Every time I see CGA graphics in cyan, magenta, black and white it reminds me of my youth and how 'cold' it felt at the time to see those graphics, I could never really get used to it. When EGA/VGA graphics came along it felt so warm and in my experience games really started to come to life.
Respect for the graphics artists in general for that time to be able to make something out of almost nothing, four colors or less and/or black and white low resolution.
Ditto. My first ibm compatible was CGA, and those pallets represent a really specific era in my memories. I actually jumped from CGA to VGA (DOS to Win3.1 as well!) and it was like somebody had switched on all the lights in a precisely dark room.
The CGA palettes were designed with three main objectives: good contrast on composite and black and white displays, high contrast productivity UX, and simple ttl circuitry. There was a limit of 16 colours, but if you wanted to step up resolution you had to compromise by selecting fewer colors. A major compromise choice was resolution vs colours. High resolution cost you your magenta and yellow. Have a google for the mode 4 and mode 5 pallets and mathematically why they are the way they are, it’s super interesting if you’re in to retro tech.
In the later era, as EGA and VGA gained, I think CGA became a bolt on by some game devs, to accommodate that dwindling audience, so the problem was compounded by it being very second class citizen.
I came to comment on the same... I grew up with CGA graphics for my first games, too. It was, in many ways, worse than no color at all. But the jarring visuals and the feeling of it will always stay with me.
I don't know why this site calls CGA "16 color" (the size of the CGA palette, of which 4 could be used at a time), while also calling EGA "16 color" (when EGA uses 16 colors at a time from a palette of 64).
I fed this question to Gemini and it made the same category error in its distinction between CGA and EGA, so, to the human that didn't check their slop site, maybe you should fix that.
I replayed the series recently and I think the gameplay didn't age that well especially after you played some japanese puzzle games like Professor Layton
or Ace Attorney. It's not the difficulty of the puzzles but rather there is almost nothing intuitive about them and a lot of times they are detached from the story. The story, the writing, the humor, and the characters holds up of course but not the gameplay.
I love both game series, but Ace Attorney has multiple moments where you lose by presenting evidence too early or the "wrong" piece of evidence (even though it would also prove your case). The later games are better but even the Great Ace Attorney has instances of this.
Professor Layton almost all the way through includes trick puzzles which have non obvious answers as well.
Obviously the games aren't perfectly obvious and later games are much better, but they are generally much more obvious than something like King's Quest which was properly brutal. I remember needing occasional hints to manage monkey island but nothing like completing King's Quest where I had to constantly check the walkthrough.
I think this is a problem of many of those old click to play
adventures.
For instance, I found Leisure Suit Larry I in many ways better,
from the gameplay, than "Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!".
Now, the latter made much more use of the mouse, so it was easier
and simpler for most players; but I found LSL 1 just so convenient
and quite fast to play, if you could handle the keyboard well. It
was of course nowhere near as convenient as clickety-click via the
mouse, but I had that impression several times with games. SimCity
1 was IMO much nicer to play than later simcities; same impression
I had with civilization, the actual gameplay got progressively more
annoying, slower and laggier.
Sometimes I really wish i could back to this time of my life. Those adventure games had a certain magic that hasn't been reproduced so far. There are some good throw back games on steam, but somehow its different. Is it because I am older now? Would be interesting to be able to experience them from scratch with the mind of my present being.
Anyway, just on to of my mind:
- Indiana Jones , especially the one with the Paris
underground and the Nazi fortress. Forgot the name.
- Monkey Islands
- Phantasmagoria 2
- Baphomets Curse 1 and 2 , especially 1.
- Kings Quest 7 (god, the drawings. Like a Disney movie)
- Simon the Sorcerer
All bangers!!!!!
So many crazy memories. They all had really good stories, a nice humour, tough puzzles and really good drawing.
Idk, I really can succumb to nostalgia here :-)
I can very much recommend looking at games developed and published by Wadjet Eye Games.
You can see the learning throughout the years, with the Blackwell Chronicles being a bit linear, and some games in between being a bit of a miss.
But "Unavowed" or the new "Old Skies" are excellent games I consider on par with the old golden age. "Technobabylon", "Resonance" and "The Excavation of Hob's Barrow" are also very far up.
