CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought!

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In this episode I cover the IBM CGA graphics system from 1981.

[@Indigo_Gaming]

The funny thing about CGA graphics was that it seemed like 90% of the color palette usage was cyan.

[@mickyr171]

My most vivid memory of them days was streetrods lol, loved that game

[@effinawesome3088]

CGA literally stands for "Cyan Graphics are Awesome"

[@shyfolium]

Cyan is my favorite color

[@jamilson1044]

@@majorpropane *cryes with purple tears*

[@jamilson1044]

@@effinawesome3088 ea: am i a LIE to you?

[@LGR]

Excellent video, sir! Burgertime and Ikari Warriors are two of my favorites for demonstrating composite CGA.

[@AsafEliyahuUzan]

"""""

[@Nukle0n]

+Lazy Game Reviews This video is wrong though, this is not making colors due to NTSC artifacts, he's actually demonstrating Tandy Graphics, or TGA, which was an extension of CGA that allowed it to show the entire CGA palette. Notice how he says it's a Tandy computer he shows it off with.

[@The8BitGuy]

+Lazy Game Reviews I had not heard of those two. I'll check them out. I had a whole bunch of others i wanted to show, though.

[@The8BitGuy]

+Nukle0n No.. as I said clearly in the video, this Tandy laptop did not have Tandy graphics.. It was standard CGA. Every CGA system could do exactly what I showed.

[@AsafEliyahuUzan]

+The 8-Bit Guy +

[@shuttereff3ct593]

5:34 That laptop looks like a thing to fire nuclear rockets !

[@OfficialIvy2006]

Well, Yes. But Actually, No.

[@SoozUK]

"If you mix black and cyan you get blue" Cool, got it. "And if you mix black and magenta you get DARK blue" No wait what?!

[@anthonyscali8013]

NOT purple, Dark blue

[@420mrhat]

he typed dark blue ?? U is blind.

[@TheBeatfox]

It had to do with the quirky way in which the (NTSC) display would separate out the image's luminance (brightness) and chrominance (hue & saturation) information from the incoming composite signal. By placing pixels in certain alternating color patterns, the software could "trick" the display into outputting a completely different color that wasn't simply a mix of the two original colors. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors

[@ergonautilus]

I'd call it indigo, not dark blue.

[@SCPH77004]

@@banhammer3904 Somebody went batshit Technology Connections mode

[@JoSephGD]

"Most modern TVs still have a composite video port on them." Disappointingly, this isn't aging too well.

[@DoomFinger511]

Most of the smart LCD TVs in my house have a composite port. I have a TCL and Samsung that are only a couple years old with those ports.

[@NascarRacingFan5]

I have a Samsung smartv from 2017 that only has component cables. I would need an adapter 😢

[@andygozzo72]

@@NascarRacingFan5 try the Y socket of component with a true composite signal, some tvs can extract colour data from it ..

[@oaajbs]

@@andygozzo72 Yes there are quite of few tvs that do exactly this but don't advertise that fact.

[@andygozzo72]

@@oaajbs my neighbours 52 inch thing does, had to try the component input as the other inputs were in use for other devices and worked perfectly , colour came up nicely on just the Y

[@mothersbasement]

man, your videos are always fascinating. the nitty gritty of how old hardware works is so cool

[@oldchannel502]

+Mother's Basement Agreed

[@ryanamberger]

+TheGeekGuy if you're the geek guy maybe you can answer my question. I watch KZbin on my iPhone 6. Why is it when replying to someone's comment that has an apostrophe in it does it read &#39 instead. Like yours reads "+Mother's Basement" instead of "+Mother's Basement".

[@barnstormer322]

+Ryan Amberger The reason is that TheGeekGuy has edited their comment after posting. When you post a comment, KZbin converts some punctuation into its (Unicode i think) code - in the case of an apostrophe, "'". This code doesn't show up when the comment is viewed, however. When you edit a comment, it doesn't convert it back into the character, leaving it instead as the code. This means that if someone edits the comment and doesn't change the code back, KZbin just views it as regular text when the comment is updated, so it doesn't convert it back into the character it's supposed to be when it's viewed again. Hope this helps. I just guessed this was the case when I edited a comment a while back and noticed this happening. (sorry for the long response, wanted to be as clear as possible)

[@hornox4life]

Yeah, something I was confronted with as a little kid and didnt really understand. And to learn in depth about it 30 years later is pretty cool.

