Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA/VGA Comparison
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I feel EGA forced artists to work within the limitations of the available color palette, and good artists created awesome stuff (like shown in this case). Once they had VGA, some artists rushed to use every color gradient they could get away with, and this ruined their art till they got the hang of it.
Something similar happened with the transition from pixel art to 3D games -- games were 3D because they had to, whether necessary or not. And many suffered from it. (Arguably, many still do!)
Of course, I hold the extremist opinion that even some CGA (4 colors!) games were beautiful in their own way. I don't think more is always better, a lesson that seems to be lost on some game developers...
Some CGA games just look stunning with CRT/composite
The more realistic the graphics, the higher the risk that it falls into the uncanny valley trap. The brain is already half fooled that it is seeing reality (or something that is supposed to be real) but if it's only slightly off, there'll be a feeling of unease. Of course, early 3d games were far off from feeling real, but they were already a step up and there was less headroom for imagination. The low polygon count models just look janky instead of endearing.
Pixel art completely sidesteps this uncanny valley by not trying to be realistic, instead it tries to engage the brain to fill in the details. It's perhaps halfway between reading a book and watching a movie.
E.g. looking at early 3d games, they just feel dated. One cannot help but compare them to today's 3d graphics and of course the oldies fall short by a very far margin. Comparing pixel art games to a modern AAA 3D game title is just so obviously apples to oranges that there is no struggle due to loss of fidelity.
Again, perhaps my view is biased because I grew up with the pixelated games of old. Still, I'd like to assign the excitement of the early 3d titles more to the novelty (at the time) than from the fidelity of the graphics. I think the pixel art style will (or already does) have much more staying power.
Fully agreed with this and the rest of your post. Are you familiar with Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics"? I'm not particularly a fan of the whole book, but I really agree and am fascinated by the concept of "closure" he describes: the way the mind "fills in" the details that are missing in sequential art (i.e. comics), so you mentally create movement and detail when there is objectively none. This even works for storytelling itself, from a few "action" frames you mentally reconstruct the story, and this requires little effort.
I think the same happens with pixel or line art. You just need some cues and then your brain gets to work on creating the scene.
>Again, perhaps my view is biased because I grew up with the pixelated games of old. Still, I'd like to assign the excitement of the early 3d titles more to the novelty (at the time) than from the fidelity of the graphics. I think the pixel art style will (or already does) have much more staying power.
I happen to agree that early 3d games like PS1/N64 look rather ugly, but nostalgia is very powerful, and retro low poly models is now its own aesthetic [0]. Like with pixel art, artists will take liberties with what was actually capable with hardware at the time, but people who grew up with the style will probably appreciate it more.
[0]https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/321754/Designing_a_demak...
To me, the limited color palette doesn't strike me as a differently meaningful sort of limitation than, say, the appearance of Mario 64 vs Mario Galaxy.
The imagination always fills in the gap - I don't remember KOTOR looking worse than Mass Effect looking worse than Mass Effect Andromeda, say, but if I go back and look at them, they definitely were more limited - but if you don't have the memory of just how much your imagination originally filled in, I think it's harder to look past the actual pixels.
Looking at them now makes a case for imagination being an important part.
Yes, this means I go back to those games now and I still find their graphics cool looking and evocative.
> The imagination always fills in the gap
Fully agreed! I think this is a quality that gets lost with games with more realistic graphics.
> To me, the limited color palette doesn't strike me as a differently meaningful sort of limitation than, say, the appearance of Mario 64 vs Mario Galaxy.
I believe it is a meaningful limitation. It's like working in a black & white drawing with a pencil, or with an early comic book illustration. It's not just fewer colors, you must re-think the illustration. An obvious example is the use of dithering, which when done right can be a beautiful art form. With VGA, you need way less dithering, if at all.
There's a similar issue with the first scene inside the nazi fort, where the wall in the EGA version is made of rough hewn rocks and whether you imagine them to be slimy, moldy, smooth or rough is entirely up to you. There are only the broad strokes to guide your subconscious. The VGA version presents a done deal of what looks like modern masonry. Again it's jarring - we are supposed to be looking at the ancient foundations of the fort.
In other cases, the artists did a better job with VGA so it's either OK or in rare cases better than the EGA version. Perhaps it also comes down to how vivid one's imagination is. Someone who has no preconceptions about the scenery or does not have a particularly strong visual imagination will just see a bunch of rough lines in the EGA flavor, and they won't mind the somewhat off putting lighting or details in the VGA screens - they'll just assume that's how it's supposed to be.
However, the article does show examples where the EGA screen is undeniably better, for example whenever there's a lightning effect. I can't understand why they weren't made for the VGA version, especially considering how easy they are to make with a simple palette rotation. The castle exterior looks so much better, more detailed and with more effects in the EGA version that it boggles the mind.