It's different in the core mechanic, but if you haven't played Return of the Obra Dinn, it's one of the most rewarding, well-crafted games I've experienced in the past decade, and scratched a similar itch of the old Sierra games, though again, not a pure text or point and click adventure... more a 3D, 1-bit murder mystery done as a detective game. It's simply brilliant.
In the same category of deduction games: The Case of the Golden Idol [1]. Very much reproduces the 1990s game vibe, and a very unique game with an absolutely unique, bonkers story universe. The story extends to the excellent (but aesthetically blander, in my opinion) sequel.
Seconded. I grew up with Lucasarts (and Sierra, to a lesser extent) point and clicks, but somehow I find they had the side effect to pretty much being the peak of that specific type of adventure game, so even if there are plenty of indie modern games of the same style, they somehow never reach the heights of the originals they are inspired by.
For this reason, I find much more interesting those modern games that scratch the same itch but try different mechanics and styles.
Obra Dinn and Golden Idol are for sure in my top three of post-2000 adventure games, and I would add Outer Wilds at the top.
Its a great game, but its more of a logic game than a sierra-style adventure in any way: no inventory, no dialog trees, no verbs, and no objects to interact with!
IIRC, the only interaction with the scene is using the pocketwatch on a corpse.
Going back isn't enough. What I wanted again was the feeling of seeing and playing those games for the first time. The awe. My kids were born in a world where color graphics and digital sound were everywhere so nothing is impressive to them.
To add to your list, Machinarium is an absolute masterpiece. Beautiful hand drawn art, and some of the best puzzles in the genre (IMO). Anything from Amanita Design is worth playing, but it takes the cake.
And they announced the sequel just a few weeks ago!
My favourite Amanita games are the Samarost series. Something about the lack of dialogue, devious puzzles, quirky humour, and unique aesthetic combining sci-fi with a world of moss, wood, and weird junk.
Creaks was also excellent, albeit a very different vibe. I couldn't quite get into Phonopolis, although the art direction is stunning.
When I see monkey island I always think of the Amiga copy protection on monkey island 2. The game was on something like 13 floppies that you had to keep switching but there was only super hard copy protection on disk 7 or something so you'd get part way through the game before getting scuppered. (I was only about 10 years old).
I think there's only really two real sets of artwork - the EGA and VGA releases. Some (EGA running on CGA or Hercules, VGA running on EGA) dither down the artwork rather than there being extra artwork for there, and the other versions are largely derived from whichever of EGA and VGA was a better fit for the target platform. Still a meaningful amount of work (especially reducing the 256 colour VGA art to 32 colours for the Amiga port), but it's the kind of thing that happened in games porting in that era.
I had 8 bit machines (Spectrum and C64) and then got an Amiga A500. I remember at the time being nothing short of appalled by CGA[0] colour palettes, since CGA was still pretty commonplace in the late 80s and even the early 90s (e.g., at school).
It cemented an opinion that PC hardware of the era was overpriced, underperforming, and uninteresting.
I’ve subsequently developed a healthy respect for what developers and artists have been able to achieve within the constraints of CGA but I have no nostalgia for it. The CGA demoscene is very much worth checking out - loads of super impressive videos on YouTube.
[0] We used to refer to CGA as Crap Graphics Array, and I seriously doubt we were alone.
I am very impressed how the 32-color Amiga version is close to the 256-color VGA version (and how much the Atari ST is lagging behind, more similar to the EGA version :)
The Amiga graphics chip had a palette of 4096 colors, you were just limited to 32 at the same time, or 64 with half bright tones, or more with chip/interrupt tricks. I doubt the latter was used on something like monkey island though.
Beatiful, when comparing PC and Mac versions, I got the feeling that the Mac screenshot has the old Mac gamma 1.8 VS PC gamma 2.2 that Apple started to use not that long time ago...
I remember being impressed by all these editions even as a teen in the nineties. It's pretty uncommon, especially as a game with graphics on this level. What a nice site that goes in depth with the differences!
Ron Gilbert was such a hero for me, and I'm always amazed at what an incredible story-rich gaming experience you could squeeze onto 256 colours and four floppy disks.
I think I played it on PC back then, but I am not 100%
certain anymore; could have been on Amiga too. Interestingly
the Macintosh version looks the best to me therein, but I am
also not absolutely sure about that since it seems to be
differently scaled than the PC version. I wish I would have
noted down back then what I used and played. And when.
