Anyway. It depended a lot on location too

I think same. An possible explanation: Over here in Germany (or western Europe in general), the IBM PC was delayed.
We didn't get it in 1981 like US users did but rather years later in 1983.
And when we got it, CGA was still current, so we bought CGA cards for it (or Hercules cards) or got PC/XT clones with integtrated CGA.

However, just as we did invest in that, EGA came out in 1984 and made us look a little bit stupid.
So we skipped EGA and waited until VGA with simple analogue RGB monitors came along.
That's the simple story, basically. I'm not sure how much true it really is, though. It's just an explanation.

Edit: It also doesn't cover the special case of using existing CGA monitors with EGA clone cards (since productivity software expected 640x350, mode 10h, which needed EGA monitors).

By mid-late 80s there also were complete sets, such as Amstrad/Schneider PC1640 or Schneider Tower AT and Euro AT.
They had gotten EGA support by their time, of course.

By 1988 onwards, VGA also made it into some 80286 motherboards.
Usually those models with a 12 or 16 MHz 286 CPU, I think.
Some disk less PCs meant for Novell NetWare also had Hercules instead (do have one).

Speculation: The older or lower end systems still had EGA (or Super EGA) in mind
but already offered an option for VGA (example: Euro AT has an optional, proprietary 8-Bit VGA card, "Euro VGA", probably due to being derived from Euro XT).

If I had to guess, I would say that the 80286 PC was rather common as a standard PC by 1988-1992.
So in the early days of VGA, basically. At the time, latest software did target both EGA/VGA, I think.

VGA users had access to EGA software, too and probably used it most of time until more VGA software was available.
Text mode on VGA also was better than on EGA. It had combined MDA's fine resolution and EGA's colour fidelity.

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-26, 11:25:

You could also upgrade your 286 with a VGA card

Color VGA monitor alone was $700 in 1987, VGA card in 1987 also $600. Any one of those was full price of whole A500.
VGA prices I researched using google books and old magazines:
1988 December cheapest VGA 256KB 8-bit $220, EGA $170. Cheapest VGA monitor $450, EGA ones $100 cheaper.
1990 EGA $100, VGA 256KB 8-bit $130, 512KB 16-bit VGA $200. Cheapest VGA card + color monitor combo ~$450.
1991 low end VGA $100. This is the moment EGA stopped being the default in low end systems, cards cost the same, monitors cost the same.
By end of 1992 finally went down to $50, price ceiling for entry level video cards.

as I said in Re: Ideal gaming system specs per year? (Esp. 1983 - 1992?) "all the way to ~1990 Amiga was king, 3-5 times cheaper than PC, hardware scrolling, fantastic audio. Couldnt do 3D tho."

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-26, 14:52:

1990 wasn't 1987... meaning when Amiga 500 launched, as the lower tier of the Amiga range, the lower tier of 286 were around 8mhz and had EGA, .... I doubt those 286 machines felt any faster than A500s at all.

Intel already had 12.5 MHz available as early as 1985, and AMD supplied 16 MHz starting in 1986. This is the period when people typically bought a 286 equipped with EGA graphics.
So you could say that anyone who bought a PC with an EGA card usually had a 286 CPU in their machine running at 12.5 MHz up to 16 MHz, which was clocked from 1.7 to more than 2 times as high and, in terms of pure processing power in MIPS, delivered 3 to 4 times or more the performance of the Amiga 500's 68000. The IPC was higher on the 286 than on the 68000. A 7.16 MHz 68000 delivers about 0.7 to 1.0 MIPS. Even an early 286 at 8 MHz already delivered around 1.2 MIPS, while a 12.5 MHz version delivered 3.2 MIPS, and the 16 MHz version reached 4.1 MIPS.

On top of that, the PC architecture utilized efficient byte-per-pixel handling (EGA/VGA), allowing the CPU to write a pixel's color in a single operation. The Amiga, however, relied on a strict planar architecture (Bitplanes) without such hardware assist. To change a single pixel, the Amiga had to perform complex bit-shifting across multiple memory locations, requiring far more cycles. Consequently, when it came to 3D games, the Amiga was clearly a slow snail. And this is a fact by pure numbers, not by beliefs or feelings.

But you can put a better VGA card in the 286! ... but you can put fast RAM in the A500 and that gains smoothness and performance... but you can use a faster 286... but you can use a 68020 sidecar accelerator on the Amiga.. It's hard to get an apples to apples when spending $$$$$ on the PC side is allowed but the Amiga remains static as in most of these arguments.