[@matthewmcdanel4106]

I clicked because of the Commander Keen thumbnail. Stayed for the great content.

[@PhoenixClank]

same

[@Kensuke0987]

me too i ended up subscribing

[@devlynnhawke]

+Matthew McDanel , Keen lured me here as well.

[@RoxHand]

+Matthew McDanel Ditto.

[@JewelKnightJess]

+Matthew McDanel Yes! :D My favourite childhood PC series.

[@PkGam]

I was floored when you connected it to a TV. I had no idea it could do that.

[@lepidotos]

Monitors were expensive, but TVs were probably already in people's homes by 1982. Same reason Commodore computers hooked up to TVs.

[@MXB2001]

Ditto. Of course I only ran CGA on my VGA card, there was no composite jack to plug into a TV.

[@modmuseum]

Man, I love CGA--It looks so unique in the landscape of retro graphic styles and uniquely limited graphics are one of my favorite parts of early gaming. I never knew what the whole *mostly cyan and pink* style was before now. Cool video.

[@jeffreyrussell4874]

Hey so I am blown away at how big this channel has gotten. I started watching this channel maybe 2ish years ago, just kinda stumbled onto it. And kinda fell away for about 6 months, this video popped up on my feed, and decided to give it a watch. I looked down and it said over 1M views and almost that many subscribers! Thats awesome! I was born in 87, and I always wanted a computer growing up, I always thought learning about this stuff was so cool. But we didnt get one until the early 2000s, and the golden age of the C64 and AppleII were long gone, and I didnt know enough about them, or even what they were to know what I wanted. I asked for a computer for years and I always got a stupid VTech toy. I'm glad I can watch this now, and learn just a little of what I missed out on as a kid.

[@iNuchalHead]

The dark palette cyan\magenta is sublime. I dream in those colors.

[@rotatingcat1957]

i dream in 2048 bit colors

[@grantorino2325]

It's sad that they couldn't make it 5 colors instead of 4 (alas, 5 does not multiply evenly into 16). With Cyan, Magenta, YELLOW, black, and white, it would've looked TREMENDOUSLY better!

[@altohippiegabber]

man this reminds me of back in the day when i was young and used to play King's Quest in glorious CGA. (VGA existed but my father didnt think it was necessary lol thanks dad)

[@TheAngryIntellect-]

I liked space Quest better. 😆

[@JimLeonard]

As co-author of 8088 MPH, I approve of this video. ;-)

[@aaldrich1982]

This video and your work have astounded me today. I had no idea CGA was not so disgusting!

[@The8BitGuy]

+Jim Leonard The 8088MPH demo inspired me to make this video. Unfortunately, the demo wouldn't work on the Tandy 1400. It would get stuck on the first plasma demo part.

[@JimLeonard]

No worries, the demo breaks most emulators too :-) I hope to make videos as well as you do someday. Glad you liked the demo.

[@itzspencerr1403]

Do you know any emulators that run the demo, without crashing?

[@JimLeonard]

+MCD456 pcem-x comes close, iirc

[@danielpool2039]

This brings back memories. Like when I couldn’t finish kings quest until we upgraded to an ega equipped computer. It turns out that it’s impossible to find a golden egg when gold isn’t one of the 4 colors available to you.

[@Vebinz]

Wow! Amazing stuff, never knew about this. Such old tech still holding secrets. Thanks for doing this video!

[@maria.h.barrizo8573]

.

[@haraldhimmel5687]

"Woah is this shitty. Is this really how CGI is supposed to look like or is it a compatiblility issue?" You just answered questions I had since early childhood. Thanks man!

[@Lion_McLionhead]

CGA looked great on monochrome monitors.

Yeah, like when we had Hercules monitor and there was a CGA emulator for it

[@193819441974]

@ Like C64 in "green monitors". Was bizarre for me to see videos of games I have never seen in colours. Green Monitors give a metallic aspect of games, and it was good for me because I have some problems of vision with colors. And black and white is not bad too: see MADWORLD on Wii.

