Well, I assume many of you already know this, but it IS possibly to have color output in console using C++ (on windows anyway). all you have to do is use this line of code: system("color 1E"); //this is a black background with yellow text if you want more options open a dos shell and type 'color -?' it explains everything. I havent been using freebsd for a couple months unfortunately - so I cant remember the command for color in a *nix terminal. Hope somebody finds this useful!