Some of the Legend Entertainment Games (Gateway, Spellcasting 301) featured SVGA and I believe could run on a 286.

Some of the windows entertainment pack games will run on a 286 and benefit from 256 colors

If memory serves the old Sim City can run svga and 286 as well

Marco wrote on 2024-04-29, 19:10:

- Pinball ?

If you mean Pinball Fantasies, then no, it doesn't use SVGA, only tweaked VGA.

I can only think of Scorched Earth.

Ah yes thanks. Scorched I really played by myself. Thanks to all already.

I summarize that most games are more moving-picture games 😀 like windows 3 cars games, text adventures or simple bullet movements.

The only exception might indeed be sim city. There is SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM for DOS which supports svga. Interesting. I will try this out 😀

Moraffware's got yer back

Check out the ones from 1991-1993 or so. These guys made a point of supporting every common SVGA chipset and the games are mostly simple enough for a 286. Not recommended for the photosensitive or for those with a history of adverse reactions to psychedelics.

Marco wrote on 2024-04-29, 20:20:

I summarize that most games are more moving-picture games 😀 like windows 3 cars games, text adventures or simple bullet movements.

The only exception might indeed be sim city. There is SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM for DOS which supports svga. Interesting. I will try this out 😀

There were a couple “multimedia “ programs from the before times that ran on a 286, even a couple CD based programs (encyclopedias and library reference disks come to mind). I am guessing they targeted 640x480 vga and not super vga but you never know. I vaguely remember a rather large text listing of cdrom titles in a magazine from circa 1990, most must have sold poorly because nobody talks much about them today and minimal advertising is to be found in the surviving pc magazines.

In 1990 at my school library the IBM 286 systems were networked into 4 cd-rom drives the various educational and reference programs would occasionally flip into graphics mode. I remember being able to do text searches across thousands of written works which were on a set of CDs. Sadly being a kid I remember very little about what the programs were named.

+1

A 286 can run a variety of Standard VGA games (mode 12h, 640x480 16c).

Super VGA titles, too, but there weren't so many of them to begin with.

In the early 286 days, many VGA cards had a lumpy 256KB of RAM, still. Especially on-board VGAs.
So Super VGA was being limited to 800x600 16c in practice. Or 640x400 256c, which was seldomly being used.

640x400 256c also needed VBE support, whereas 16c colour support merely needs to know the right mode number for a given card (there are exceptions, as usual; ATI cards I vaguely remember).

That's because 16c video modes normally keep the default memory organization of Hi-Res EGA/Standard VGA.

256c modes may use something different, though, so VBE support through a VBE BIOS or a VBE TSR is being required.

Of course, with lots of dedication, support for multiple SVGA chipsets could have been implemented in the games directly without the use of VBE. But that's more work than just maintaining a list of video modes for 800x600 16c.

I mean, some applications (maybe games, too) written with Turbo Pascal/C may have shipped with SVGA.BGI, which was a popular Super VGA library in the 90s.
https://github.com/jharg93/SvgaBGI

Still, simulations and text-adventures with graphics usually supported 800x600 16c, at least.
Like Wonderland by Magnetic Scrolls (supports Paradise/V7 mode; Paradise can be patched to VBE).
MS Flight Simulator (4 onwards) supported it, too.

On Windows 3, the simulator "ATC: Air Traffic Controller" by Mallard Software Inc. had recommended a Super VGA resolution and a 20" monitor. And lots of RAM. Not bad for a ~1991 title.

There are more such titles, which perhaps didn't *require* Super VGA, but at least wanted full VGA resolution in 640x480.
These games can look awesome on a period-correct CRT monitor.

Like for example, those MegaTech titles. ;)
Or visual novels in general (for example, those by Jast USA).
On a 286, EMU386 can help running the DOS utilities to display Kanji character set. It does help to fix gibberish text.

OS/2 1.3 is another story, as well. It has a few board games, card games and logic games that play better on a bigger resolution.

In essence, that's true for a lot of Windows 3.1 applications/games, as well.
Both 640x480 256c and 800x600 16c/256c resolutions were being useful back then.

