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Yep, my cringe is triggered by "retro" pixels that are perfectly square with impossibly sharp edges/borders between neighbours. The CRT shaders we have these d

Yep, my cringe is triggered by "retro" pixels that are perfectly square with impossibly sharp edges/borders between neighbours. The CRT shaders we have these days are pretty good at turning raw pixels into something that looks "about right" so there's no excuse [not even laziness] for dumping raw unfiltered pixels to the screen.

vmception 6y ago
Its so weird that barely anybody does it Probably more people played “retro” games on emulators than actually owned them so life has just gotten extremely meta
yoz-y 6y ago
Think of it as another style altogether. Graphics back then used to look the way they looked because of technical limitations. We don't have those anymore. I personally don't miss the barely readable text despite it was set in huge letters. But I still enjoy a good hand crafted pixel art.
- laumars 6y ago
  It’s more than that. Graphics were designed to take advantage of the technical limitations. Eg Using the blending effects to create new colours in the CRT or chess-board ‘stipple’ effect of alternating between foreground and background pixels knowing that the CRTs will produce an accidental alpha blend effect. Some old games look crap on modern hardware because ironically modern displays end up limiting the after effects that retro games would employ.
  - yoz-y 6y ago
    Sure, but this is a remake, not an emulation of an old game. It does not need to try to reproduce the old style, rather it should work with what we have now.
    - laumars 6y ago
      Indeed. My point wasn’t intended to read as a disagreement to yours but rather a complimentary “old games did stuff that will look wrong on modern hardware because they intentionally exploited the limitations of older hardware” point
- boomlinde 6y ago
  > Graphics back then used to look the way they looked because of technical limitations. We don't have those anymore. You're right that it's the result of technical limitations, but a lot of the time that's what the artists worked with, and subsequently what the techniques they used were based on. Personally I don't mind the difference too much. I use a CRT TV for older games, but normally with RGB input rather than composite. But there's definitely an argument to be made in favor of composite video for some systems: that it's closer to the way you were presumed to experience it. Off the bat, an example I can think of where the difference is really obvious is with the light effects in the bar at the beginning of Streets of Rage II. With a high quality RGB monitor or "ideal pixels" the light cones appear as checkerboard patterns where every other pixel is transparent. With composite video, these patterns instead blend together into what looks like a transparent layer, which is a much better effect.

vmception 6y ago

Its so weird that barely anybody does it Probably more people played “retro” games on emulators than actually owned them so life has just gotten extremely meta

yoz-y 6y ago

Think of it as another style altogether. Graphics back then used to look the way they looked because of technical limitations. We don't have those anymore. I personally don't miss the barely readable text despite it was set in huge letters. But I still enjoy a good hand crafted pixel art.

laumars 6y ago
It’s more than that. Graphics were designed to take advantage of the technical limitations. Eg Using the blending effects to create new colours in the CRT or chess-board ‘stipple’ effect of alternating between foreground and background pixels knowing that the CRTs will produce an accidental alpha blend effect. Some old games look crap on modern hardware because ironically modern displays end up limiting the after effects that retro games would employ.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  Sure, but this is a remake, not an emulation of an old game. It does not need to try to reproduce the old style, rather it should work with what we have now.
  - laumars 6y ago
    Indeed. My point wasn’t intended to read as a disagreement to yours but rather a complimentary “old games did stuff that will look wrong on modern hardware because they intentionally exploited the limitations of older hardware” point
boomlinde 6y ago
> Graphics back then used to look the way they looked because of technical limitations. We don't have those anymore. You're right that it's the result of technical limitations, but a lot of the time that's what the artists worked with, and subsequently what the techniques they used were based on. Personally I don't mind the difference too much. I use a CRT TV for older games, but normally with RGB input rather than composite. But there's definitely an argument to be made in favor of composite video for some systems: that it's closer to the way you were presumed to experience it. Off the bat, an example I can think of where the difference is really obvious is with the light effects in the bar at the beginning of Streets of Rage II. With a high quality RGB monitor or "ideal pixels" the light cones appear as checkerboard patterns where every other pixel is transparent. With composite video, these patterns instead blend together into what looks like a transparent layer, which is a much better effect.