Or puke yellow monochrome.

It's interesting that CGA was released by IBM in 1981. Probably in response to color machines like the Commodore Vic-20, which had 16 colors. (The Upper 8 could only be used in the background, though.)

And, then shortly after the CGA was introduced, the Commodore 64 hit the scene with a true 16 color display.

Then, in 1984, IBM released the EGA card, with true 16 colors. Too bad the Commodore Amiga 1000 was introduced the same year with 32, 64 (EHB Mode) or 4096 color (HAM Mode) modes.

Then, IBM finally took the lead when they released the VGA in 1987 with 256 colors (Out of 262,144).

(It wasn't until 1992 that Amiga released their swan song AGA graphics, which could produce 262,144 colors in a 24-bit mode. Used first in the Amiga 4000, then in the ill-fated CD32 game console.)

I remember playing a copy of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat I got from a friend, that for some reson only worked in CGA mode. I loved that game, even with only 4 colors. I remember finally playing it a few years later in VGA, and being blown away by the difference. It was like playing a whole new game.