The vector art also included some complex dithering patterns that balloon RLE-encoded bitmaps. Dithered drawing is actually one of the worst cases for simple, pure RLE. For dithering compatible bitmap encoding you would want other more complex compression schemes than simple RLE. Some of the palette-based compression techniques of "modern" GIF were reused from such early predecessors, even though there's a belief today that RLE was most of what games at the time used. (It's useful to point out that early AOL was also heavily dithered, especially in monochrome versions. AOL also spanned the gap between dithered, heavily palette-based graphics to "early modern graphics".)
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The vector art also included some complex dithering patterns that balloon RLE-encoded bitmaps. Dithered drawing is actually one of the worst cases for simple, pure RLE. For dithering compatible bitmap encoding you would want other more complex compression schemes than simple RLE. Some of the palette-based compression techniques of "modern" GIF were reused from such early predecessors, even though there's a belief today that RLE was most of what games at the time used. (It's useful to point out that early AOL was also heavily dithered, especially in monochrome versions. AOL also spanned the gap between dithered, heavily palette-based graphics to "early modern graphics".)