Are we certain that there exists an EGA version with more colors and that the "rare" EGA mode doesn't also use only 4 colors? (just not the same 4 colors as the CGA)

konc wrote on 2024-09-02, 16:38:

Are we certain that there exists an EGA version with more colors and that the "rare" EGA mode doesn't also use only 4 colors? (just not the same 4 colors as the CGA)

Yes, in the menu, before loading the game, there are 4 graphic options: CGA, EGA, Hercules and PCjr/Tandy.

I am attaching images of how it looks in CGA and in "EGA". In Mobygames, in the "trivia" section, they claim that there is a rare EGA version, which was possibly only a European release. As you can see, only the blue color tone and the red color tone change. Those tones don't come out by default in CGA, that's true, only in certain special uses. But is that really the authentic EGA version? I don't know. But it's strange to me that in "EGA" mode, you can only see 4 colors, when it could have been used much better in a game with so many possibilities like this one (having several different terrains to compete on). And also coming from Epyx and released in 1988, it's even stranger to me that the graphics weren't used correctly in EGA.

Anyway, I just wanted to shed some light on this, and to see if any forum readers have seen a different version than the ones shown here. Thanks.

What I'm trying to say is that probably this is the "rare" EGA version (maybe mobygames refers to physical copies being rare), and it only uses 4 colors.
I've never seen evidence or even claims that there exists another EGA version with more than 4 colors.

I have the game and it runs in EGA mode with the dark blue opening screen and yellow desert...etc.
What I noticed is that the game itself refuses to run EGA mode on certain cards. I tried two VGA cards in my XT. On one of them, 4x4 chooses CGA always despite what I ask it for in the menu. On the other VGA card, it runs EGA mode perfectly.
On other systems (newer than the XT) the game also runs EGA mode properly.. so I'd say it has some incompatibilities with some cards that cause it to think it's unable to display EGA, thus it reverts to CGA.

Also, EGA mode in this game doesn't use more than 4 colors anyways. But the color choice goes beyond CGA's palettes.

Interesting! Thanks for the clarifications, best regards!