[baruchthescribe]

This reminds me a lot of Mode X which, although a funky 320x240 mode with square pixels built in to standard VGA, only became popular after Michael Abrash popularized it in Dr Dobbs. And then there was the utterly gorgeous mode Q - 256x256 with 256 colors. No muls or shifts - high byte is Y and low byte is X.

[bloopernova]

That "Graphics Programming Black Book" is available online here: http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-b...

Mode X or Q reminds me of the amazing Mode 7 SNES graphics used to great smooth effect in F-Zero and many other titles.

[raverbashing]

It's funny, you get Mode X by not picking a mode "the easy way" (like mode 0x13 for 320x200x256) but by setting the lower level registries in the VGA controller, it's an unofficial mode