What can you do? The PC was usually bought as a family PC and therefore paid for by the parents, while the Amiga 500 ended up in the kids' bedrooms and thus couldn't cost as much. However, this isn't about comparing what you can get for minimum money or maximum money, but simply comparing a 286, the common family PC of that era, with the Amiga 500, the common gaming Amiga of that era. Anything else would make little sense. You compare what families actually had at home. And apart from a RAM upgrade to FastRAM to expand the selection of games on the Amiga, very few people made further performance upgrades to their Amiga 500 before the end of 1990.

Also somehow the top tier hardware on PC side gets compared to lowest tier Amiga.

On the PC side, the top tier was the 486DX, which was released in 1989. So, a comparison between a top-tier PC and the lowest-end Amiga is not being made at all here when you compare a 286 to the Amiga 500.

I think windows 3.0 was a factor too, home users wanted a simple interface.

Windows 3.0 wasn't released until May 1990, and it still lacked applications. They were developed quickly, but it didn't become relevant until mid-1991 at the earliest. The PC was bought for a different reason. Parents had them at work. It was the workplace computer running under DOS (with user software like WordStar, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 or dBase). That’s why it was purchased for the home shortly thereafter, so parents could practice on it at home. In the beginning, it wasn't about Windows.
The Amiga 500 was perceived by the majority as a toy. By saying this, I’m not suggesting that it didn't have its place in the media sector, but the typical workplace computer simply was a PC, and that’s why it ended up being bought for the home.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-27, 00:25:

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-26, 11:25:

You could also upgrade your 286 with a VGA card

Color VGA monitor alone was $700 in 1987, VGA card in 1987 also $600. Any one of those was full price of whole A500.

As I said above, that's not relevant. You compare what is available at home. Thus, the family PC in family A vs. the kid's Amiga 500 in family B (if they have no PC).

as I said in Re: Ideal gaming system specs per year? (Esp. 1983 - 1992?) "all the way to ~1990 Amiga was king, 3-5 times cheaper than PC, hardware scrolling, fantastic audio. Couldnt do 3D tho."

And I corrected you on that point because you need to pay attention to the genre. In the 3D space, the PC was king for the reasons mentioned above. I never denied that the Amiga was king when it came to side-scrollers—just look at my very first reply on this topic. (Re: need idea: what can i do with a 286?)

So, just to make it clear: The Amiga was by no means the undisputed king. You have to look specifically at the genre. Anyone who wanted to play 3D simulations and 3D games was definitely worlds better off with a PC, because in that space, the PC was king. And by the way, the same goes for strategy games, thanks to both the software library and the hard drive. You also have to consider the market here: it was mostly adults who owned a PC. They couldn't care less about side-scrollers, but complex strategy games definitely got them excited.

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-27, 12:23:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-26, 14:52:

1990 wasn't 1987... meaning when Amiga 500 launched, as the lower tier of the Amiga range, the lower tier of 286 were around 8mhz and had EGA, .... I doubt those 286 machines felt any faster than A500s at all.

Intel already had 12.5 MHz available as early as 1985, and AMD supplied 16 MHz starting in 1986. This is the period when people typically bought a 286 equipped with EGA graphics.
So you could say that anyone who bought a PC with an EGA card usually had a 286 CPU in their machine running at 12.5 MHz up to 16 MHz, which was clocked from 1.7 to more than 2 times as high and, in terms of pure processing power in MIPS, delivered 3 to 4 times or more the performance of the Amiga 500's 68000. The IPC was higher on the 286 than on the 68000. A 7.16 MHz 68000 delivers about 0.7 to 1.0 MIPS. Even an early 286 at 8 MHz already delivered around 1.2 MIPS, while a 12.5 MHz version delivered 3.2 MIPS, and the 16 MHz version reached 4.1 MIPS.

I dispute your numbers I've got 1.4 MIPs for an 8Mhz 68000 and 1.28 MIPs for a 12 Mhz 286

But, you are missing the point. FASTER AMIGAS EXISTED IF YOU SPENT MORE MONEY. therefore if only makes sense to compare basic low end machines. You have no point to make that faster 286 were available, they weren't selling to the same people. Motorola had a 50Mhz 68030 at 18MIPs in 1987, that went into Amiga expansions too.

Let's lose the craziness about "everybody instantly had infinite money to upgrade instantly on the release date" and look at a home computer oriented general computing magazine from 1987 mid 1988 because that's how long it took for 286es to be showing up for sale at home user prices.
https://archive.org/details/1988-08-compute-m … age/80/mode/2up
Montgomery Grant Ad..
We finally have a clone 286 there, in previous issues there was the odd mention of "call us about IBM AT". Not seeing any VGA cards for sale yet, all clones seem to be coming with mono/herc or EGA at this point. CGA seems favored in the turbo XTs, of which, new models were still announcing in the news sections. The only visible way to get VGA in this magazine is to order those PS/2 model 50 or 60s for $2500 plus.