@@193819441974 oh yeah, we had one of those greens for our Enterprise 128 too

[@HextorBane]

No.

[@otter-pro]

And I always thought how awful the CGA was, especially the choice of purple/magenta, but now I see how it would've been with composite. I never had the chance to use the composite, when I had an old PC. Thanks for the info.

[@vwestlife]

Great video, but I have to disagree with you about CGA being comparable or superior to a C64 or Atari 8-bit series. Those machines had dedicated graphics chips with hardware sprites, which made them ideal for gaming, and it wasn't really until the EGA/VGA era that most PC games began to exceed what the C64 and Atari were capable of -- or if you were lucky enough to have a Tandy 1000, the system which truly legitimized PC gaming.

[@Scalibq]

+vwestlife Aside from needing EGA/VGA you also needed quite a powerful CPU compared to the humble 6502-derivatives in the C64 and Atari. The CPU had to bang all the pixels into memory the hard way. You'll need at least a 10 MHz 8088 or a 6-8 MHz 286 and a proper VGA card (the game is EGA, but real EGA cards tend to have very slow memory) to enjoy Commander Keen, where C64 and Atari did similar games with ease on a much slower CPU.

[@krasen671]

insert long comment here

[@LMacNeill]

I think the superiority of CGA was in its dedicated 16K-on-the-card video RAM. The Atari, Apple ][, C64, and all the others had to share system RAM with the graphics subsystem. I do agree with you that the dedicated hardware sprites, like those available in the C64 were most definitely excellent for gaming, and made what *would’ve* been a far inferior system much more useable. I’m a big C64 fan, no doubt, but I definitely give IBM some big credit here - they created a graphics subsystem that was excellent for its day.

[@Guroth]

Inclined to agree, what I just witnessed was not comparable to the C64. If I had seen that back in the day, I would have cringed and run back to my 64.

[@sammymcfone8281]

Krasen Makes Content oh you think you're So Great don't you you think you can just posted them slightly witty comments and nobody will respond well guess what I responded bro I responded real hard look at this response I'm responding all over the place you won't even know how hard I'm responding all over your somewhat redundant comment watch me watch me bro watch me watch me watch me yeah ok stop watching me now

[@jfwfreo]

Seeing Commander Keen in CGA surprised me since I recall reading that the "smooth scrolling trick" John Carmack developed (and used in Commander Keen) was "only possible on EGA". How did they make it work on CGA?

[@alansmithee1030]

Man, this is why I like KZbin. Great little shows like this one.

[@algi1]

OMG, that Total Eclipse runs superfast compared to C64!

[@The8BitGuy]

+algi To be fair, that was running under DOSBOX when I captured the video. When I ran Total Eclipse on the old Tandy laptop it ran about the same framerate as the C64 version.

[@algi1]

+The 8-Bit Guy Oh, that sounds good, I might do that myself, too.

[@technologyproductions-ye3px]

I own a eclipse mp3 player

[@jez9999]

+algi Check out my speedrun. :-) watch?v=hL90h4vvx_4

[@algi1]

+Kurt Angerdinger Weren't the Mercenary games running smooth compared to Total Eclipse?

[@ViolentSh4de]

It's like 2008-2010 Angry video game nerd without the swearing. I like this channel.

[@ravengaming4143]

+ViolentSh4de Looks like a normal guy making a informative video, about as far removed from the sensationalist and pompous "AVGN" and his clones as possible.

[@ColynBowman]

Oof chill, This person probably just doesn't have much experience with retro tech on youtube. I feel like you guys are just using it as a chance to attack the AVGN channel and it's fans.

[@DodderingOldMan]

+Marcopolis Neko I dunno, does it make you feel smart when you say shit like that? Like a mature, sensible, intelligent adult? Is that what you think you're being? Because if you do think that... well... I've got bad news.

[@ViolentSh4de]

Marcopolis Neko I take it you havnt seen the 2 minute long segments where he explained console and companies history before the game came out. Plus they both do (did) Retro tech stuff. There were a couple similarities between the segments that AVGN did and these videos no reason to be hostile.

