You nailed it with "4 ugly colors"[0] I remember the palette choices in CGA were downright bizarre; they'd be 4 colors that you couldn't possibly use to make a

You nailed it with "4 ugly colors"[0] I remember the palette choices in CGA were downright bizarre; they'd be 4 colors that you couldn't possibly use to make anything look right. At the price of the card and the display, you're like "wait ... that's it?" [0] Ignoring all of the interesting things coming out of the 8088 demo scene, nothing that I'm aware of from the 80s was capable of anything close to that.