digger wrote on 2023-08-07, 16:17:

LucasArts made good use of both AdLib and MT-32 hardware. Considering how I played it back in the day, I'm probably a bit biase […]
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Jo22 wrote on 2023-08-06, 20:05:

digger wrote on 2023-08-06, 12:09:

The campfire scene music at the beginning of Monkey Island 2 has got to be one of the most wholesome themes in PC gaming history.
It just makes me happy whenever I hear it, or when it starts playing in my head. 🥰

AdLib or CMS ? Or MT-32? 😃

LucasArts made good use of both AdLib and MT-32 hardware. Considering how I played it back in the day,
I'm probably a bit biased towards Adlib, in terms of nostalgia. But hearing the theme on an MT-32 warms my heart as well.

I guess I would have to experience it in CMS mode to figure out if I would feel similar nostalgia, even though I never played it on such hardware.

Did Monkey Island 2 even support CMS, though? I know Monkey Island 1 did, but I can't find any recordings on YouTube of Monkey Island 2 on CMS or Game Blaster.
Even if it didn't, I guess I could use the Tronix286 SoftMPU fork
to emulate and redirect MPU-401 MIDI to a CMS or Game Blaster device, and see how that sounds with Monkey Island 2,
but as curious I am to hear the result of that, it definitely wouldn't sound as the game developers and composers intended. 😅

Anyway, this is going off-topic. There is also already Tronix286's thread,
but trying it out with a lot of games and sharing the results might be worthy of a topic in itself.
"How do games that didn't originally support CMS sound on CMS, using MIDI emulation/redirection?" Maybe there is already such a separate topic, but I haven't found it yet.

Thank you for your reply! So it's AdLib then.. 😀
- I'll try to do some CRT video capture in the near future then.
Sorry that it takes a while. At the moment, I'm behind schedule with so many things. 😓

Thanks also so for the information, please don't worry. I'm okay with things that are a bit off-topic sometimes.
It makes things interesting and reveals other interesting connections and leads to topics.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-09, 13:04:

Thanks for sharing these, the backgrounds in Rise of the Dragon really shine when displayed directly on a CRT,
also Telekommando II - I've never heard of it before being in the UK but the art looks much cleaner & more complete on phosphor.
Seeing a direct comparison like this, especially on a larger dot pitch really showcases where are lot of the art was designed directly for CRT / analog rather than just pixel art.

You're welcome! ^^ I'll promise to try to capture some more photos in the near future.

It's just that many classics (Jazz Jackrabbit, Whacky Wheels, Beneath a Steel sky, The Dig etc) need a 386 or 486 and that I'm a bit busy right now.
I have to essentially remove the 286 setup which I'm still working on first, before I can use the 586 PC.

But even here's a problem - should I use an ISA VGA for consistency? That 586 currently has an S3 PCI card installed.
It works fine, but an ISA VGA card is more period-correct. Its slightly blurry output might be needed for MCGA/VGA games from 1994 and before.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-08-09, 13:04:

I'll have to make sure to try out some more games on an actual CRT again, I've mostly been using laptops recently.
I wonder if TV-out / composite / S-video would work well for this?

Hi, I don't see any problems with using Composite or S-Video.
As long as the graphics card and CRT can handle it, it's fine, I think.

The only problem I see might be if the CRT can't do NTSC (like mine, that's why I use SCART+RGB).
If it can't, you have to use PAL, which has a higher resolution and makes the image look compressed.
Anyway, if the CRT has controls, the image size can be fixed so that things look about right.

Good luck! 😀 🤞

Stone Breaker

Information:
http://web.archive.org/web/19981203135255/htt … .simplenet.com/

Curse of the Catacombs (Catacomb Armageddon)

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/5892/curse-of-the-catacombs/

Leather Goddesses of Phobos! 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X

Another classic, hope it's okay to show here.
The game is by Infocom, the famouse software house who released interactive fiction (IF) classics like 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

It's a funny spoof game, as the ridiculous title suggests.
It plays in the comparably prudish/sexist world of the 1950s and makes fun of certain things by exaggerating them.
I just hope no one of you feels offended by it.
On the bright side, it offers the option to not only choose between two genders, but also an alien.

I've chosen the game because of the eye candy graphics (obviously), but also because I remembered it as one of the few games supporting Covox sound (has LifeSize Sound Enhancer dongle).