[@ZiddersRooFurry]

+Marcopolis Neko Why so rude?

[@bwgti]

I have watched this several times. A couple of times with my 8 year old son. This is some of your best work David. You have one of the best channels on YTube!

[@alexsteb]

many many more youtube channels should have the interesting information density of yours. Keep up the great work!

[@ojanieno]

I'm watching this on hercules and can't see any difference.

[@WAQWBrentwood]

LOL!

[@WAQWBrentwood]

+manfreed That card was considered "esoteric" at the time. Some of us had them, Most didn't. (like reel-reel tape decks,Known, but considered unusual.)

[@ojanieno]

***** I don't know, maybe because it wasn't color. I wasn't happy about it when my dad bought his first PC, but after all it wasn't that bad and most stuff worked (including Windows).

[@JasperJanssen]

Hercules (well, clones) were extremely popular over here in .nl. They used the same (cheap) mono monitors as the old MDA and so they were the natural upgrade option for businesses.

[@WAQWBrentwood]

Jasper Janssen A lot of us here in the USA used Herc. An awesome thing before VGA.

[@JasonValentineFL]

I wish I knew about this when I was a kid, would have tried to convince my Dad to try some games in Composite mode. I was so happy when we finally upgraded to EGA though. lol

[@JasonValentineFL]

+Dario Pervan Do go on.

[@OcarinaofKillingTime]

+I do games just ignore assholes

[@OcarinaofKillingTime]

***** This was months ago. You're going to have to let posts go sometimes. I'm sorry somebody dropped you on the head as a child so you can't recognize that...actually no I'm not since you're being an ignorant bitch. I'm not personally offended, but someone reading the comment might be, so I owe you that much, as you are certainly dumb.

[@JasonValentineFL]

This has been a great thread. I just wish Dario would elaborate on his comment, I love to see his brilliant intellect at work.

[@-taz-]

I knew about it, but never got it to work. Maybe you didn't miss much. :)

[@SilentSinnerInScarlet]

1:12 Commander Keen! I remember that little guy! Even though I never played it (but saw my uncle play it)

[@snufkin8940]

Fun fact: that game is where the Minecraft enchantment table language comes from.

[@mossmacarthur504]

ck 5 has a lit soundtrack idk about the others tho coz im yest to play them. i actually only clicked on this video because i saw commander keen on the thumbnail lol

[@Preinstallable]

@@snufkin8940 and theres a translator

[@davodar]

love it how these videos take me back to a simplified world ☺

[@OuroborosChoked]

This was crazy interesting! I wonder why you never showed up in my recommendations before... I wonder what else KZbin is hiding from me...

[@stefanobiaggini]

I still have dozens of old '80 computers and software, your channel is beautiful, greetings from Italy.

[@binaryguru]

We used to call CGA, "Chunky Graphics Adapter" back in the day.

[@silne]

We called it crappy graphics adapter LOL. I still remember when my dad bought a vga card and a monitor that could utilise it and we were all "WHOA" like it was the best thing we'd ever seen bahahaha.

[@scottbreon9448]

I called it the Crappy Graphics Adapter myself. It' sucks when the radio shack TGA (Tandy graphics adapter) was far superior to the IBM CGA

[@bright_decision407]

I like how you use gameplay footage from Ultima VI often in your videos.

[@The8BitGuy]

+chaos407 It has always been one of my favorite games.

[@technologyproductions-ye3px]

I hate that game GTA 5 is way better

[@lucarnetrange]

My dad bought our first computer (Olivetti PC1) in 1988 with CGA graphics. I liked the CGA games of our first computer and I even bought some games (like Test Drive 2: the Duel), but when I saw the Amiga 500 graphics and sounds (the game was Lankhor's Mortvielle Manor), I was completely amazed and instantly fell in love with the Amiga. My parents offered me an Amiga 500 in 1990 or 1991. It was the best gift I ever had. I sold that Amiga in 1995 or 96 for about 400 euros including 2 MB memory, external floppy drive, monitor, joysticks and a dozen of original games (believe it or not !). So for me playing CGA games was quite frustrating, but the Amiga was really a pure joy.

