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I always see this option in games around 1990-97 or so.
I understand Stereo is better than Mono
Mono means 1 I think, and stereo means 2 outputs?

What is really the difference, and if Stereo is better, why so many games have the option to choose Mono?

I always wondered, do you know why?

Yes Stereo means 2 channels Left and Right, and Mono means one, single speaker.
Not all TVs supported Stereo at the time. I believe with Mono both channels are mixed into one signal and thus you would not miss any sounds say for example would only come out of the right channel/speaker.

Mono just means both your RCA connectors get all the sounds, no separation say an explosion on the left side of the screen. The idea was that either audio RCA cable plugged into a mono TV will have all the sounds.

CRTGAMER wrote:Mono just means both your RCA connectors get all the sounds, no separation say an explosion on the left side of the screen. The idea was that either audio RCA cable plugged into a mono TV will have all the sounds.

Yep, I remember wondering why my Genesis games sounded much better at my friends house (mainly gunstar heroes). Turned out that one of the speakers on my TV fizzled out, and I was missing the sounds from the Left channel. Set it to Mono, and finally got the complete sound array from one speaker.

Not too many games took advantage of stereo, but if you have an older tv with one audio plug (just yellow and white composites) be sure to set mono to get the full range of sound effects from one speaker.

I had one of those tv's with one yellow input and one white input
I always wondered why I didn't have a red input!

now I know.....

A pain to configure each game. You could just leave settings to default stereo.
Hookup both the audio cables with an adaptor to your mono TV.

CRTGAMER wrote:A pain to configure each game. You could just leave settings to default stereo.
Hookup both the audio cables with an adaptor to your mono TV.

My dad has like, 3 of those things just sitting around, I always wondered what it was for.....

thelolotov wrote:

CRTGAMER wrote:A pain to configure each game. You could just leave settings to default stereo.
Hookup both the audio cables with an adaptor to your mono TV.

My dad has like, 3 of those things just sitting around, I always wondered what it was for.....

For making homemade fractals very very slowly.

all this talked reminded me to mention it
no one ever buys anything from a company called Aiwa,
I had terrible childhood memories with that tv...

Green and red spots
black and white Snes
Mono sound system(even though about around 1994 brand new)

piece of crap..

: ***(

My parents have a little Aiwa mini stereo that's 20+ years old and it still works fine. They mounted speakers up on the walls and I actually took the speakers since they weren't using them and have them hooked up to my amp and TV right now.

I know what you mean about weird TVs that were obsolete when released though. When I had roommates years ago I had a hand me down TV from 89 or 90 that was pretty shallow for a 27 incher with s-video input, stereo, and other bells and whistles. It died and we were stuck with the 26 inch TV my roommate had. His parents had given to him new in the late 90s. It was mono and only had coax/RF input.