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/480/leather-go … the-pulsating-/

.. continued

.. almost there

You made me realize that I have not seen a working CRT in action (ok, maybe tested to see if powered up) in at least 5 years . I need to get my 13" NTSC CRT set up (and possibly RGB modded) to see the differences with my own eyes. My initial impression is that structure of the shadow mask in your photos of the CRT TV screens is more apparent than it is to the naked eye, but that might well be down to me misremembering.

darry wrote on 2023-08-14, 00:01:

You made me realize that I have not seen a working CRT in action (ok, maybe tested to see if powered up) in at least 5 years .
I need to get my 13" NTSC CRT set up (and possibly RGB modded) to see the differences with my own eyes.

😀 👍

I think a little CRT is worth as a secondary monitor for sure.
While some DOS games really shine on CRT, some look basically the same on the TFT/LCD monitor.
It really seems to depend on how the game designers drew their art work.
That's why I'm trying to collect screenshots of various games here, essentially.

darry wrote on 2023-08-14, 00:01:

My initial impression is that structure of the shadow mask in your photos of the CRT TV screens is more apparent than it is to the naked eye, but that might well be down to me misremembering.

Possible, but maybe your memory is right, as well. The picture is very crude on that small SCART TV, really.
The CRT TV I use is from the late 90s, I suppose (have to check). It has an on-screen display, supports a remote control and so on..
It likely wasn't meant as a high-end model in first place, I think.

By contrast, that old 100% analogue PAL TV from the late 70s/80s that I have shows a much finer screen mask.
It comes close to what you remember, maybe. Luckily, I've still got a screenshot from a while ago..
Source thread: Re: Amstrad Mega PC

Hi there. Quick update. I'm currently making a list of most important games.
And I must say, it's not easy. I try my best to limit the number, because I understand these pictures may cause precious storage space on this forum.

Unfortunately, there are at least a few dozen "must have" titles that some people may miss if I don't include them.
Like Willy Beamish. Or Flight of the Amazon Queen or Kyrandia series. Or Might&Magic, Zac Mckracken. Or Magic Carpet..

These are all "forgotten" classics that are important and known,
but don't come as quickly to mind as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Prince of Persia or Indiana Jones series.

Then, there's the visual appearance problem. Some classics of the early 90s are still EGA, in terms of fidelity.
They either use 320x200 16c or any other 16c mode.

While they're quality games, too, they don't benefit of a blurry screen/low-res CRT so much.
Which is the main reason for this experiment, after all.

That's why Commander Keen IV is missing, too, for example.
It's a fine game, but it uses EGA graphics, it doesn't use 256 colours and colour-gradients.

Full VGA games (mode 12h) are also excluded, in general (exceptions prove the rule 🙂).
I do consider creating a separate thread/topic in the future, maybe. 😀

But they're perhaps better looking on quality CRT monitors, to be honest:
Both digital EGA monitors and VGA monitors for office use do have a CRT tube with a fine dot pitch (0.2x mm).

This higher resolution of the screen goes along fine with the equally higher resolution of the games (640x350 and up).

So in simple words:
- low-res games/low-res CRT
- high-res games/high-res CRT

Anyway, that being said, there are exceptions.
Some EGA games are essentially CGA games with some extra colours for EGA users.

That means that the graphics were drawn with CGA and/or a blurry Composite monitor in mind in first place (CGA Composite).
- Many XTs and 8088 "home computers" had an RCA jack for a basic video output, after all.

I'm Thinking of:
https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=473
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Spectravideo_SVI-808
http://www.classiccomputer.de/sin/sinpc200.htm

But If these CGA games were being run on EGA setup,
they were usually being seen on a razor sharp digital monitor, which didn't match so well with their CGA drawings.

On the other hand, to make matters more complicated, some popular third-party graphics cards did support Composite monitors.
Like ATI Small Wonder or ATI EGA Wonder. They also emulated full resolution Hercules
and EGA, respectively, on Composite monitors by using interlacing (aka normal video).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KsY635VdOQk

And that's a bit of an dilemma, really. 😔
Third-party hardware (aka non-IBM) was very popular at the time.
It was often both less costly and more functional than the reference hardware.

So we can't be sure whether or not the artists drew their pictures for/on a digital monitor with visible
fine, black lines in-between or a bog-standard, blurry TV set (normal video monitor, say Commodore 1702, 1084).