[@KaziiTheAvali_inactive]

the way composit cga looks is closer to dittering but not to the exact. i love it

[@Kairi091]

WOW these videos are friggin amazing.

[@philojudaeusofalexandria9556]

That commander keen is running in EGA, not VGA. It was my fav game in the late 80's and I ran it on an EGA monitor/card so I remember exactly what it looked like.

[@ninjashaw5991]

i am so grateful that we have so powerful graphic cards now.

[@sameash3153]

Ninja Shaw I'm not. They're boring now.

[@funnylookingfoetus]

Playing games in CGA mode was all I could do back then in the late 80's to early 90's. That's what my dad had and I was simply in awe of it. Going through the whole line from text based games, to CGA games and then later EGA and VGA games was endless fun for me. I get really nostalgic when I see those graphics now. Thank you for the great video about it.

[@linux42069]

All the early computers my family got were throw aways from my dad's work. They always ran cga with that magenta, cyan White palette. I still remember booting up popcorn to that palette

[@groundbeef2]

Holy crap, I haven't seen ZZT since I was a kid!

[@fribiesdi]

I find this composite demo very pleasant to watch. Seems like to have been done with passion.

[@balcofono666]

You had me with the Commander Keen preview!

[@matthewmorciglio]

+The 8-Bit Guy You should make an updated home network tour

[@Motocicleiros]

Loved this video. I am from CGA era and I never knew that composite could be that good!

[@smitfraudc3896]

Most early consoles did the same trick, they could only show limited colors at the same time but had a huge color palette to choose from

[@oldaccount7768]

Alpha wave for MS-dos has a pretty good CGA mode

[@zanchito]

This was an excellent video. It has brought me memories of being a teen and fiddling with my father with our old computer. Truly a piece of computer history!

[@carolinmaamann6191]

Amazing work! As a huge pixel graphics fan, your video proves what limited resources are able to create! There is one thing I wonder about which came across me the past days: With traditional CGA, the graphics modes vary depending on the number of colors used. So for monochrome it's 640x300px, four colors can be displayed in 320x200px and 16 colors in 160x100px. Now what my brain concludes from this is that the displayed size on screen becomes smaller the more colors are used. Looking at videos on KZbin, though, it seems that this assumption is not true (according to some maths I did, with a 14" display of 720px resolution in width, this results in something around 5cm size for displayed graphics in 16 colors). My impression is rather that 160x100px are stretched over the whole screen, making single colors bigger. The reason why physical size matters to me is a project I'm working on in which I want to transfer CGA graphics into print products keeping as many retro aspects as possible. Do you have a hint for me to solve my enigma?

[@kurostyx9124]

so this is where the magenta-cyan 'aesthetics' come from

[@Sylocat]

Yep. Half our culture's conception of cyberpunk Aesthetics™ is based on the technical limitations of one specific graphics card from the 80s.

[@jorgemarcelo4708]

I was thinking the same thing!

[@quattro4468]

@@Sylocat wow. Just wow im so lucky to have bumped into this video.

[@mrpedrobraga]

@@quattro4468 Heck yeah

[@High_Priest_Jonko]

RGBI is for adults. Composite is for kids.

[@mikeymcmikeface5599]

I was left confused about the "composite mode"...

[@cope9489]

HDMI is for babies.

[@Kojirremer]

Mindblown. The idea of patterns combining into different colors never crossed my mind.

[@Slooby]

Ahhhhh throwback to playing dangerous dave on a floppy back in the day and changing between graphics modes

[@hamudified7663]

wow future changed a lot

[@gali01992]

Back in the mid 80s, I worked at a company that developed optical mark readers. The hardware division was kept separate from the rest of the company because they used IBM computers with CGA monitors running CAD programs in red/green/yellow mode. The flyback whine from over a dozen computers was irritating to some people, especially me since I was sensitive to that frequency (15.7 KHz). Just entering the building was misery for me, and I couldn't enter the CAD room without some sort of ear protection (I stuck my fingers in my ears every time I passed the room). Us software developers didn't have a problem with flyback whine because we all used EGA cards which have a higher frequency (21.4 KHz), which I could still hear but it wasn't nearly as loud.

