RealSound is a patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

ed technology for the PC

IBM PC compatible

IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...

 created by Access Software

Indie Built

Indie Built, Inc. was a Salt Lake City, Utah based video game developer founded in 1982 by Bruce Carver as Access Software.They are popular for creating the golfing Links series and also for creating the video game detective series based on the character Tex Murphy.In 1987, Access announced The...

 during the late 1980s. RealSound enables 6-bit digitized PCM

Pulse-code modulation

Pulse-code modulation is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form for digital audio in computers and various Blu-ray, Compact Disc and DVD formats, as well as other uses such as digital telephone systems...

-audio playback on the PC speaker

PC speaker

A PC speaker is a loudspeaker, built into some IBM PC compatible computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven speaker. More recent computers use a piezoelectric speaker instead. The speaker allows software and firmware to provide...

 by means of PWM

Pulse-width modulation

Pulse-width modulation , or pulse-duration modulation , is a commonly used technique for controlling power to inertial electrical devices, made practical by modern electronic power switches....

 drive, allowing software control of the loud speaker's amplitude of displacement. The first video games to use it were World Class Leader Board and Echelon, both released in 1988

1988 in games

This page lists board and card games, wargames, miniatures games, and table-top role-playing games published in 1988. For video and console games, see 1988 in video gaming....

. At the time of release, sound card

Sound card

A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...

s were very expensive and RealSound allowed players to hear life-like sounds and speech with no additional sound hardware, just the standard PC speaker.

RealSound was an impressive enough technology that a few other PC video game developer

Video game developer

A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...

s, like Legend Entertainment

Legend Entertainment

Legend Entertainment was an American developer of computer games, best known for their complex, distinctive adventure titles throughout the 1990s....

, licensed it for use in their own games. However, as the early 1990s progressed, sound card prices dropped to the point that they eventually became a baseline requirement for gaming PC-audio, leaving RealSound obsolete as it no longer filled a niche in the market.

Examples of games using RealSound

• Access Software:
  • World Class Leader Board (1988)
  • Echelon
    Echelon
    Echelon may refer to:* A level or rank in an organization, profession, or society.* Echelon formation, a military hierarchical formation, also used to describe the migratory patterns of birds...
    
    (1988)
  • Mean Streets (1989)
  • Countdown
    Countdown (computer game)
    Countdown is a point-and-click adventure game released by Access Software for MS-DOS in 1990. The player plays as Mason Powers, a CIA agent who wakes up in a Turkish mental hospital, suffering from partial amnesia and accused of murdering his supervisor...
    
    (1990)
  • Crime Wave (1990)
  • Links (1990)
  • Martian Memorandum
    Martian Memorandum
    Martian Memorandum is a dystopian cyberpunk/noir PC adventure game that was originally released in 1991 for PC. It was developed and published by Access Software. The game is the second in the series of Tex Murphy mysteries; its immediate sequel is Under a Killing Moon...
    
    (1991)
  • Amazon: Guardians of Eden
    Amazon: Guardians of Eden
    Amazon: Guardians of Eden is a point-and-click adventure video game for MS-DOS from Access Software. It is one of the first games to feature super VGA graphics...
    
    (1992)

• Interplay Entertainment:
  • Battle Chess
    Battle Chess
    Battle Chess is a computer game version of chess in which the chess pieces come to life and battle one another when capturing. It was released for the Commodore Amiga and subsequently on the 3DO, MS-DOS, Apple IIGS, Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Amiga CDTV, CD32, Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, Acorn...
    
    (1988)
  • Pro League Baseball (1992)

• Loricels:
  • Space Racer (1988)

• Legend Entertainment:
  • Spellcasting 101 (1990)
  • Spellcasting 201 (1991)
  • Spellcasting 301 (1992)