SNES Vertical Line Discussion

[Zing]

For whatever reason, the castle levels are the ones that show the line the easiest. Especially if there is a wooden texture (e.g. the walls that tip over and try to smash you).

By far, the best test should be Earthbound. I would only occasionally notice the line in Yoshi's Island. In Earthbound, it is almost constantly in sight and very annoying to me as I currently play through the game. It may be due to the game's very basic graphics and single colour, bright backgrounds making the dark line more viewable.

[vlame]

For whatever reason, the castle levels are the ones that show the line the easiest. Especially if there is a wooden texture (e.g. the walls that tip over and try to smash you).

By far, the best test should be Earthbound. I would only occasionally notice the line in Yoshi's Island. In Earthbound, it is almost constantly in sight and very annoying to me as I currently play through the game. It may be due to the game's very basic graphics and single colour, bright backgrounds making the dark line more viewable.

for yoshi's island get me a world/level number plz.

[D.D.D.]

this might actually be an effect from some of the chips on the board of these particular games not being shielded correctly.

concerning my super famicom - i own smw 2 japanese so i will check this out next time i have a chance.

I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and hook up the Super Famicom and try it out just to be sure... Mite be a few days though; I'm damn busy this week.

[Redifer]

I am very confident that anyone saying they "don't have it" is just not seeing it, either due to their particular TV, or its settings, or they are not playing games that show it easily.

I disagree wholeheartedly. I record SNES games a lot for my Youtube thing and I'm pretty sure it would show up in the recorded footage if it were there. But not once in any show I've done featuring any SNES games has it appeared. This can easily be verified by settings in the editing program as changes in the video level would quickly reveal any abnormalities.

Here is a screen grab from my SNES:


Same image with the levels adjusted brighter to show any image defects:


And some Super Metroid just for fun:

Normal image:


Levels adjusted to reveal anything hidden:


If there was an issue with the SNES video output, it would clearly show up here. Bottom line: Not all SNES units exhibit this problem.

[Croooow!]

For whatever reason, the castle levels are the ones that show the line the easiest. Especially if there is a wooden texture (e.g. the walls that tip over and try to smash you).

By far, the best test should be Earthbound. I would only occasionally notice the line in Yoshi's Island. In Earthbound, it is almost constantly in sight and very annoying to me as I currently play through the game. It may be due to the game's very basic graphics and single colour, bright backgrounds making the dark line more viewable.

Earthbound is easily the worst I've seen it on. It shows up very easily on Final Fantasy III/VI as well.

[Zing]

There are various combinations of SNES chipsets and encoder chips. I will entertain the notion that a particular chipset with a particular encoder chip may not have the problem.

I do challenge anyone who thinks they do not have the problem to load up Earthbound and walk around in the green grass of Onett.

[Ziggy]

I am very confident that anyone saying they "don't have it" is just not seeing it, either due to their particular TV, or its settings, or they are not playing games that show it easily.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

As do I.

There are various combinations of SNES chipsets and encoder chips. I will entertain the notion that a particular chipset with a particular encoder chip may not have the problem.

I'm not sure if it's a particular chipset or not. Like I said many times in this thread already, I have, and have had, a number of different model SNES consoles and I've never come across this problem before. I have consoles ranging from my original US launch to minis and major revisions in between. Of course, I was never looking for it until now. But still, I have played a LOT of SNES in my day, and these kinds of things do annoy me pretty good, so I would like to think that if I own, or have owned, a SNES console that had this problem I would have definitely noticed it.

I do challenge anyone who thinks they do not have the problem to load up Earthbound and walk around in the green grass of Onett.

I was actually just playing Earthbound yesterday, didn't notice it. Unfortunately I don't have a capture card right now, but I could try and take a pic of the screen (though my camera is really horrible).

Would you agree with Jas that turning the brightness on the TV all the way up exacerbates the problem?

[Zing]

When you say brightness, do you mean contrast? Actually, a high brightness should alleviate the problem somewhat, as the dark areas will lighten up to match the surrounding colours.

Both settings are relatively low on my TV. I'll be able to test on another model TV tomorrow. I actually have an identical model to my current TV in the storage room that I could test, but I have no doubts it will show the same vertical line.

I swore my SNES did not have the line. I "had never seen it". I went for weeks occasionally looking for the vertical line and was satisfied that I didn't have it. Two days after confidently posting on DP that my SNES did not have it, there it was on Yoshi's Island.

I do not see it in any other game on my system except Earthbound. I haven't personally checked Super Metroid yet, but I don't recall seeing the line in my few hours of recent play. It is a common test cart, though. I also have not tested another common test cart: Final Fantasy III. My games like Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Star Fox, F-Zero, Sim City, Chrono Trigger, and so on… I do not see it at any point. I would definitely notice it now that I know it exists on my system, and I only see it on two games so far.

[Croooow!]

When you say brightness, do you mean contrast? Actually, a high brightness should alleviate the problem somewhat, as the dark areas will lighten up to match the surrounding colours.

I use a high brightness to alleviate it as well and made it unnoticeable when I would play Link to the Past.

[Ziggy]

When you say brightness, do you mean contrast? Actually, a high brightness should alleviate the problem somewhat, as the dark areas will lighten up to match the surrounding colours.

No, I meant brightness. I was just going by what Jam said. He said if you turn the brightness all the way up you can see the vertical line easier.



So I just messed around with Earthbound a little. Playing from the start of the game, when you're walking around Onett in the dark, I could not see it. If I turned the brightness down all the way to zero, I was just able to make out an extremely faint vertical line. The brightness on this TV goes from 0 to 100. It had to be on 0 for me to be able to see this vertical line. Once I started to turn the brightness back up, it immediately disappeared. Say, around 10 or so, it was absolutely gone.

Now, I did the same test during the day time in Onett and I was not able to see this vertical line anymore. Even with the brightness turned down to 0, I still could not get this vertical line to come back.

So what does that say? I have no idea! I'll do the same test with Super Metroid later if I get the chance.

This was done with my model 1 SNES. I forget if it's a model with one or two PPU's, it's been a while since I've opened it up, but I know it doesn't have the cart lock bar and the extra sound board. So it's not an older model. It was hooked up to my HDTV with S-Video cables.

I also have a launch NTSC-U SNES as well as a 1 PPU PAL SNES that I could try out, either on my HD or CRT. With RF, composite or S-Video, too. I don't believe I have any other SNES's on hand right now.

edit: Just remembered another SNES I have. It's another model 1 without the lock bar, might be a 2 PPU model but I don't recall exactly.