Path: ...!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: vallor <vallor@cultnix.org>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Did EGA Save PC Gaming?
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2024 21:39:54 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 90
Message-ID: <v7jv79$8ee3$2@dont-email.me>
References: <ndhq9j998dhtqb31akdb92a163n849fr7a@4ax.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2024 23:39:54 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="8ed918a9eb83393b02ff0cc0b66a1b40";
	logging-data="276931"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18yeN7kWzlKxz/yu2qeNuNn"
User-Agent: Pan/0.159 (Vovchansk; 31ef135; Linux-6.9.10)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:SFHL/tV/WPHgKURpQVHf5VFZ2Kk=
X-Face: \}2`P"_@pS86<'EM:'b.Ml}8IuMK"pV"?FReF$'c.S%u9<Q#U*4QO)$l81M`{Q/n
 XL'`91kd%N::LG:=*\35JS0prp\VJN^<s"b#bff@fA7]5lJA.jn,x_d%Md$,{.EZ
Bytes: 5546

On Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:10:09 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote in
<ndhq9j998dhtqb31akdb92a163n849fr7a@4ax.com>:

> That's the thesis of a recent article*, anyway. I'm not sure I agree
> with it but it's a good excuse for a ramble about old-timey games and
> hardware.
> 
> Not that I need much an excuse to do that.
> 
> I honestly can't remember if my first PC (IBM/PC compatible for you
> nitpickers ;-) came with an EGA card. Back then, I didn't know EGA from
> VGA from whatever that weird bastardization of color and monochrome mode
> the Apple II used. My second PC -which I acquired a year later- was
> definitely VGA.
> 
> Not that I found EGA so troublesome. There were a lot of good games in
> EGA. The original "Duke Nukem" was EGA. "Ultima V" was EGA. The first
> "Mechwarrior" game was EGA. "Pool of Radiance" was EGA. You could do a
> lot with just 16 colors.
> 
> ("Syndicate" -at least its gameplay mode - was only 16-colors; didja
> know that? It wasn't EGA, though -it used a higher-resolution VGA mode-
> but it just goes to show you that it color depth didn't necessarily
> restrict you from creating good-looking visuals. "Lemmings", too, used
> only 16 colors.)
> 
> So CGA was a definite eyesore, but it wasn't a deal breaker. Besides,
> with some tricks, even CGA was bearable. Only a few games used it, but
> the CGA composite mode gave the IBM/PC games sixteen (slightly blurry)
> colors to work with. (The best example of this was Sierra Online's
> "Mickey's Space Adventures", where the difference between the two is
> dramatically obvious. See it here: https://imgur.com/a/SaesMin . Same
> game, same code, just different monitor output.)
> 
> So I'm not so sure EGA was really the life-saver the article claims. The
> only reason composite CGA didn't take off more than it did, I think, is
> because EGA replaced it relatively quickly.
> 
> Far more important to me was upgrades to the PC sounds. Barely tolerable
> (and on the low-end on what was used by its competitors) in 1981, by the
> late 80s the PC beeper was extremely behind the times. I could endure
> the blue-and-magenta eyesores of CGA visuals, but the squealing of the
> PC Beeper was an immediate turn-off. It made games unplayable.
> 
> (In fairness, you could do some impressive things with the PC beeper
> too, from playing recognizable music to digitized speech. It was always
> scratchy but not always an ear-bleed. However, it was so computationally
> intensive that few games used those techniques).
> 
> But it was the advent of dedicated sound-processing cards -the Ad Lib,
> the Sound Blaster - or if you were rich, the Roland MT32! - that made
> games on the PC competitive again. Or at least a hobby I was interested
> in playing around with. CGA was bilious, but that beeper made me
> embarrassed to game on a PC.
> 
> Still, the article does bring up some amusing points; in particular, the
> cost of an EGA card. The most basic model would set you back $500 USD,
> and you'd need to buy a compatible monitor to go with it. A high-end EGA
> card and monitor would cost you the equivalent of more than $5000 USD in
> 2024 money.
> 
> That's about the equivalent of buying three GeForce RTX 4090s! And all
> you got out of the deal was 16-colors! High-end PC gaming was _always_
> a rich-man's folly!
> 
> Anyway, by the late 1980s -definitely by 1991- I had upgraded to VGA,
> and all these issues were moot. Actually, by then I may already have had
> an SVGA card, although I doubt any program I had took advantage of that
> capability. Still, 256 colors felt excessively grandiose, and nobody had
> a PC that could push more than 640x480 pixels anyway. There were a lot
> of great games in EGA, but most of my favorite games were VGA, and I'll
> always have a soft spot for that mode.
> 
> Anyway, I've run out of things to say so I think I'll just trail off
> here...

I got out of the service in the 91, and bought myself a
386SX16 with VGA.  At some point, I got Wing Commander, which
I played with the PC speaker until I finally got a SoundBlaster.

When I started playing Doom, we played deathmatch at the campus
after-hours.  VGA.

> 
> * Congratulations! You knew to look here for the URL to the article!
> https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-retro-tech/ega-graphics

-- 
-v