[@centigrams]

This video just got recommended to me on both of my accounts today lol. Nice video by the way.

[@dandobar3139]

black,cyan, magenta,white = *A E S T H E T I C S*

[@MaxPSVR]

I grew up with CGA. My main computer was an amstrad 1512. I always looked on with envious eyes at EGA and VGA. As I knew I could never play those sort of games. I had me CGA and had to be happy with it. But I still had a lot of awesome memories. Star flight. Space rogue, magic pockets, speed balls, psi 5, supremacy, battle of Britton. Even elite. I all played in CGA on that out dated computer.

[@vertigo4567]

Oh my god, Commander Keen.... I'm 30 and yet I am still am old enough to have amazing memories of at least 3 of the commander keen games... brings me back. haha

[@BryonLape]

I guess the Tandy 1000 episode never came about.

[@funnylookingfoetus]

Oh yes he did make one, a year ago :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4qrpaKgqMaFobs

[@Huderlord]

Ok so i know why CGA had 4 colors, because of small vram but why it had Black, C,M, White and not Black, R, G, B. It is still 4 colors and cost the same amount of vram. So why they choose that terrible pallete. BlRGB would be better than BlCMW.

[@thomasjoyce4681]

Or they did it to catch the attention of children. Cyan is one of my favorite/favourite colours/colors.

[@andrewmjenner]

+Huderlord Here's my guess: The CGA's designers knew they had two bits from the pixel data to play with and 4 output bits (R, G, B and I). They assigned R and G to the two pixel data bits because differences in R and G are more visible than differences in B and I. The B and I bits just came from two spare bits of the palette register, giving a choice of 4 palettes (dark red, dark green, brown; dark magenta, dark cyan, light grey; light red, light green, yellow; light magenta, light cyan, white). The low 4 bits of the palette register (which control the overscan colour in text modes) also control the colour of bit pattern 00 in the 4-colour graphics mode, giving an extra dimension of colour. The BIOS is set up to make the black/light magenta/light cyan/white palette the default in order to enable white text on a black background, but lots of games use one of the other 64 possible palettes. Actually 96 if you count the red/cyan/white palettes that you get if you turn off the colour burst (that was most likely done in an attempt to make 4 different shades of grey on monochrome composite monitors rather than to give more possible palette combinations).

[@QuicksilverSG]

To simplify andrewmjenner's explanation, in the 4-color CGA graphics mode, only the R and G channels could be controlled by the programmer. The B and I channels were set globally by the choice of graphics palette. The I channel was always set on to produce a bright image. If the B channel was off, the four R and G combinations gave you a Black, Red, Green and Yellow palette. If the B channel was on, it combined with the R and B channels to give you a Black, Purple, Cyan, and White palettte.

[@davidmcgill1000]

More likely chosen for clarity. Sharply contrasting colors made better edges. Plus you kinda wanted white to pair with black leaving 2 different colors for drawing attention to objects.

[@Jonseredi]

Turns out CGA Graphics were just as bad as I thought

[@Dracopol]

2:52 FLASH ATTACK! I remember playing that tank game on a 12-line computer Bulletin Board System that you called into. You had a full view of the environment of your base, but only tiny views around each of your 4 tanks, which you needed to actively attack the other bases.

[@mariannmariann2052]

That view system kinda reminds me of Planet X1, an old game made by David himself.

[@microcolonel]

Fuchsia and cyan were absolutely insane choices for the only two colours, seriously.

[@cst1229]

They could have at least done red, green, blue and black. Yeah you can't make white but you can make any other combination.

[@JesusFamiglietti]

I hate CGA all days of My life, until now. Thank you for this great explanation.

[@Chocolatchips]

5:09 "Who would want to play this?" Kids trapped in school (with kind teachers who let us "find" games laying around the lab) enjoyed playing that. xD Even barf-o-vision becomes entertaining when the alternative is sitting silently for hours.

[@shyleshsrinivasan5092]

That laptop is just awesome ! Manufacturers must consider releasing modern laptops with vintage design !

[@yetidynamics]

that was interesting

[@axonanimations3050]

+yeti dynamics hello i heard about you!