I played that version only much later (originally I had it on Amiga and then PC VGA), but the EGA version has indeed a unique charm of its own. It really feels like an alternative, equally good looking relase rather than a downgraded version of the VGA one, which makes sense as iirc it was developed and shipped first.
100%. What Steve Purcell and Mark Ferrari achieved with those 16 colors is simply genius. The 256 color version added detail, but lost much of the boldness and elegance of the EGA version.
Had the OG Amiga version and always wondered why it looked different on my friends PC. Back then I was a kid and thought it was the different CRT monitor and not 16 v 256 colors lol
Every time I see CGA graphics in cyan, magenta, black and white it reminds me of my youth and how 'cold' it felt at the time to see those graphics, I could never really get used to it. When EGA/VGA graphics came along it felt so warm and in my experience games really started to come to life.
Respect for the graphics artists in general for that time to be able to make something out of almost nothing, four colors or less and/or black and white low resolution.
Ditto. My first ibm compatible was CGA, and those pallets represent a really specific era in my memories. I actually jumped from CGA to VGA (DOS to Win3.1 as well!) and it was like somebody had switched on all the lights in a precisely dark room.
Games which were made especially for CGA did often look really cool.
Possibly not the best example but I do feel like Alley Cat looked great in CGA: https://i.ibb.co/wNDvgzQ8/alleycat.gif
I never understood the choice of default CGA palette colors. amber and green wasn't much nicer to me, and it was even more rare in games.
though, "The Eternal Castle Remastered" (2019) used the same palette, and it was pretty good.
The CGA palettes were designed with three main objectives: good contrast on composite and black and white displays, high contrast productivity UX, and simple ttl circuitry. There was a limit of 16 colours, but if you wanted to step up resolution you had to compromise by selecting fewer colors. A major compromise choice was resolution vs colours. High resolution cost you your magenta and yellow. Have a google for the mode 4 and mode 5 pallets and mathematically why they are the way they are, it’s super interesting if you’re in to retro tech.
In the later era, as EGA and VGA gained, I think CGA became a bolt on by some game devs, to accommodate that dwindling audience, so the problem was compounded by it being very second class citizen.
Not graphics, but even the PC speaker intro had some significant effort put into it, considering how limited it was as a sound source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ
I came to comment on the same... I grew up with CGA graphics for my first games, too. It was, in many ways, worse than no color at all. But the jarring visuals and the feeling of it will always stay with me.
I don't know why this site calls CGA "16 color" (the size of the CGA palette, of which 4 could be used at a time), while also calling EGA "16 color" (when EGA uses 16 colors at a time from a palette of 64).
I fed this question to Gemini and it made the same category error in its distinction between CGA and EGA, so, to the human that didn't check their slop site, maybe you should fix that.
Yeah, CGA was really absurd, I'm glad I've never had a computer with that
I replayed the series recently and I think the gameplay didn't age that well especially after you played some japanese puzzle games like Professor Layton or Ace Attorney. It's not the difficulty of the puzzles but rather there is almost nothing intuitive about them and a lot of times they are detached from the story. The story, the writing, the humor, and the characters holds up of course but not the gameplay.
I love both game series, but Ace Attorney has multiple moments where you lose by presenting evidence too early or the "wrong" piece of evidence (even though it would also prove your case). The later games are better but even the Great Ace Attorney has instances of this.
Professor Layton almost all the way through includes trick puzzles which have non obvious answers as well.
Obviously the games aren't perfectly obvious and later games are much better, but they are generally much more obvious than something like King's Quest which was properly brutal. I remember needing occasional hints to manage monkey island but nothing like completing King's Quest where I had to constantly check the walkthrough.
I think this is a problem of many of those old click to play adventures.
For instance, I found Leisure Suit Larry I in many ways better, from the gameplay, than "Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!". Now, the latter made much more use of the mouse, so it was easier and simpler for most players; but I found LSL 1 just so convenient and quite fast to play, if you could handle the keyboard well. It was of course nowhere near as convenient as clickety-click via the mouse, but I had that impression several times with games. SimCity 1 was IMO much nicer to play than later simcities; same impression I had with civilization, the actual gameplay got progressively more annoying, slower and laggier.
