CGA

Once of my favourite games of all time is Space Quest III and I f’in LOVE its art.

I obviously didn’t know when I was playing at the time, but it uses the CGA colour palette. This was basically a byproduct of there being a limit to the number of colours that could be used in games — on account of the fact computers were way less powerful than they are now.

Anyways, they had just 16 colours to choose from in this palette:

By themselves these look pretty basic, and yet with this very limited selection to use they were able to make some of the best (imo) game visuals of all time. Like, seriously, look at these…

Space Quest III: Pirates of Pestulon, Sierra Entertainment 1989

And ditto Commander Keen Secret of the Oracle. Man I loved playing that game:

Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! Episode 1: Secret of the Oracle, id Software 1991

Why is any of this relevant? I’m working toward getting a full first playable level of Eric completed, so have segued into some level design the past couple of weeks. As a part of this, I’ve been testing out the CGA colours because I’m (commander) keen to integrate this palette into the game.

Before full-steaming it into the backgrounds though, I’ve been playing around with colours and styles, and during that process I ended up making a CGA Kāpiti, which I like, so I thought I’d share:

And now back to making the actual game.

🖤Alice