RealMagic (or ReelMagic), from

Sigma Designs Sigma Designs, Inc., was an American public corporation that designed and built high-performance system-on-a-chip semiconductor technologies for Internet-based set-top boxes, DVD players/recorders, high-definition televisions, media processors, d ...

, was one of the first fully compliant

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

playback boards on the market in the mid-1990s. RealMagic is a hardware-accelerated

decoder that mixes its video stream into a computer

video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

's output through the video card's

feature connector The feature connector was an internal connector found mostly in some older ISA, VESA Local Bus, and PCI graphics cards, but also on some early AGP ones. It was intended for use by devices that needed to exchange large amounts of data with t ...

. It is also a

SoundBlaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer au ...

-compatible

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

. Sigma Design's Realmagic superseded by *Realmagic Hollywood+ *Realmagic XCard *Realmagic NetStream2000 - 4000 Several software companies in 1993 promised to support the card, including

Access Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access International Advisors, a hed ...

, Interplay, and Sierra. Software written for RealMagic includes: *''

Under a Killing Moon ''Under a Killing Moon'' is a 1994 point-and-click adventure interactive movie video game. It is the third installment in the '' Tex Murphy'' series of adventure games produced by Access Software. In it, the detective Tex Murphy finds himself u ...

'' *''

Gabriel Knight ''Gabriel Knight'' is a series of point-and-click adventure games released by Sierra On-Line in the 1990s created by Jane Jensen. The titular character is an author and book store owner in New Orleans who is investigating a strange series of mur ...

'' *'' Escape from Cybercity'' *''

King's Quest VI ''King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow'' is a point-and-click adventure game, first released in 1992 as the sixth installment in the ''King's Quest'' series produced by Sierra Entertainment, Sierra On-Line. Written by Roberta Williams and ...

'' *''

Dragon's Lair ''Dragon's Lair'' is a video game franchise created by Rick Dyer. The series is notable for its film-quality animation by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth, and complex decades-long history of being ported to many platforms. It has also been adapte ...

'' *'' Police Quest IV'' *''

Return to Zork ''Return to Zork'' is a 1993 adventure game, developed by Activision. The game was the last to be published by Infocom for the ''Zork'' series, and was the first to use a point-and-click interface, rather than text-based interaction as in previou ...

'' *'' J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I'' The above titles were on a REELMAGIC demo CD that came with the hardware. The CD also contained corporate promotion videos, training videos, and news footage of

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...

and the Apollo Moon mission. Also included in the bundle was a complete version of '' The Horde'', published by

Crystal Dynamics Crystal Dynamics, Inc. is an American video game developer based in San Mateo, California. The studio is best known for its games in the ''Tomb Raider'', '' Legacy of Kain'', and '' Gex'' series. Madeline Canepa, Judy Lange, and Dave Morse ...

in 1994. Another compatible game, released separately, was Merit Software's '' The Psychotron''.

References

Graphics cards {{Compu-hardware-stub