Maybe I tell a lie though there is an ATI VIP card listed by one vendor for halfassed VGA.

Anyway, this mag is giving me the impression that the average PC home "gamer" system is XT with CGA, and nobody seems to have heard of a sound card.

Jump to the next year at same time (aiming for august for mid year because of magazine lead times) https://archive.org/details/1989-08-compute-m … age/50/mode/2up

And finally you can find a way to get VGA if you've got the best part of $1000 burning a hole in your pocket (tiny listing at bottom) and speeds for the now more prevalent 286 are being seen at 16mhz... practically zero VGA market penetration yet though or advertisers would be crowing about having it. Still looks like "Planet XT " mostly though.

Edit: I got to the newsettes, damn, they're still announcing new XT machines in 89 (HeadStart)
EditII: a peek at 1990, october, august is missing, wow, whole new world, lots of PC game ads, soundcards are "here", better spec 286 shipping with VGA, the XT reign of terror is at an end. But... 386 is quite prevalent now too.

So , guys which games will run fine with a 8mhz 286 , VGA , and 2 mb of ram?

Maybe I tell a lie though there is an ATI VIP card listed by one vendor for halfassed VGA.

Hi! The VIP was introduced in summer '87, I think.
It basically was an Super EGA card with extras, we could say.
It added support for VGA BIOS and mode 12h (640x480 pels 16c) and mode 11h (640x480 mono).
Which probably was fine for 90٪ of applications (not games).

However, I think it had no normal RAMDAC yet so no support for more than 16c (no mode 13h in 256c).
MCGA or PS/2 graphics isn't really VGA, anyway. Real VGA is planar, I think:
720x400 (text) and 640x480 16c (graphics) is Standard VGA (applications).
The VIP may or may not have had a custom 16c palette so it's uncertain if palette cycling might have worked or not (have none at hand for testing).

The other VGA/SVGA compatible cards came out in 1988 (PVGA1A has "Paradise '88" label).
I once read an article that stated they started to show up in February 1988..
Just 6 months later, in August 1988, they might not have been available in high volume, maybe.
Or perhaps PC hardware vendors were not well informed about the newest developments in PC business.

Edit:

So , guys which games will run fine with a 8mhz 286 , VGA , and 2 mb of ram?

Um, most point&click adventures? My Schneider Tower AT is surprisingly quick.
It has 10 MHz 80286 and a humble 1 MB of DIL RAM..
Here's a video of it running Windows 3.1, I took it a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc2fVXozxwU

Edit: Here'a another one. It shows Turbo Pascal for Windows on Windows 3.0 MME (quick).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URktiHd30Qo

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-27, 12:23:

The IPC was higher on the 286 than on the 68000. A 7.16 MHz 68000 delivers about 0.7 to 1.0 MIPS. Even an early 286 at 8 MHz already delivered around 1.2 MIPS, while a 12.5 MHz version delivered 3.2 MIPS, and the 16 MHz version reached 4.1 MIPS.

and all that additional power was used up doing software scrolling resulting in such lovely ports like Double Dragon https://youtu.be/xdG5oTIQU7k?t=259 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nEZ_K-DPnc
and Double Dragon 2 VGA "smoothly" scrolling ever 8 pixels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erJ47rMuekk
Much smooth so playable!

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-27, 12:23:

On top of that, the PC architecture utilized efficient byte-per-pixel handling (EGA/VGA), allowing the CPU to write a pixel's color in a single operation.

That would be only VGA. EGA/CGA is read-modify-write.

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-27, 12:23:

The Amiga, however, relied on a strict planar architecture (Bitplanes) without such hardware assist. To change a single pixel, the Amiga had to perform complex bit-shifting across multiple memory locations, requiring far more cycles.

Thats why Amiga games used blitter and hardware scrolling making screen moves and sprites CPU ~free.

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-27, 12:23:

And apart from a RAM upgrade to FastRAM to expand the selection of games on the Amiga, very few people made further performance upgrades to their Amiga 500 before the end of 1990.

and that wasnt even fastram, it was 512KB of slow ass Chip ram.

Exploit wrote on 2026-05-27, 12:41:

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-27, 00:25:

Color VGA monitor alone was $700 in 1987, VGA card in 1987 also $600. Any one of those was full price of whole A500.

As I said above, that's not relevant.

it very much is. If price is not relevant PC sucked ass because you could play even better 3D games on SGI IRIS 4D/30.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-27, 14:58:

1988
Anyway, this mag is giving me the impression that the average PC home "gamer" system is XT with CGA, and nobody seems to have heard of a sound card.

correct

MarmotaArmy wrote on 2026-05-27, 15:13:

So , guys which games will run fine with a 8mhz 286 , VGA , and 2 mb of ram?