That's why I do consider opening a separate thread in the future.
To see how things would look on a bad screen, *just in case* the artists drew their stuff with a low-res CRT in mind.

Edit: That being said, there are special cases/borderline cases I can think of.
Some VGA games of Japanese origin (PC-98 etc) use fine dithering and other tricks to make the most of 16 colours.

Those games, despite their higher resolution of ca. 640x480, might look nicely on a traditional TV set/video monitor.

These games also compensate the font size for use on lower resolution screens (they use bigger text characters).
By comparison, a traditional western title would be rather hard to read on same monitor.

Edit: And then there are true EGA games.. EGATrek, CD Man, Cobra Mission (EGA mode),
graphic adventures by Magnetic Scrolls/Legend Entertainment..
They do use 640x350 in 16c, which is kinda borderline, too:

The colour count is below 256c as used by MCGA - but on the other hand,
the 350 line mode is still within the physical capabilities of a tube of a good TV set/video monitor.
So details in an image wouldn't be lost (blurred).

Which means that the actual performance of the TV/monitor would still be comparable to a real digital EGA monitor here.

So in theory, an ATI EGA Wonder or similar graphics card could display these games
on a regular Composite monitor without much loss (by using interlacing or driving it out-of-spec).

So in theory, it might be possible to play Frederick Pohl's Gateway that way.
In EGA mode, the font size/GUI appears to be drawn bigger than in VGA mode, due to the lower resolution used.
Which in turn increases the readability of the text.

Personally, I'd really like to see how an ATI EGA Wonder or similar EGA card would perform on a Composite monitor here.
Unfortunately, I have none at hand right now. 😅

Edit: Formatting fixed (on PC).

On the subject of 15KHz CRTs, I have a retro video game console "playdate" (40+ year-olds are not too old to do that, right ?) in the planning stages with som friends.

On the potential menu :
- 13" CRT TV
- Atari 2600 gaming (on baremetal heavy sixer, likely the main event and possibly the only one . I have some Wico joysticks to test out. Might need to source some paddle controllers)
- SNES gaming (baremetal)
- Playstation 2 gaming (on an actual console, emulators running on it MIGHT be allowed, as I do not own a NES or a Sega Master System, though I do have a base converter, yet no Genesis)
- Big maybe : Retron 5 hooked up to the CRT via an HDMI to composite converter. I'm guessing it would look/play like crap due to upscaling + downscaling + possible lack of aspect ratio control + added latency , but maybe not .

darry wrote on 2023-08-16, 05:12:

On the subject of 15KHz CRTs, I have a retro video game console "playdate" (40+ year-olds are not too old to do that, right ?) […]
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On the subject of 15KHz CRTs, I have a retro video game console "playdate" (40+ year-olds are not too old to do that, right ?) in the planning stages with som friends.

On the potential menu :
- 13" CRT TV
- Atari 2600 gaming (on baremetal heavy sixer, likely the main event and possibly the only one . I have some Wico joysticks to test out. Might need to source some paddle controllers)
- SNES gaming (baremetal)
- Playstation 2 gaming (on an actual console, emulators running on it MIGHT be allowed, as I do not own a NES or a Sega Master System, though I do have a base converter, yet no Genesis)
- Big maybe : Retron 5 hooked up to the CRT via an HDMI to composite converter. I'm guessing it would look/play like crap due to upscaling + downscaling + possible lack of aspect ratio control + added latency , but maybe not .

Sound good! 😃👍

The 13" CRT should be fine, it reminds me of the 90s, when us kids still sat in front of "little" TVs in living room or bed room.

The picture of the Atari VCS should be fine on that TV, too.
Older TVs before the cable TV era had more rugged tuners, with AFC and such.
That's one of the reasons why RF connection is perceived as being so bad these days.
The modern TVs can nolonger handle weak or unstable RF signals, because they were designed for strong/stable cable TV signals.

Alien Carnage (Halloween Harry)

Another Apogee classic.

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/522/alien-carnage/

.. continued

.. continued

Alpha Waves (Continuum)

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/939/continuum/

Titus the Fox

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/211/titus-the- … akech-and-back/

Xenomorph

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/14556/xenomorph/

Circuit's Edge

"VGA".. 🙄

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/247/circuits-edge/

Cosmic Spacehead

Also exists on consoles.

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/7335/cosmic-spacehead/

D/Generation

Information:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1274/dgeneration/