CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought!

The 8-Bit Guy
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2016–2024
YouTube
2.4M views · 10 years ago · explainer · historical

The 8-Bit Guy on how the IBM CGA graphics card really looked in its day. He shows that its four-colour modes and the composite-monitor artifacting tricks gave games far better colour than the garish palettes people remember from digital RGB monitors.

HN people use it as the go-to description of what CGA was really like, explaining how developers exploited composite signals and why many CGA games look worse on modern setups.

“The following YouTube video does a good job describing what CGA was really like back in the day”
ColorGame art & UI
#cga#artifacting#compositevideo#retrographics#8-bitguy#colorpalettes

19 comments from Hacker News

n
@nzach2021 · in “Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit [video]”
Your comment got me thinking: "Wouldn't be nice if existed an 'awesome list' for this kind of content?" After a brief google search the best I could find is this [0] and it seems to be abandoned. Does anyone know a better source for this type of content? I'm leaving some random links to great channels that produce this kind of content: - CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought! [1] - DVD-RAM: The Disc that Behaved like a Flash Drive [2] - The Story of Super Mario Bros. 3 | Gaming Historian [3] [0] - link [1] - ▶ this video [2] - link [3] - link
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l
@laumars2021 · in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA/VGA Comparison”
Bare in mind the displays of the time would have blended the pixels. 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: ▶ this video
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j
@jandrese2020 · in “Why do color TVs make black and white snow?”
The 8-Bit guy did a great piece on CGA that goes into detail about how old developers abused the fuzzy smeary nature of composite signals to output somewhat decent graphics. The tricks however didn't work when people upgraded to proper monitors and as a result a lot of CGA games look much worse today than they did on the intended equipment of the day. ▶ this video
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g
@gecko2020 · in “The Polygons of Another World: IBM PC”
CGA colors were designed for display on composite; the issue is most people were using digital cables, which had the garish colors. ▶ this video has a great overview of what was possible.
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d
@djsumdog2017 · in “Secret colours of the Commodore 64”
If you want to see how this type of colour magic works in video form, the 8-bit guy does a GREAT video on this: ▶ this video He shows all the interesting artifacting that makes these extra colours possible.
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j
@jordigh2016 · in “CGA Graphics – Not as bad as you thought”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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d
@donut2016 · in “CGA Graphics – Not as bad as you thought”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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S
@StreamBright2016 · in “CGA Graphics – Not as bad as you thought”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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i
@ijk2016 · in “CGA Graphics – Not as bad as you thought”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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l
@lomase2024 · in “The effect of CRTs on pixel art”
Did you ever played a ms-dos game in CGA mode? It was not suposed to look like that! ▶ this video Developers did definitly took advantages of everything they could to show more colors on the screen, remember all those demos?
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a
@actionfromafar2024 · in “The effect of CRTs on pixel art”
PC monitors with RGB were a different ballgame, at least at that low resolution there was no distortion or bluriness as you say. Even PCs had games for composite video: ▶ this video TVs though, especially on RF, were pretty darn blurry.
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j
@johannes12343212023 · in “The IBM 5153's True CGA Palette and Color Output (2022)”
One thing about CGA is that it was meant to be output via composite video instead of VGA-style RGBI. This video demonstrates the difference: ▶ this video
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