That wasn't the only change, through. I remember that there is a rotisserie in the castle which rotates in EGA/VGA, but does not in CGA, so they likely knew that the computers with CGA could not handle the animation as well.
1. https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/indiana-jones-and-the-las...
I'd take a 1-bit Mac game over CGA.
Here's an example where it's used, and it looks cool to me: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/defender-of-the-crown/scr... (the text is hard to read, but that's because of the low resolution).
> I'd take a 1-bit Mac game over CGA.
Those indeed look pretty cool, but that's a matter of higher resolution which allows for cool dithering effects. CGA color modes were pretty low res, so it's likely that's the actual problem you have with them, not just the 4 colors. Or rather, the combination of both factors.
The dark green dark red brown black palette was indeed probably the least bad palette, but it suffered severely from a lack of contrast. That's why the text is hard to read, because it's black text on a brown background, not because of the resolution.
The reason the cyan magenta white black palette was so common is because it had both black and white, meaning the text was easy to read.
The Tandy graphics adapter allowed a programmable palette. It was still just 4 colors, but the programmer could choose which 4 colors they were. (out of the 16 colors a CGA monitor could display) This was such a minor increase in complexity for a 10x improvement in usefulness it's shocking to me that IBM didn't include that in the CGA.
Yes, I meant the low intensity palette, you're correct. I disagree with you in that I don't find it "the least bad", but actually beautiful. It has a kind of "wood engraving" vibe to me.
> That's why the text is hard to read, because it's black text on a brown background, not because of the resolution.
I respectfully disagree. It's true that the contrast is lower than with a brighter color, but it's still not a problem for my eyes. For me, it actually has to do with the blockiness of the low res font; also there's some aliasing with the "m" and similar characters that confuses my eyes and I have to make an extra effort the parse the characters -- the same would happen were this black font on white background.
The Tandy fascinates me since I saw that video by The 8 Bit Guy. Sadly, I never owned one!
Likewise those who complain that CGA is “only 4 awful colours” have clearly never used a proper CGA system the way it was originally intended.
The following YouTube video does a good job describing what CGA was really like back in the day: https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc
EGA was definitely a massive step up, no question. But people also miss the point of CGA when they look as sharp screenshots rendered on a pixel perfect LCD display.
In practice, (and I saw plenty of ugly CGA) I don't think I ever came across one of these composite outputs/monitor combos.
And if the colour palette wasn't to your taste... For years I had CGA with a monochrome composite monitor. So it was all shades of green. The old LucasArts and Sierra games were fine on mono CGA.
Also we walked uphill both ways to school, etc, get your 4k displays off my lawn...
EGA is great though, 320x200x16 is just one of those natural sweet spots that many different early computers eventually settled on.
That's not even counting the many, many games with wonky cameras. It feels like cameras were not widely figured out until the 360/PS3 generation.
This is one reason I appreciate Downwell. You unlock new 4-color palettes as you progress. Some are really nice to look at and completely change the mood of the game.
‘Down Ward’ does that too: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fisholith/down-ward-owl... (or would do if it was funded—not sure of its fate).
I agree! I have a CGA game still inked on my left arm (in case any of you ever need to identify my headless corpse).
Not much to look at, but plays well into the noir theme in this case.
The aesthetic recently had a resurgence in the indie scene, with ‘Obra Dinn’ and whatnot. Many gamemakers especially reminisce about Gameboy's four-color palette.
Some modern low-color games might have more than two colors, but are designed essentially in grayscale and allow switching the whole palette: https://pioneersgame.tumblr.com/post/112307966203/i-doubt-th...
Though of course, this time the four colors aren't some arbitrary acid-neon colors, but are chosen by the authors.
4 shades of a single colour isn't so bad.
Really wish I hadn't sold it now as I did a lot on that machine. Even ran Windows 2.0 passably.
I really, really wanted something capable of playing Wolfenstein though so it had to go. :(
(I started with a Commodore 64, but I was too young and didn't really manage to output graphics with it).
The Last Blade II (1998), IMHO the pinnacle of 2D fighting games (both in terms of graphics and replayability): https://www.nintendolife.com/games/neogeo/last_blade_2/scree...
Virtua Fighter (1993), pioneering 3D fighting game: https://www.mobygames.com/game/arcade/virtua-fighter/screens...
IMHO even Tekken IV (2001), released three years after The Last Blade II, aged worse and looks uglier today: https://www.fightersgeneration.com/games/tekken4-p2.html
Mostly it feels like the EGA artist was better at dramatic lighting. For example, in the EGA version of the dead templar, the neck area is pure black for a reason: it makes the skull, the focal point of the image, stand out more. But in the VGA version they decided to paint something there, so the image became less focused.
thanks, I was hoping someone would comment on this. I haven't played this one, but FoA is one of my favorites.
