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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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
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.
Possibly not the best example but I do feel like Alley Cat looked great in CGA: https://i.ibb.co/wNDvgzQ8/alleycat.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ
though, "The Eternal Castle Remastered" (2019) used the same palette, and it was pretty good.
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.
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.
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).
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 :-)
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.
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.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677770/The_Case_of_the_G...
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.
IIRC, the only interaction with the scene is using the pocketwatch on a corpse.
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.
It was Venice underground, The Last Crusade (Indy3.exe)
> Simon the Sorcerer
That's not common to hear, thanks for the throwback ;)
Technically not all. The anniversary re-release is missing.
This post did well.
Guess the right people were awake to upvote it