Well this is a blast from the past: Denthor’s tutorials were my primary learning aid for VGA graphics programming in school in the 90’s! He went to the same university that I did (The University of Natal, Durban), but graduated before I started.

They’re all available for download: Denthor’s VGA tutorials

The set of tutorials was distributed on a local BBS and swopped among friends. These taught us everything: palettes, buffering, pointers, scrolling, animations, backgrounds, assembly language. Our school learning material didn’t even come close. I remember completing basic school programming assignments, but instead of using text mode, I’d use VGA Demo mode and animate the user interactions.

I had no idea these were so well known across the globe - it’s only with the internet that we can now read stories from users thanking Denthor for creating them.

My school friends and I used to have LAN parties, but we’d often end up programming our own games instead of playing Doom or Wolf 3D.

All thanks to Grant Smith, a.k.a. Denthor of Asphyxia.