Yes, looking back on the EGA graphics, there is definitely a level of skill and stylization that I took for granted at the time and have a certain nostalgia for, but when the VGA versions of these games came out they were all mind-blowing and you just kind of had to be there - no one was selecting the EGA option if they had a VGA card.
I remember the VGA version of Indiana Jones in particular being awesome in VGA, on a CRT, live in motion.
Looking at them now, the EGA ones have a certain amount of nostalgia, but I vividly remember 16 colours being really limiting, especially at those resolutions where dithering was really noticeable.
Even looking at the comparisons in that post I still prefer the VGA versions over the EGA versions. Guess I did not get enough exposure to EGA to have that much nostalgia for it. My family got a computer around '91 and I think the VGA card came within a year after purchase
The Atari ST can display 16 colors from a 512 color palette.
The Atari STe can display 16 colors from a 4096 color palette.
The Amigas can display 32 colors from a 4096 color palette.
These EGA/VGA comparisons (this is the second I've seen so far) almost demonstrate this perfectly. It's really quite fascinating.
I really enjoy the dark scenes in blue monochromatic. It gives a really good athmosphere. Somethings that's lost in the 'upgrade'
Apparently he had to fight with the engineers over switching to a dithered art style because at the time they were using run length encoding for compression. But, he re-painted a few scenes to be dithered and the improvement was so obvious that the engineers gave in and “made it work” (switched to LZW compression).
The thing this immediately brought to mind for me was the way Silent Hill 2 was absolutely massacred a few years back in its supposed "remaster" (they left out the FOG): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill_HD_Collection. This seems to be an eternal pitfall: "Upgrading" graphics while failing to realize that impressive visuals are about artistic skill and effort (often MOSTLY), not just technical stats.
Here is almost the same, due to its limitation EGA needed some creativity that VGA didn't need. But in the end VGA was also mastered and produced some masterpieces (for example Monkey Island 2 to remain into the LucasArts realm).
Conversely, increasing the technical capabilities of the tool does not guarantee a good art style.
I went back to both of them, decades years later, and found Last Crusade to be much more challenging in a way that games no longer offer (besides Dark Souls) -- they let you make mistakes which hinder or make completion almost impossible. You could get pretty far in to Last Crusade and not have the required items to progress further.
This was in contrast with Sierra Online's adventures, which had plenty of surprise deaths and deadend situations. This led to saving frantically at every step, which isn't particularly fun.
I loved Sierra games -- the first three EGA Space Quest games are my favorites -- but I see the point of avoiding player frustration.
However, it turns out that by default the V2 displays wrong in ScummVM, while accurate to the hardware limitations. You need to switch the ‘render mode’ to Amiga to get intended colors: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Maniac_Mansion#Higher_qual...
These images brought back some powerful memories, one in particular is hearing the chorus of the song Self Control by Laura Branigan comming out of my friends C64 in or around 1986. The next time I heard a simmilar example was a .wav file of the song Daisy but that was years later.
https://archive.org/details/msdos_shareware_fb_VGAART
I remember being very excited for Zone66 since I had seen other things by Renaissance and it used protected mode to squeeze every ounce of processing power out of my PC. In the end, though, the game just wasn't very fun. It had a cool introduction, though!
The EGA versions had distinct 16 colors graphics.
I guess you had the VGA versions
This is a small part of the charm of these old games newer players on ScummVM miss out on, as ScummVM (sensibly) removes the in-game copy protection questions. They were integrated into the game in a sympathetic way that made looking up the diary feel like Indy hunting for clues etc.
There was also an odd time where every graphics card got called a "VGA" in its broadest sense, unrelated to actual VGA modes.
I feel it's time to talk about the beloved Hercules adapter and SIMCGA!
Q for players of modern video games: do they still have great ending credits scenes like that?
I only play a select few contemporary video games, so my sample is somewhat limited, but none of them have had the sort of credits scenes that we enjoyed in the '80s and '90s. Nowadays it's just another cutscene like all the others sprinkled throughout the game. In fact, when I finished the main quest line in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, I wasn't even sure I was done! This might be particular to open world games though, which don't really have an end, per se; you just sort of run out of things to do.
edit: just for fun, here is the scene -- https://youtu.be/9ivNLD75rAU?t=2854
And then I enjoyed the article all over again. Properly this time.
Anyway, what I miss most from Lucas Arts games are the running gags to decipher, so I guess this way was better for me.
Think I actually got to play Fate of Atlantis before Crusade and that game still blows me away.
For some reason, I never get that feeling when playing modern games designed in retro/8-bits style.
> Hover the cursor over the images to see the remastered VGA version. If you're on a iOS device, you can simply tap the images
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I will refer myself to my own quote from the guidelines :-)