[@yetidynamics]

+Baltic Tiger hi

[@uraldamasis6887]

5:17 I love how you used the sound of some closet door for the laptop. Highly appropriate.

[@RetroZwierz]

Wow. My first PC in mid 80s had an EGA graphics, but I didn't realize that CGA was capable to output such a nice and colorful picture in composite mode. I remembered it, as an ugly 4 color mode. Very nice video 👍

[@gemboy9507]

What is the name of computer in 1:46 ? Looks similar to Commodore64, but C64 had tape drive port instead of this RGBI, hmm...

[@The8BitGuy]

Commodore 128.

[@gemboy9507]

Thanks, i used C128 few times, but in C64mode only, and unfortunately i never had my own C128. But... I still have C64, on which I play on every Chritsmas Eve. Eyes are bleeding when you play on 42" HDTV, but the games... games are still awesome :)

[@helpmemynameis]

Gem Boy c

[@bryan-po8dn]

Hey, I used a Tandy 1400 LT all through college! So awesome to see someone using the old beast.

[@BryndanMeyerholtTheRealDeal]

"The same technique used by the Apple II, only on st er o i ds" made me laugh out loud

[@vwyd]

When he turn his tv on, i thought it was my tv turning on

[@Qinti101]

A Tandy 1400 LT! This was my first PC, I had it for far longer than anyone would have though, I think I kept using it while my friends had 486 SXs and DX. Everyone had hard drives and HD floppies and I only had regular floppies. Typing an essay on it was marginally better than using a typewriter if only because I would correct my mistakes without retyping the whole damn page, but getting the dot matrix printer to print was quite the experience. I remember spending way too much time playing Megaman and Prince of Persia on this machine. Ah, seeing it took me back for a while...

[@geraldsittly1512]

ZZT and ZZT II were awesom. I run them ob both PC DOS and Amiga with Emulation (which was very fast btw) and gerenated a lot of own levels. Nice to see that game here

[@333panda]

And here I’m using a rtx 2080 ti with like 11gb vram and back then you had like 16k vram

[@pieterpretorius1014]

its amazing how far we've come with computers

[@leomdk939]

and yet the games were still a lot of fun, anyway

[@MrSEA-ok2ll]

I remember how decent some Tandy graphics games looked such as Rampage...I used to sell games for Tandy's at Radio Shack in the early 90s. Very good video.

[@yusriabbas8430]

Although I didn't understand anything of all what you explained, I kept watching until the end of the video.

[@BattlecryBob]

Do you have more information about the game Flash Attack shown at 2:51? It looks really familiar but I can't really find anything useful on the internet bout it.

[@The8BitGuy]

+Robert Morris It was a multi-player game back in the 1990's, but it required to be connected to a "MajorBBS" system. However, it was based off of an earlier game written for the Commodore PET.

[@BattlecryBob]

Thanks, I found it finally. I was really into MBBS back in my high school days. It's nice to see something years later I totally forgot about!

[@DavidGalloway]

Oh, I really really wanted this game back in the day. Possibly saw it in Byte Magazine (Pet Version?)

[@AB-om2qp]

So cga is basically that ugly girl who's now beautiful and you regret not dating her in high school Update: wow so many likes. Thank you so much

[@stevethepocket]

More like composite mode is beer goggles.

[@KillThad]

Pocket Fluff Productions How about the ugly girl is now moderately good-looking and you've got a buzz going?

[@trenzinhodaalegria8012]

Hum no... It is however one of those things that nobody knew how to use properly back then. Same goes for VCR's ability to start recording autonomously at a given time, most people were absolutely clueless because they did not read the manual.

[@pavy415]

SilkyGuy8179 actually that fat girl

[@Gyros9988]

No CGA is the ugly girl on who you had the wrong standard for and now you're older and can have that 4K Latin Girl

[@SomeGuy712x]

(2:48) Oh, I totally remember playing that Lawn Mower game in the past. This brings back such memories.

[@android927]

I actually used to have an old Tandy 1400 when i was a kid and i would in fact play games on the monochrome screen. My dad actually wrote a program in 8088 assembly language that would invert the colors on the monochrome screen for better contrast while playing games. The ones i remember playing the most are Digger and Qix, but there were probably others as well.

