I love making the graphics worse

[Takeuchi]

Whenever I play a retro game I make the graphics look like I'm playing it on an old TV. It's not a nostalgia matter, it just feels better this way to me somehow. Gives me a cozy feeling

 

[NemissaFotia]

There's definitely an argument to be made that this is actually superior. Developers expected their games to be seen on consumer CRTs of questionable quality through something as poor as an RF connection so a lot of the art is designed around this. The imperfections of a CRT were often used in creative ways.

 

[_Lorenzo_]

Whenever I play a retro game I make the graphics look like I'm playing it on an old TV. It's not a nostalgia matter, it just feels better this way to me somehow. Gives me a cozy feelingView attachment 30903

Perfectly agree... When I play titles from my childhood I always use filters that smooth out pixels, which on most emulators are on by default. Rough pixels never appealed to me, but it has to be said that even back then there were people who liked scaling, or otherwise very clean graphics.

 

[DunkeyKong]

Perfectly agree... When I play titles from my childhood I always use filters that smooth out pixels, which on most emulators are on by default. Rough pixels never appealed to me, but it has to be said that even back then there were people who liked scaling, or otherwise very clean graphics.

CRT talking about CRT

 

[Theobaldus]

The important bit is that you don't fall for the fake CRT grid trap. Been a fan of that thing for a while, then at some point I realised putting my games in jail was stupid and didn't actually do anything about the matter; the point is to dither the pixels, not make them look darker. On Duckstation I use "ntsc-adaptive-lite" as a game/display post-processing effect, with these values. The difference is subtle, but it makes text look not as sharp as vanilla anymore and it smooths everything a bit. I really dig it.

Post automatically merged: Feb 23, 2025

How it looks like in Koudelka (played it last December, loved it).

VANILLA

NTSC FILTER ENABLED

 

[_Lorenzo_]

The issue regarding the scanlines filter had already been discussed in another thread, and the problem was just the darkening of the game screen. I happened to use it in the past for some SNK and more generally arcade titles, then I too got tired of it. I only recently discovered Duckstation in its standalone version, and ever since then I can't do without it.... I'm curious to try the filter you mention. That said, Koudelka is definitely an RPG worth playing despite its flaws particularly in the battle system. I loved it very much at the time!

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I too enjoy low graphics as seen above.

 

[DunkeyKong]

View attachment 30914
I too enjoy low graphics as seen above.

I'm saving this lmao

 

[DanVzare]

There's definitely an argument to be made that this is actually superior. Developers expected their games to be seen on consumer CRTs of questionable quality through something as poor as an RF connection so a lot of the art is designed around this. The imperfections of a CRT were often used in creative ways.

*Me who grew up with decent CRTs that I still own, because my parents knew that by investing in something decent, it would last longer and save money in the long term.*
The heck are you talking about?

But yeah, you're not wrong. Just look at Dracula's eyes on Castlevania Symphony of the Night. A clear signal gives you a red dot, an RF signal gives you an actual eye.

But as someone who grew up with decent monitors and a decent television, as well as a Windows 95 computer and later a Windows 98 computer, both of which output an image at 1024x768 with ease (mind you, you couldn't see anything on the desktop if you did, because the text was too small to read), my nostalgia has me wanting to improve that graphical quality to the absolute limit. (Also for the record, I pretty much grew up just above the poverty line. My parents just knew how to save their money and spend it wisely.)
As such, I very much dislike this whole "nearest-neighbour-only" thing that a lot of low-poly indie games insist on forcing upon us. Give me bilinear filtering! Some of us grew up with a computer not a PS1! I want indistinguishable smears, not chunky blocks!

But that's just me.

Although when it comes down to the really low-graphic games like the Atari 2600; I make sure to put on as many image ruining filters as possible.
There's nothing to look at already, so I figure that by adding crap like scanlines and ghosting, I'll be giving myself something to look at. :D

 

[IHeartRetro]

I got to agree. The look of these games without any crt filters just is not right. It's often a chore to flip through everything because I am not familiar with all the terms, but in the end I just can't play Crash Bandicoot without those blurry screens.