Having 256c available all time reduced dithering and colour glitches (Windows wants 20 colours to stay fixed). It also allowed for colour-cycling.

PS: Not really on topic, maybe, but the Gameboy emu "no$gmb" supports VBE and SVGA (ET4000 etc) on a 286.
Can be useful for Super Gameboy or GBC emulation, which feature an increased colour depth.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-04-30, 01:46:

In the early 286 days, many VGA cards had a lumpy 256KB of RAM, still. Especially on-board VGAs.
So Super VGA was being limited to 800x600 16c in practice. Or 640x400 256c, which was seldomly being used.

"Early 286 days" would be the 1984-87 period, so no VGA at all.
But you've got a point: in 1990+, 286 became the low-end PC, therefore unlikely to be coupled with high-end graphics.
VGA was already common, but it was a plain 256 KB card.
Yes, most such cards also supported 800 x 600 x 16, but monitors - not necessarily!
640 x 400 x 256 support on such cards was problematic.

Well, the American point of view might have been different...
Obviously, 286 boxes with 512 KB SVGA - and color monitor! - did exist on the market:

I was thinking of the early 286 VGA days, of course. Should have said that. About the 1988 to 1992 time frame.
When they had VGA chips like ATI VGA Wonder/Wonder 16, Paradise '88, Realtek, OAK-37c etc.
The first one here was soldered on the motherboard of my 80286-12 PC. PC had a 1988 BIOS.
An extra was the DE9 bus mouse port, so no V.24 serial port was being wasted on a mouse.
These cheap VGA chips were replacing the older Super EGA chips, I suppose.
They also had mouse support, sometimes.

Edit: The refresh of 800x600 mode on those older cards was about 56 Hz, I believe.
In order to trying to be compatible with normal VGA monitors.
Still, it may required using the adjustment knobs between mode swtiches (VGA <> SVGA).
Timings could have been like this: http://tinyvga.com/vga-timing/800x600@56Hz

Jo22 wrote on 2024-04-30, 07:19:

Edit: The refresh of 800x600 mode on those older cards was about 56 Hz, I believe.
In order to trying to be compatible with normal VGA monitors.

Normal VGA monitors have fixed 31.5 kHz HSYNC, eg.:
IBM 8512
IBM 8513
IBM 8503

That should be enough for 800x600 at 45 Hz.

At 56 Hz, it requires 35.1 kHz HSYNC - a different class of monitors.

yes there might be a mix-up between gpu and monitor topics here.

Low end non-fixed SVGA monitors did indeed only provide 35,1KHz meaning:
- 640x480 @ 60Hz
- 800x600 @ 56Hz
- 1024x768 @ 43Hz Interlaced

That it not necessarely representing the gpu capabilities. I was owner of one of these 😀
Maybe even a OTI67 was capable of providing more.

I have read some reports that Wizardry 7 will run on a 286. I know it uses VGA palette programming, and 256 color mode X.

Interesting!

Overall, there's a bunch of shareware games that can use SVGA on a 286.

But are there any COMMERCIAL games?
Likely not, as the first common SVGA game was Links 386 Pro - using the Phar Lap extender.

Define "SuperVGA", is what I would ask.

256 color mode X was used almost exclusively in the period in question, as it could be supported on "Basically any" VGA card, and gave a decent viewport, good color depth, and could be drawn fairly quickly/easily, with true 8bpp framebuffer.

LOTS of games supported this that could run on a 286, like the wing commander series.

If you mean VESA games... less so. Much much less so. Most wanted dos extenders of some kind, to hold assets in memory, or to do flat-mode memory operations.

As stated I refer to 640x480x256. Although things in the middle as 320x400 would also be of interest.

What’s super vga or not could be an endless (maybe pointless) discussion 😀

I personally am historically bit between:
A) the infos shown in windows 31 setup where svga started at 800x600x16 or 640x480x256
B) simply all that is only possible with 522 kb

I know this is just subtil own feeling 😀

Taking A) as definition there would be battle bugs with up to 800x600x16 w/o extender from SX on I think