It's true that both modes are triggered at a hardware level in the same manner, but from a programming standpoint you can do things with a VGA adapter than you can't do with an MCGA adapter, so while virtually all MCGA 320x200x256 games will work on a VGA card, some VGA 320x200x256 games will not work on an MCGA chipset, such as those that implement multiple video pages or utilize Mode-X tweaks to speed things up. (There's enough video memory on most VGA cards to store 4 pages of 320x200x256 data, but doing so requires various tweaks and MCGA chipsets are simply incapable of handling this.)
This is why I like to note the correct mode when I do my reviews, but all of my searches in relation to the game I'm reviewing has yielded no results as to whether the game will work on MCGA hardware or not.
EDIT: I'm fairly certain the game I'm covering requires VGA and won't work on MCGA. I managed to locate the game's source code, which was written in Pascal, (which I know how to program in thankfully), and upon looking through it I noticed various references to a graphics driver that not only referred to itself as a VGA driver, but was also being used by the programmer to do page copying and flipping. VGA can do this, MCGA can't, so clearly the game won't work on an MCGA chipset. (At least, not properly.)
Still, if anyone knows a better way of figuring this kind of stuff out in case I run into this problem again in the future, please share those details! :D
--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg