While searching for info on Gobliiins and the Hercules version on the internet, I have found this interesting bit concerning DOSBox 86Box development: https://github.com/86Box/86Box/issues/260

It is interesting to compare screenshots without the patch (same as DosBox):

with the blend patch (86Box):

and off-screen photo from my own Hercules monitor:

The screenshot with the blend patch (middle) and off-screen photo (bottom) look much closer than the screenshot without blend patch (top). The screenshots taken from DOSBox in this thread are definitely same as the top one.

Does anyone know whether such feature is included in current version of DOSBox as well? Or is there any chance it would be in future?

I had no idea so many games run on Hercules! When I had my 286 with Herc card, I only had a handful of games and win 3.11 to play around in (that had few games as well, at least one kind of solitaire and a tile matching game).

Nevertheless, here's couple DOS games I remember enjoying:

• Street Rod - already mentioned in the thread, but it was my favorite game on that PC

• Operation Wolf - it was good for a short time

• Future Wars - I couldn't understand English back then - so I never got far in it, but I remember running it only to enjoy the graphics and animation on my amber monitor.

• ...and finally - Kret - A Polish puzzle-ish game where you eat falling tetris blocks and try not to get squished. You can grab a copy here (the English version of the website seems to be broken, but you can just click on the "Ściągnij pierwszą wersję Kreta" to download it.

The photos from your laptop take me back, as I had an amber CRT at the time. What is it? I would love to get a small laptop with an amber screen that is good enough for games.

I didn't know Kret supported Hercules, I recall playing it in 640x350x16 EGA mode.
So, I tried it on a Hercules now, and... yet another case of minimum-effort Hercules graphics.
They didn't care to create graphics data especially for 720x348 resolution, they just took the 640x350 data in monochrome, and didn't even bother to center it...

It's a small independent game made in early 90s - I was not expecting a custom Hercules mode from it. I was just glad it worked on my machine, and it was pretty fun to play.

Curiously, I didn't remember it not filling the whole screen. Probably just nostalgia glasses.

cybrasty wrote on 2020-07-06, 17:34:

It's a small independent game made in early 90s - I was not expecting a custom Hercules mode from it.

In 1991's Poland, Hercules was the most popular of PC graphics cards, at least in the installed base.
So it's obvious it was commonly supported by such indie games - which weren't even called "indie" back then.

Anyway, if speaking about such stuff, one more game is worth mentioning: "The Worm" a.k.a. "Robak".
I have two versions, the one from 1988 is Hercules-only:

The 1991 version supports all BGI-supported cards, as long as they provide at least 640x348 - not CGA, then.

Grzyb wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:03:

Anyway, if speaking about such stuff, one more game is worth mentioning: "The Worm" a.k.a. "Robak".
I have two versions, the one from 1988 is Hercules-only:

Oh, we are talking worm games now? Don't miss out VEGI then (German only, if I remember correctly). It has native hercules support, although I am not sure whether it uses the extra 80 pixels hercules provides over EGA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEr71ziUJcY

Another series of games popular in Germany with native hercules support (again, likely just 640 pixels horizontal) is the robot series. They had a lot of colored keys in EGA mode, which were replaced by numbered keys in Hercules mode. See this entry in MobyGames: https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/robot-series. Most resources are German, though.

That worm game totally looks like it was written using either Turbo Pascal or Turbo C. Definitely using BGI graphics! Those fonts are a dead giveaway.

mkarcher wrote on 2020-07-07, 07:36:

Another series of games popular in Germany with native hercules support (again, likely just 640 pixels horizontal) is the robot series. They had a lot of colored keys in EGA mode, which were replaced by numbered keys in Hercules mode. See this entry in MobyGames: https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/robot-series. Most resources are German, though.

The Game of Robot is an absolute classic! Robot 1 and Robot Junior were also available in English. Make sure to check them out! I spend weeks on that game as a kid! Shareware version only, of course... When I finally had enough money to buy some games, I didn't spend it on Robot. But you can play even the Shareware version for quite a bit. It stops at a certain score, though. It is still commercial software and you can still buy licenses for all four games. I did so a few years back and almost finished Robot 1 (Robot Junior is Freeware and quite short in comparison). All the games are massive and take quite some time to complete.

cybrasty wrote on 2020-07-06, 03:56:

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• Street Rod - already mentioned in the thread, but it was my favorite game on that PC

• Operation Wolf - it was good for a short time

• Future Wars - I couldn't understand English back then - so I never got far in it, but I remember running it only to enjoy the graphics and animation on my amber monitor.

• ...and finally - Kret - A Polish puzzle-ish game where you eat falling tetris blocks and try not to get squished. You can grab a copy here (the English version of the website seems to be broken, but you can just click on the "Ściągnij pierwszą wersję Kreta" to download it.

Thank you very much for your contribution! I've forgotten about Kret, but you are correct, it did run on Hercules. Sweet little thing that. I'll give Operation Wolf a try, although I vaguely remember that the graphics didn't survive transition to mono graphics very well... Future Wars is a mega surprise, it's Eric Chahi's game (the guy that later made Another World), I haven't even suspected it run on Hercules graphics card.

cybrasty wrote on 2020-07-06, 03:56:

The photos from your laptop take me back, as I had an amber CRT at the time. What is it? I would love to get a small laptop with an amber screen that is good enough for games.