[@ssplintergirl]

That image of the graphics card is so cool. Just look at those traces.

[@kevinlaskowski2285]

Love your videos. Keep up the good work my retro computer guy.

[@ZubairKhan-vs8fe]

You are very very knowledgeable. Thank you for all the detailed explanations.

[@manuelesaureyescendejas1724]

Hi, I love your content, I just want you to know is not nostalgia if you can't comprehend how the technologies evolve and where they come from u can't create new and most intuitive technologies, soo thank you for make this info available for everyone

[@Karukami1]

Fallout 4 CGA

[@PeterLawrenceYT]

I was planning on commenting about 8088 MPH until I got to 8:45 That was an amazing demo. pbs.twimg.com/media/CCuJLbaWgAA1D0D.png:orig

[@Roxor128]

Equally amazing is how it actually works. The devs wrote a series of blog posts about it. EDIT: Oh, your picture is from one of them. Silly me.

[@alexb3d]

Hi The 8-Bit Guy. In the RetroArch forum we are working on basic and advanced shader (also overlays) for DOSBox PURE video adapters, (Hercules, CGA (PCjr/Tandy), EGA, VGA). The idea is to best represent the monitors of the time. Some fast for less powerful systems, some medium with very showy reflections and some more demanding and perfect. If you are ok with it and have availability, you could share some high resolution videos and pictures for reference. Thanks! 🙏

[@WhiteRhinoPSO]

I never knew that CGA was anything other than those four colors. I used to like starting up old DOS games in CGA on occasion just because it was such a departure from the I was used to the games looking.

[@k2mr]

The first device I fixed when I started working on computer maintenance in the late 1980s here in Brazil was a CGA video card like the one that appeared at the beginning of the video.

[@zarjesve2]

CGA superior to C64 or Atari 800 ? :D :D Are you blind? :D

[@scottbreon9448]

Maybe superior to the ZX Spectrum....maybe

[@generalkawasaki9485]

"CGA looks, well, terrible". Let's not forget that it was rare to have a colour computer screen, most screens were monochrome or b/w, or "amber" and on that it looked quite good. Also computer screens were a lot smaller back then. (maybe you mentioned that, i didn't watch the whole video)

[@HeyLaserLips]

I remember Lemmings for DOS supported CGA mode which was pretty generous for a game that came out in 1991. I tried it a couple of times just for fun but that colour pallet was a strain on the eyes after a while. xD

[@nicolasdelucchi9745]

I never even had a CGA card. As a kid, our first computer (AT 286) had an Hercules Graphics card and a white phosphorous monochrome monitor which I loved. It was unusual at the time, because there were mostly amber and green monochrome monitors all around. Our second computer was a 486 and used VGA. At the time, I was amazed I could see colors.

[@rebane2001]

I recommend you to remove the _(take 2)_ part since most of views you're going to get don't know about the accident It might even drive some viewers away

[@The8BitGuy]

+rebane2001 I'll fix it shortly.. Just that I still have both videos on my channel and I don't want to get mixed up as to which is which. Once somebody confirms the audio problem is fixed, I'll delete the first one.

[@rebane2001]

The 8-Bit Guy It seems to be fixed You can just rename the first video if you want to keep it

[@luxray978]

+rebane2001 what accedent

[@rebane2001]

Aidan Brent There was a high-pitched noise, that some users (including me) could hear

[@joejoe4games]

+Aidan Brent the beeping caused by the flyback transformer of the CRT @7:45 was still in the recording, very annoying for anyone who can hear it!

[@meathrow]

We can imagine the desperate challenges of back then engineers - nice video!

[@dwonga]

I felt so old when I saw all those old video games on CGA and I can recall every one of them (but I played them in a hefty monochrome green monitor instead of CGA 4 color monitor, which were more expensive).

[@SonicSammich]

MEGA MAN, ON DOS!

[@robertwatchmen7527]

+ShadowMaster77 AVGN

[@purrbox7514]

Mega Man... ON DOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@fennedd]

ASS!

[@mariannmariann2052]

RCR... ON DOS!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i'm talking about Retro City Rampage)