Sometimes I really wish i could back to this time of my life. Those adventure games had a certain magic that hasn't been reproduced so far. There are some good throw back games on steam, but somehow its different. Is it because I am older now? Would be interesting to be able to experience them from scratch with the mind of my present being.
Anyway, just on to of my mind: - Indiana Jones , especially the one with the Paris underground and the Nazi fortress. Forgot the name.
- Monkey Islands
- Phantasmagoria 2
- Baphomets Curse 1 and 2 , especially 1.
- Kings Quest 7 (god, the drawings. Like a Disney movie)
- Simon the Sorcerer
All bangers!!!!!
So many crazy memories. They all had really good stories, a nice humour, tough puzzles and really good drawing. Idk, I really can succumb to nostalgia here :-)
I can very much recommend looking at games developed and published by Wadjet Eye Games.
You can see the learning throughout the years, with the Blackwell Chronicles being a bit linear, and some games in between being a bit of a miss.
But "Unavowed" or the new "Old Skies" are excellent games I consider on par with the old golden age. "Technobabylon", "Resonance" and "The Excavation of Hob's Barrow" are also very far up.
Yes Technobabylon was pretty good. Need to check the others! Thanks
It's different in the core mechanic, but if you haven't played Return of the Obra Dinn, it's one of the most rewarding, well-crafted games I've experienced in the past decade, and scratched a similar itch of the old Sierra games, though again, not a pure text or point and click adventure... more a 3D, 1-bit murder mystery done as a detective game. It's simply brilliant.
In the same category of deduction games: The Case of the Golden Idol [1]. Very much reproduces the 1990s game vibe, and a very unique game with an absolutely unique, bonkers story universe. The story extends to the excellent (but aesthetically blander, in my opinion) sequel.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677770/The_Case_of_the_G...
Seconded. I grew up with Lucasarts (and Sierra, to a lesser extent) point and clicks, but somehow I find they had the side effect to pretty much being the peak of that specific type of adventure game, so even if there are plenty of indie modern games of the same style, they somehow never reach the heights of the originals they are inspired by.
For this reason, I find much more interesting those modern games that scratch the same itch but try different mechanics and styles.
Obra Dinn and Golden Idol are for sure in my top three of post-2000 adventure games, and I would add Outer Wilds at the top.
I'd put up Lamplight City [1] with the best of 'em.
1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplight_City]
Its a great game, but its more of a logic game than a sierra-style adventure in any way: no inventory, no dialog trees, no verbs, and no objects to interact with!
IIRC, the only interaction with the scene is using the pocketwatch on a corpse.
Don't we all?
Going back isn't enough. What I wanted again was the feeling of seeing and playing those games for the first time. The awe. My kids were born in a world where color graphics and digital sound were everywhere so nothing is impressive to them.
To add to your list, Machinarium is an absolute masterpiece. Beautiful hand drawn art, and some of the best puzzles in the genre (IMO). Anything from Amanita Design is worth playing, but it takes the cake.
And they announced the sequel just a few weeks ago!
My favourite Amanita games are the Samarost series. Something about the lack of dialogue, devious puzzles, quirky humour, and unique aesthetic combining sci-fi with a world of moss, wood, and weird junk.
Creaks was also excellent, albeit a very different vibe. I couldn't quite get into Phonopolis, although the art direction is stunning.
You can experience them. Just type those titles into a search engine.
I wrote: "Would be interesting to be able to experience them *from scratch* with the mind of my present being"
til Phantasmagoria had sequel.....!
> the Paris underground
It was Venice underground, The Last Crusade (Indy3.exe)
> Simon the Sorcerer
That's not common to hear, thanks for the throwback ;)
Beautiful. I love the CGA interface.
When I see monkey island I always think of the Amiga copy protection on monkey island 2. The game was on something like 13 floppies that you had to keep switching but there was only super hard copy protection on disk 7 or something so you'd get part way through the game before getting scuppered. (I was only about 10 years old).
It’s an incredible that graphics artists provide 13+ variations on the same artwork, especially without the help of modern tools.