Well, it's complicated. Most photos I posted here are from Tandon CSP1622, a pretty rare machine that I have found and restored (more about it here: "Childhood Embers" - 286 AT with Hercules graphics build ). This is my Hercules computer, not laptop, with yellow screen (looks orange on Gobliiins screenshot, but that's just weird camera thing). Some others were taken from Toshiba T3100, which is a completely different beast: CGA graphics and orange plasma screen in laptop form, but without battery (this was called luggable).

digger wrote on 2020-03-28, 11:28:

That's what I Iove about this forum. Every time I think I know all there is to know about the MS-DOS era, I get proven wrong and learn something new about that magical time that I never knew before. 😊 I never knew the Hercules Graphics Card was capable of displaying graphics at 640x400 resolution!

By the way, do you agree that it's a shame that the developers of the HGC never bothered to implement a graphics mode that supported both brightness levels for individual pixels, like it did in text mode? Variable pixel-level brightness combined with dithering at 640x400 resolution would have made it possible to display many games designed for 320x200 16-color graphics at a much higher quality!

Also imagine what possibilities that would have given to games that would be designed to take advantage of the native graphics capabilities of such an improved Hercules card. The projectiles and explosions in Space War would pop out visually with increased brightness, for instance.

As a follow-up to my earlier post, it may be interesting to know that apparently there were some enhanced EGA cards that could take better advantage of the abilities of MDA/Hercules monitors, by utilizing the 2 different pixel intensities in addition to dithering to emulate lower resolution color graphics modes. That made even EGA 16-color games look reasonably well on such monitors. That's a major improvement over the original EGA card, which offered only a 640x350 monochrome mode when paired with such a monitor.

The user nestor on the VCFED forum posted links to two YouTube videos showing such a setup in action, using an ATI VGA Wonder+ hooked up to an IBM 5151 monochrome monitor. Although the resolution of the YouTube videos isn't the best, the result looks fairly impressive. Pay particular attention to the brightness of the campfires on the beach in the second scene of the Loom video: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?269 … 3389#post193389

I wonder if such EGA cards also made use of the interlaced 640x400 mode in combination with 2 intensities to provide even higher quality 16-color grayscale rendering to emulate 320x200 16-color resolutions. You'd be able to get the maximum possible quality (at least as far as DOS games were concerned) in such a way. 🙂

OldCat wrote:

Well, it's complicated. Most photos I posted here are from Tandon CSP1622, a pretty rare machine that I have found and restored (more about it here: "Childhood Embers" - 286 AT with Hercules graphics build ). This is my Hercules computer, not laptop, with yellow screen (looks orange on Gobliiins screenshot, but that's just weird camera thing). Some others were taken from Toshiba T3100, which is a completely different beast: CGA graphics and orange plasma screen in laptop form, but without battery (this was called luggable).

Love the small form factor of the Tandon - wish those were more common, because I would love to grab one of those somewhere down the line. Was that a Point of Sale, or an industrial computer? You seldom see PCs with those specs in such small form factor.

I was already looking at the T3100 after researching laptops with an amber screens. They get pretty pricey on ebay, but I will keep looking. How is the plasma screen compared to the CRT? Does it have a similar "glow"?

Also, got your PM - can't respond as I am too new on the forum to have PM privileges, but you guessed right; I am originally from Poland, although I live in US now.

Grzyb wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:03:

The 1991 version supports all BGI-supported cards, as long as they provide at least 640x348 - not CGA, then.

Wow, so there's a chance it supports M24/Olivetti enhanced "CGA" mode in 640x400?
I'm asking because that monochrome mode is kind of compatible to CGA's 640x200 hires mode (you can even cross load images both ways round)..
Olivetti/Logabax/AT&T/Toshiba 640x400 hi-res graphics mode

Edit: Please excuse me for shamelessly advertising an older thread of mine. 😅
I looked for other people's threads/articles first,
but that matter apparently is so niche that I couldn't find something appropriate..

Jo22 wrote on 2020-07-14, 08:29:

Grzyb wrote on 2020-07-06, 18:03:

The 1991 version supports all BGI-supported cards, as long as they provide at least 640x348 - not CGA, then.

Wow, so there's a chance it supports M24/Olivetti enhanced "CGA" mode in 640x400?

Yes, there is a chance - the "ATT" driver is linked in.
Though I doubt if the author actually tried to run it on such hardware, pretty much non-existent in this country...

There's still the option to write a new BGI driver or set of BGI drivers that impersonates the popular EGAVGA.BGI.
That would allow us to run BGI-based EGA or VGA software – predominantly shareware games – on pretty much everything.
The approach would be particularly interesting for the various obscure Super CGA cards but would certainly work with Hercules, too.

Thanks for the information, guys.
The ATT may work, I believe.
Atleast it does so in the Star View program that also has this BGI.
PCem/86Box has an M24 machine mode, which could be used for testing..

That "olivetti"-mode is supported on the PC-Card on my MegaSTE 😀
I am using it for Windows on the Atari.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-07-14, 13:45:

That "olivetti"-mode is supported on the PC-Card on my MegaSTE 😀
I am using it for Windows on the Atari.

That's really cool! Do you mind testing that game on it? Please?? 😁
Currently, I can only use my Raspberry Pi 4 and some old laptops.
If only PCem ran on the Pi (can't get it to compile myself)..

I currently have it on the shelf...I am using Mega4 instead which has 1GB SD on IDE internally and no DOS/PC-Card.
What game do you want me to test on the 386sx PC/Card.

Never thought that Castlevania supported HGA and CGA..

Judging by the screenshots, it does Hercules graphics the cheap way, though.
That looks like CGA hardware emulation using the infamous customized 640x300 mode.
It's obviously impossible to tell from the pictures whether it uses segment b000h or b800h, so it could be either.