Except that still locks you to 1920x1080 which a LOT of displays, laptops etc already break... 16:10 aspect, 3440x1440p, etc. are already outside that ratio you outline. The thing with 80x25 VGA text modes was it was both fast and consistent in a lot of ways. You just cannot have a predictable full screen text interface today in the same way as you could.

That said, there were differences back when... you had the original CGA and EGA as precursors to VGA. I used an EGA 386 system for several years and have similar fondness for that, especially in that it was the native for RIPterm/RIPscrip in the early-mid 90's. Which was still different from the much more common VGA modes.

Hell, my biggest niggle to this day is that so many terminal apps don't match the DOS colors you got with CGA/EGA/VGA default. I often will configure that, so I can at least output classic ANSi art to my terminal and have it look closer to correct. I keep working through ideas for a "modern" text mode BBS that worked well in modern terminals. On the flip side, I'm thinking of adapting a door server model that will map CP-437 output to UTF-8 and map the colors to rgb color codes for modern terminals to show the right colors.

Sorry, I thought that part went without saying. A modern console leans into the actual resolution of your _current display_ and gives you nice integer ratios by default while letting you configure whatever character cell size you prefer if you want something different.