I think there's only really two real sets of artwork - the EGA and VGA releases. Some (EGA running on CGA or Hercules, VGA running on EGA) dither down the artwork rather than there being extra artwork for there, and the other versions are largely derived from whichever of EGA and VGA was a better fit for the target platform. Still a meaningful amount of work (especially reducing the 256 colour VGA art to 32 colours for the Amiga port), but it's the kind of thing that happened in games porting in that era.
What sort of modern tools do you think would make it easier?
I see retro, I upvote. Good times back then with Monkey Island, great art, great adventure game.
GROGtastic.
I remember this as a whole immersive world, is funny to look back and realise that it was all only in 16 colours.
I had 8 bit machines (Spectrum and C64) and then got an Amiga A500. I remember at the time being nothing short of appalled by CGA[0] colour palettes, since CGA was still pretty commonplace in the late 80s and even the early 90s (e.g., at school).
It cemented an opinion that PC hardware of the era was overpriced, underperforming, and uninteresting.
I’ve subsequently developed a healthy respect for what developers and artists have been able to achieve within the constraints of CGA but I have no nostalgia for it. The CGA demoscene is very much worth checking out - loads of super impressive videos on YouTube.
[0] We used to refer to CGA as Crap Graphics Array, and I seriously doubt we were alone.
I immediately revived an old feud and compared the Amiga and Atari ST versions... Amiga, definitely. Ha!
I got the monkey island tune ringing in my ears, thanks for replacing the 7/365 jingle bells for at least a moment!
Nice. I want to hear each rendition of the opening title theme.
I am very impressed how the 32-color Amiga version is close to the 256-color VGA version (and how much the Atari ST is lagging behind, more similar to the EGA version :)
The Amiga graphics chip had a palette of 4096 colors, you were just limited to 32 at the same time, or 64 with half bright tones, or more with chip/interrupt tricks. I doubt the latter was used on something like monkey island though.
The pirate close-up (pointed out by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50495836) confirms: the Atari ST graphics are ported from the EGA version, while Amiga is based off VGA.
As expected, Amiga version looked the best.
Don't miss all the options in the menu bar at the top of the screen
ux 10/10 I couldn't have imagined a better one
also works great on mobile.. +1
This is beautiful, thanks for making it. My fav game of all time
That’s pretty cool.
Technically not all. The anniversary re-release is missing.
Beatiful, when comparing PC and Mac versions, I got the feeling that the Mac screenshot has the old Mac gamma 1.8 VS PC gamma 2.2 that Apple started to use not that long time ago...
OT:
Didnt know that there are by today 13 versions and that they extended the productline ad infinitum :-D
Beautiful, well done :)
I remember being impressed by all these editions even as a teen in the nineties. It's pretty uncommon, especially as a game with graphics on this level. What a nice site that goes in depth with the differences!
There's a SEGA CD version! Never knew that.
Oh cool there's a Gobliiins Switch ROM that runs on the average potato ... Nobody bother me for the rest of the weekend, please!
AND all the discworlds have PS1 ROMs. I'm going to have to report in sick. Everybody else is doing it for GTA6 anyway.
You know, we really need a PC game ROM standard ...
Ron Gilbert was such a hero for me, and I'm always amazed at what an incredible story-rich gaming experience you could squeeze onto 256 colours and four floppy disks.
TurboVision is the best bit about this :)
I think I played it on PC back then, but I am not 100% certain anymore; could have been on Amiga too. Interestingly the Macintosh version looks the best to me therein, but I am also not absolutely sure about that since it seems to be differently scaled than the PC version. I wish I would have noted down back then what I used and played. And when.
The difference in the pirate close-ups is amusing.
This was posted 3 times and for whatever reason.
This post did well.
Guess the right people were awake to upvote it
CGA... oh man, it's like I'm a kid again :)
The EGA one is the true version for me
I played that version only much later (originally I had it on Amiga and then PC VGA), but the EGA version has indeed a unique charm of its own. It really feels like an alternative, equally good looking relase rather than a downgraded version of the VGA one, which makes sense as iirc it was developed and shipped first.
100%. What Steve Purcell and Mark Ferrari achieved with those 16 colors is simply genius. The 256 color version added detail, but lost much of the boldness and elegance of the EGA version.
Had the OG Amiga version and always wondered why it looked different on my friends PC. Back then I was a kid and thought it was the different CRT monitor and not 16 v 256 colors lol
neat :thumbsup:
lfg so clean