu-driven approach).
You characterize this era as being "pre-soundcard"... so it should be mentioned that even before the advent of Roland and AdLib, it wasn't all just beeps and squeaks. Clever programmers were able to make the PC speaker act as a crude synth, or play digital samples - enabling speech in games like the original Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond CW. This was sort of a Big Deal, and quite amazing to hear back then. Other than that, of course, you had the PCjr and the Tandy 1000 line, with their 3-voice/noise channel sound chips, giving consoles good fight in the audio department.
Other random games worth mentioning... California Games from Epyx; the classic Alley Cat; a lot of early Electronic Arts titles (Archon, etc); good platformers ported from other systems - Jumpman, Montezuma's Revenge, and Lode Runner (excellent action/puzzle crossover, as well as one of the first games with a built-in editor). Some of those "official" arcade ports were also worth a go: Tapper, Moon Patrol and Ms Pacman, among others.
And then you had good games coming from Spain (Goody, Livingstone Supongo), France (check out titles from Loriciels and Infogrammes), Israel (Xonix... really more influential than it was good), Poland (California Dreams titles), and so on... I'm just scratching the surface here.
Oh, and this has to be mentioned: you're probably aware of Apogee's "shareware revolution", but there were lots of shareware/free games circulating on the PC scene in the pre-Apogee age - some became popular enough to be seen almost everywhere. The best examples would be Sopwith and Round 42, off the top of my head.
Personal anecdote... the first PC game I ever played was a weird little CGA platformer called Big Top, written by a certain Michael Abrash (who would go on to bigger things like Quake a decade later). Our XT clone had a monochrome green monitor, but one of the neighbor kids actually had a color CGA screen(!) - reason enough to become friends so I could go play it at his place, of course. 🤣 Another good early game by Abrash was Cosmic Crusaders - basically a Galaxian clone, but its fluid gameplay really stood out on the PC.
All in all, it's still fun to dig through this ancient PC stuff and find little oddities that escaped my awareness back then. Where else can you come up with a crappy BASIC game released by IBM(!) where you need to bomb Apple's headquarters? I'd buy a remake 😉
