SF6 is used as a main insulation gas for gas-insulated switchgears (GIS), but it has recently become a gas to be restricted because of its greenhouse effect. Up to now, we have studied the insulation characteristics of compressed N2 and CO2 as a possible SF6-alternative gas. As GIS are subjected to very fast transient voltage due to incoming lightning surges or at disconnector switching operation, it is necessary to clarify the sparkover voltage-time (V-t) characteristics in the short time region. In this report, we describe the V-t curves ranging from 30ns to 10μs for high pressure (0.6 and 1.0MPa) N2 and CO2 obtained by applying square impulse voltage. We next studied the V-t curves for standard lightning and oscillating impulses for the same experimental conditions. Based on these results, we investigated the possibility of quantitatively estimating of the V-t curves for these waveforms by applying the “equal-area criterion”. The minimum sparkover voltage estimated by the criterion very well agreed with the measured characteristic in all conditions studied, and thus it has become clear that the quantitative estimation of the sparkover characteristics is possible for high pressure N2 and CO2.