Think about Mah Jongg -V-G-A-. Now think about it running at 1024×768 with 256 colors, featuring tiles with intricate, shaded pictograms and calligraphy that cast shadows across their tiles. This hidden gem is Mah Jongg -V-G-A- rewritten for the 8514 graphics standard, and it looks absolutely amazing. Briefly, the 8514/A adapter was introduced in IBM's PS/2 line of PCs around the same that they also introduced MCGA and VGA in 1987. It was an expensive option because it was a graphics accelerator – it had its own chip dedicated to processing graphics, which was designed to improve the speed of graphics drawing and free up the CPU to handle other tasks. The 8514 standard also included a high-level programming language called an AI (Adapter Interface), not unlike modern APIs like DirectX and OpenGL. The later XGA standard (1990) also had an AI that was backwards-compatible with the 8514 AI. The 8514 featured two resolutions – 640×480 and 1024×768 – and displayed 16 colors in the default 512KB version, and 256 colors with the 1MB upgrade. Offering higher resolutions and color depths than VGA, which were useful for professionals, the standard was supported by Windows, OS/2, and expensive drawing and design software like CAD. Sadly, there were almost no games for the 8514 because the standard was never widely adopted. (After VGA, numerous "Super VGA" cards introduced new proprietary BIOS modes until VESA standardized the industry with VBE.) To play it you'll need a genuine 8514/A adapter, or an 8514-compatible graphics card such as the ATI Mach 8 and Mach 32, the IIT AGX, or a SVGA graphics card with at least 1MB of video RAM and an 8514 AI emulator. This game can be played in DOSBox by using Tseng Labs ET4000 video emulation and RIXAI8 to emulate the 8514 AI. Version 0.6 was a public beta, and Ron Balewski confirmed that it may be considered freeware.
Added by DOSGuy
Screenshots
1024×768×256c
Downloads
Complete version history:
| Mah Jongg -8514- v0.6 / Serial No. 0000 Freeware (240,681 bytes) | 1991-04-19 | DOS | Play online  |
Patches
| Mah Jongg -8514- Unofficial patch for unwanted lines (65,962 bytes) | 2011-04-05 | DOS | Play online |
Availability
This game never left the beta stage and was never sold, and author Ron Balewski has generously released this game as freeware.