Tanarus supports a wide array of video cards, however, there seems to be confusion as to what 3D actually is. When you install Tanarus on your system, you have the option of running Tanarus in one of two video modes: software rendering (using the cpu only) and hardware rendering (using special video acceleration hardware which is either on an add-on card or built into your primary video card). The default is set to software rendering, but can be changed by loading the game and selecting Options/Graphics.

One of the base requirements to play Tanarus is a video card with at least 1 megabyte of video RAM (see Tanarus Requirements for more info). Since all systems are configured for video output (otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this), Tanarus supports these "base" systems via its software mode. In other words, the Tanarus software mode is the least common denominator for the Tanarus display. Click here for a list of 2D cards we've tested with Tanarus.

Many newer systems are equipped with special video cards capable of 3D graphics and effects. Many of these special cards are supported by Tanarus in what we call hardware, or 3D accelerated, mode. By using Microsoft's Direct 3D library, we're able to program across a wide variety of these specialized 3D cards. If your card is Direct 3D compliant for 3D acceleration, Tanarus will run in its special 3D mode. However, not all 3D cards are made the same, and features found on one card may not necessarily be found on another. Since there is no clearly defined standard in the world of Windows 95, this seems to cause quite a bit of confusion. Just because a card says "3D" on the box, doesn't mean it supports true 3D acceleration needed to run Tanarus in hardware mode. For more information on which Direct 3D cards we've tested with Tanarus, click here.