 

[hazys]

I find a lot of artificial scanlines unconvincing. It's hard to do a good CRT filter that doesn't just darken the whole picture. But when it's good, it's really good.

I also like toying with the resolution on old games, though. Seeing what PS1 games look at 4x resolution is fun too.

 

[treytenderoni]

I’ve really dialed in my MiSTer FPGA settings to replicate my PVM on my OLED, but it can’t touch the brightness and glow of a tube, even after HDR injection. Especially using BFI to smooth out motion, too.
Glad we have so many options.

 

[Theobaldus]

The issue regarding the scanlines filter had already been discussed in another thread, and the problem was just the darkening of the game screen. I happened to use it in the past for some SNK and more generally arcade titles, then I too got tired of it. I only recently discovered Duckstation in its standalone version, and ever since then I can't do without it.... I'm curious to try the filter you mention. That said, Koudelka is definitely an RPG worth playing despite its flaws particularly in the battle system. I loved it very much at the time!

I think the biggest flaw of the game is the very slow pace of battles indeed, I found myself turboing the game very often. ? I've also noticed how the game keeps making any actor not currently involved in any attack/skill/whatever disappear from the chessboard, only to make them reappear again right after that. That's probably one of the things which slow everything down I reckon, along some very lengthy, if not delayed, animations.

Resolution-wise, sometimes I check the highest ones but I keep going back to the original resolution very quickly. The thought of seeing things the way they were intended is too strong and I find myself sticking to it no matter what. I also like it cause I can see how resolution sometimes changes dynamically (e.g.: Silent Hill low ingame res vs map/inventory almost doubled res).

 

[J.F.C]

Ah yes just like the developers intended.

 

[Nidoking's iconNidoking]

Definitely cozier, if not just objectively better looking given more modern limitations... ironically through superior technology.

 

[BigNerdSam]

I never know what S-Video was until a few years ago when I was looking at the Retrotink and it came up when I was trying to figure out what SCART was.

I'll be honest: component-out for really sharp pixels is cool and all, but the fuzziness of a composite video signal on a mid-range CRT was where I grew up and that's what I'm plugging in my PS2 with.

 

[CaptainToad]

The issue regarding the scanlines filter had already been discussed in another thread, and the problem was just the darkening of the game screen. I happened to use it in the past for some SNK and more generally arcade titles, then I too got tired of it. I only recently discovered Duckstation in its standalone version, and ever since then I can't do without it.... I'm curious to try the filter you mention. That said, Koudelka is definitely an RPG worth playing despite its flaws particularly in the battle system. I loved it very much at the time!

A lot of old LCD scanline implementations I think are just treating each second line (or 50% of the lines) as a solid black line or maybe one with a little transparency, both of which aren't really close to how scanlines/blanklines worked on CRTs since the darklines/blanklines on CRTs are like maybe 1/4 the size of the light-up lines.

Also, people seem to fixate on the blankline aspect of CRTs when as far as I can tell it's really the phosophor blur and non-shimmering resolution (at least on the horizontal axis) that's actually appealing about CRT graphics in retro games and what the sprite artists were exploiting to create colour blending via dithering, etc. etc. Blanklines can help define and delineate visuals on 8/16-bit blocky graphics sometimes but it's weird that aspect was chosen as the definitive CRT quality to emulate on PC emulators before the colours, the colour blending, smooth motion, properly-scaled pixels, etc.

 

[Ikagura]

When you play a video game not made with 4K 30" screens in mind you tend to see imperfections that weren't meant to be seen.

Like seeing cables in action movies back when CRT would make them invisible.

 

[Denmdm]

Even if the game runs fine I usually disable most graphic heavy stuff and put it on a lower resolution, I'm not used to the game looking good it's weird lolll hence why my GTA 4 looks like a ps2 game, I really like the look

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

I mean I see the appeal.

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

I'm all for that dirty RF look. Todays display's seems not to fit older arcade games of the late 80s well IMO. For example I always thought Super Contra was uglier than the NES port. When tweaking shaders and "raising black levels" like an old bad CRT, the game's details that were drown in the grey mass are reappearing.