I prefer bad picture quality for old games

[Anayo]

Emulating old games on an Nvidia Shield Portable made me realize I don't really like HD quality picture for 16 or 8 bit games. This was partly why I decided to jailbreak my Wii so I could play emulators with an analog video signal. To me, it looks particularly unflattering on NES games. Many backgrounds in Megaman are great expanses of monochrome with no tiling or gradient or anything. I feel like the noise of an analog video signal helped conceal that.

Oddly enough, when it comes to N64 and Dreamcast era games, I feel the opposite way. Those look way more beautiful to me when emulated in HD.

[samsonlonghair]

Good call, Anayo. I think I'll mod a wii this week for the same reason. Did you follow a guide? I can manage the letterbomb, but I tend to get lost after that.

[isiolia]

Also keep in mind that Raspberry Pis still do composite output. They simply swapped to an A/V multi-out jack on newer ones.

[J T]

I only have one TV and it is the CRT I bought back in 2000. I've never wanted to upgrade my TV because I like to play games on it and the PS2 is my most modern console.

[samsonlonghair]

More or less the same story here. I only own a CRT. I jus can't bring myself to buy a high def TV. The most modern console I own is a wii. So component video is good enough for my wii and my PS2. Composite is good enough for everything else for now.

[Ziggy]

What are we talking about though when we say "bad" picture quality? As in, composite video is "bad" compared to S-Video, component video, or HDMI? Or 240p video on a standard def CRT versus a 1080p HDTV? upscalling issues and lack of scanlines on an HDTV? Or are we talking about actually BAD video quality, as in composite video from the Genesis (which is notoriously bad)?

[samsonlonghair]

Everything is relative, ziggy. I spent fifteen years playing Sega Genesis on an old Sears & Roebuck TV set that itself needed a modification to be "cable ready" before I could connect the coax cable.

By comparison, I think composite video looks great on my Genesis.

[Ziggy]

Genesis might be a horrible example.

I played Genesis via RF and composite video for years. It never looked bad to me, because that's all I ever knew. Then I modified my Genesis to output S-Video, and boy, I never knew what I was missing! There's no way I'm ever going back to composite.

But that's a little can of worms since some games use tricks that are broken once you go beyond composite video quality. I'm willing to make this sacrifice, but I can't blame someone else if they're not.

But of course, I'm talking about gaming on a standard def CRT. So one might still consider that to be the "bad picture quality" compared to a beautiful upscaled HD picture. You're right, it is relative!

[Sarge]

I like as much fidelity as I can get out of my systems, but I am finding myself preferring retro gaming on a really nice CRT. But I also have no problems with the "so sharp it'll cut you" nature of emulation.

The biggest problem with HD sets is how they handle 240p. Some do it okay, and some don't. And the lag, of course. That seems to have gotten better overall these days, though. My older Bravia is pretty awesome there, though, even if it only does the comb-effect on 30 Hz flashing.

My newest TV is clearly not going to be good for retro gaming, though. The composite looks horrible through there, and no S-Video. Boo.

[ElkinFencer10]

I generally prefer a sharper HD picture (why I LOVE my Retron 5), but I agree that there's just something special about playing the old consoles on a CRT.

I'm with you 100% on newer stuff, though. Eternal Darkness running on Dolphin looks better IMO than most PS3 games, and there are few things in this world more beautiful than a Dreamcast outputting VGA (especially Soul Calibur, YES LAWD, that game looks amazing).