I’m not sure if the NES can, but by the 16-bit era the console can modify what’s being output between scan lines. Obviously that’s only beneficial if the action

I’m not sure if the NES can, but by the 16-bit era the console can modify what’s being output between scan lines. Obviously that’s only beneficial if the action affects what is below the current scanline, but the way images were drawn allows for techniques that aren’t possible when the entire frame is buffered at a fixed refresh rate. There is also a lot more to latency than just refresh rate. Retro RGB, My Life in Gaming, Digital Foundry and more have volumes on digital signal latency, and it is not as simple as getting a high refresh rate monitor or television. The TV itself can add latency. If going through a receiver, it can add latency. Need to scale a signal from 720p or 1080p to 4K? Maybe you’ll add latency, maybe you won’t. If the display doesn’t have a fast scaler, external devices can be used which will reduce the total latency, even though they may add some of their own (10-33ms).