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 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: References: 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 wrote in : > 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