Mostly static screen/limited scrolling/panning games. For example Prince of Persia. At 8MHz you will really struggle playing Dune 2, F1GP, Wolf3D, Xenon II, Cannon Fodder or any of the so praised by Exploit 3D games.

VWestlife did a good video on why 286 is not a great system for retro gaming "Why you don't want a vintage 286 PC -- but I like mine anyway" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htbvm5_NZHc&t=489s

It’s hardly the PC’s fault if devs didn’t know how to use the pel pan register.

MarmotaArmy wrote on 2026-05-27, 15:13:

So , guys which games will run fine with a 8mhz 286 , VGA , and 2 mb of ram?

Late 80's PC games should be fine, particular point-and-click adventure games and RPGs.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-05-27, 18:54:

It’s hardly the PC’s fault if devs didn’t know how to use the pel pan register.

Sure, but it is what it is. Were there any games doing it pre 1990 Commander Keen?
It took another 40 years for https://github.com/mills32/Little-Game-Engine-for-VGA-EGA to show you can smooth scroll VGA on 8088
demo on 4.77MHz 8088 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t98OKbYonQI

Right, but it's not at all rocket science. It's right there in the documentation, presumably the same documentation where they found out about display start.

It strikes me as lazy. Devs who aren't very passionate about the PC platform just throwing something together for the port so they can get paid.

That being said I don't know why no one did it before 1990. The capability was fully available since 1985 with EGA, and 1987 with VGA, was not "hidden", an "undocumented feature" (it was just as documented as everything else), nor were even the slowest PCs too slow to make use of it, as the game engine you referenced above demonstrates.

I think it was because of the common perception that PCs were only good for business use, so typically the more talented game devs focused on other platforms. And even John Carmack took two shots at it before he figured out the optimum way of doing it (Keen 4-6 use a much better method than Keen 1-3).

All that plus the fact that there *is* one glaring flaw in PC video hardware, and that is the lack of a reliable method of detecting vblank. But that's something you inevitably discover and solve (because it's not unsolvable) *after* you build your smooth scrolling code, not before. You have to get your game scrolling smoothly before you notice that it is an issue.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-27, 18:38:

That would be only VGA. EGA/CGA is read-modify-write.

You don't write individual pixels on EGA for this reason. You write entire bytes (8 pixels at a time) and perform bitshifts to put your sprite in the middle of a "byte column".
It's not terrible. I've written code that can efficiently draw dozens of sprites per frame on a slow 286 using this method. Then of course tiles don't need to be shifted at all, so you only write 160 or 128 bytes per tile depending on whether it's masked or unmasked.

Jo22 wrote on 2026-05-27, 17:03:

Um, most point&click adventures? My Schneider Tower AT is surprisingly quick. It has 10 MHz 80286 and a humble 1 MB of DIL RAM.. […]
Show full quote

Um, most point&click adventures? My Schneider Tower AT is surprisingly quick.
It has 10 MHz 80286 and a humble 1 MB of DIL RAM..
Here's a video of it running Windows 3.1, I took it a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc2fVXozxwU
Edit: Here'a another one. It shows Turbo Pascal for Windows on Windows 3.0 MME (quick).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URktiHd30Qo

It loads windows as fast as my win 10 machine with an ssd on it. Pretty fast, congrats

Thanks for your answers guys , I guess it will be commander keen , prince of persia and point and click adventures

Simulation games kicked off in late 286, things like "Moonbase" Lunar Colony sim and Sim Earth and benefit from RAM above 1mb.

Civilization might be the winner. Not a lot of action, no scrolling, small ram requirements, fantastic gameplay.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-27, 21:07:

Civilization might be the winner. Not a lot of action, no scrolling, small ram requirements, fantastic gameplay.

Just one more turn and I'm going to sleep. (4AM)

Having a turbo XT-class computer, I can think of a few games I'd like to run better. Wolfenstien 3D in VGA, Jill of the Jungle, Mechwarrior, all would benefit from a 286 for sure. Half of the fun of running these old systems is running programs outside of their original scope.

ArbysTPossum wrote on 2026-05-28, 14:26:

Having a turbo XT-class computer, I can think of a few games I'd like to run better. Wolfenstien 3D

Wolf doesnt run on XT, and is merely playable on high end 286. We are talking 6fps on 10MHz 286.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-28, 21:23:

ArbysTPossum wrote on 2026-05-28, 14:26:

Having a turbo XT-class computer, I can think of a few games I'd like to run better. Wolfenstien 3D

Wolf doesnt run on XT, and is merely playable on high end 286. We are talking 6fps on 10MHz 286.

Doesn’t is a bit harsh

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=auVLqRJCOJ4&ra=m

Playability is another matter