alt Hacker NewsThe EGA version is the original version of the game, and is gorgeous. Most people don't realize that by playing the more colorful VGA version, they're experiencing an inferior redrawn remake.
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Comparison: https://youtube.com/v/86O3PxdLrg8
Personally I think the VGA version often looks better at least post-intro, but opinions may differ.
Watching this, neither version seem as good as I remember the Amiga version looking, which was still dithered but looked better than the EGA version. Obviously hard to say without a direct video comparison.
I for one prefer the Amiga version, because that's what I played back in the day. The Amiga supported 32 colors (without tricks like EHB and HAM) in 320x200/240 mode, so only twice as much as EGA, but they could be picked freely from a palette of 4096 colors, so IMHO it looked much better than the EGA version with its fixed 16 colors. But if you look at screenshots (https://scummbar.com/game/the-secret-of-monkey-island/versio...) it's obvious that they really put in a lot of work, with custom assets which fully used the capabilities of the various platforms. Of course, the higher the limitations, the more artistry was needed to make it look reasonably good, but I don't think that should be held against the "higher-color" versions...
Wow, they really messed up Loom in the EGA to VGA conversion. The EGA graphics were a work of art, very moody.
It's interesting how the VGA version manages to be way less nuanced, plus it destroys that beautiful "blue" look of the night scenes.
I must be in the minority, but I really prefer the EGA versions of many of those games. Probably nostalgia.
Even less defensible, I've come to appreciate the (awful to me at the time) CGA 4-color palette. You know, the games that were either cyan-magenta-white-black or red-yellow-green-black? I hated it at the time, but now I look back on that time with my rose-tinted (or should I say, magenta-tinted?) glasses firmly on.
I even bought the fake retroremake Eternal Castle, which is a loving homage to that era.
Amiga versions seem the best of all the Lucasarts adventures, music is just much richer and although Monkey Island and Loom are done in the reduced color palette so look more stylistic I think they use a few more colors or better shades of colors than the harsh looking EGA set.