The Hercules card was the first widely popular non-IBM standard for the IBM PC. It got as much mainstream software support as IBM's own CGA or EGA (and far more

The Hercules card was the first widely popular non-IBM standard for the IBM PC. It got as much mainstream software support as IBM's own CGA or EGA (and far more than Plantronics, or IBM's PGC). Business software like Lotus and Harvard Graphics, and games like Microsoft Flight Simulator and SimCity, support Hercules. (Flight Simulator's support for Hercules singlehandedly turned many 1980s PCs into gaming machines.) The ultimate proof of the Hercules standard's power is that everyone else cloned it, whether in discrete video cards or in motherboards with integrated video. I guess this video is evidence that the Hercules standard is so simple that someone today can implement it at home. I suppose that's why Hercules, the company, couldn't maintain its market lead after the EGA era; the same thing happened to Hayes modems.