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Join Date:Posts: 50597
Note: There's some resizing compression artifacts but clicking on the images will give you full sized versions.
So did a bit of an experiment.
It's always annoyed me that the perception of retrogames is that they are made up of giant blocky graphics when in fact when played on a CRT TV they were aliased and had a much softer look. So I've gone into retroarch and taken some screenshots of games with and without shaders applied to simulate a CRT screen. The a CRT screen is essential for getting across what the artists intentions were.
Anyway you can make up you minds below:
NES
Start with Final Fantasy 3. You might not know it looking at the unfiltered graphics but the FF games were lauded as being gorgeous when released. Amano's monster art was translated beautifully to the enemy sprites and was a significant step up from the likes of Dragon Quest. Unfiltered it's a blocky mess:
![Final Fantasy 3 (J) [T-Eng1.1]-220804-225357.png](https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/C1MDEMT0J8K5/final-fantasy-3-28j-29-5bt-eng1-1-5d-220804-225357.png)
![Final Fantasy 3 (J) [T-Eng1.1]-220804-225700.png](https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/XLO98BB6JAZJ/final-fantasy-3-28j-29-5bt-eng1-1-5d-220804-225700.png)
On a CRT you can really see Amano's original art in the enemy sprites:
![Final Fantasy 3 (J) [T-Eng1.1]-220804-225338.png](https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/ALINLU7X5LHG/final-fantasy-3-28j-29-5bt-eng1-1-5d-220804-225338.png)
![Final Fantasy 3 (J) [T-Eng1.1]-220804-225643.png](https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/U0X31QPG99F0/final-fantasy-3-28j-29-5bt-eng1-1-5d-220804-225643.png)
Next up is Megaman 2 which was quite the looker on the NES. It's a blocky mess again with the raw pixels
Through a CRT and it looks so much better. The cartoon aesthetic really shines.
Take note of the waterfall and brown 'soil' tilemaps. Through a CRT the waterfall is way more convinving and the browns are a much more natural earthy tone.
16-bit next
Post edited by Retr0gamer on
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
Megadrive
While the megadrive had the advantage of a much faster CPU than the SNES allowing it to pump out sprites without slowdown, it was severely lacking in how many colours it could display in comparison. It meant a lot of Megadrive games would look darker and blander. To compensate developers would use a lot of 'dithering', basically using alternating coloured pixels that the CRT would blend together to give games the colour depth the megadrive lacked.
Gunstar Heroes:
Note the 'rounding out' of the fire effects.
Rocket Knight Adventures is a good example of dithered art. The house, ground and castle in the background look so much better while unfiltered is block-o-vision.
The Megadrive also lacked the transparency effects of the SNES so developers would also fake these with dithering. The CRT would blur these pixels to give a transparent effect. It was effective although the dithering was still noticable. Sonic 1 and 2 are shown below to demonstrate this effect. A real low quality CRT would probably blur the pixels more:
SNES
Not a whole lot needs to be said about the SNES. It's pretty much peak 2D art. Actraiser 2 and Contra 3 shown below:
Actraiser 2
With a CRT the game has such incredible atmosphere that is missing from the raw pixels. The game is gorgeous. Pity it's a bit of a stinker.
Contra 3
Contra 3 again shows the effectiveness of dithered art.
Next I'm highlighting Donkey Kong Country 3 because of the use of pre-rendered art. When viewed in raw pixel form this just looks absolutely disgusting. You'd be forgiven for thinking oldies like me were idiots for ever thinking this looked good. Apply a CRT filter and the art comes much closer to the renders the graphics are based off. The improvement is staggering and highlights how impressive this was on 16-bit hardware:
32-bit next
Post edited by Retr0gamer on
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Join Date:Posts: 50597
32-bit won't be as big an improvement as 8 and 16-bit owing to how ropey 3D was.
Saturn
The Saturn is more renowned for its 2D prowess but it could pump out some pretty decent 3D when required. The biggest issue with the Saturn was transparency effects. While the saturn fully supported transparencies its complicated hardware created issues. It had two video processing units that basically created two images that were combined to give the final output frame and this did not play nice with transparencies. The PS1 on the other hand had hardware specific to pumping out transparencies and developers took full advantage of this (just look at all the JRPGs with ridiculous spell effects). The saturn would often compensate with dithered transparencies which even when viewed through a CRT did not look convincing.
Die Hard Arcade and Bulk Slash are shown here as two of the best examples of 3D on the Saturn
Bulk Slash
Note the dithered shadow under the players Mech yet the HUD elements have transparencies.
Die Hard Arcade
Yet more dithered transparencies for shadows, water and ceiling lights yet the enemy health bars are fully transparent.
While nothing is going to drastically improve the old school blocky quads (the saturn used quads and not triangle polygons) a CRT makes everything far more readable.
PS1
The PS1 is a really well engineered console. The engineers knew that the sparse polygons and low resolution of the system would not look great. As a result the PS1 console was built specifically around outputting on a CRT and uses a clever trick to overcome this issue. On PS1 hardware (and the effect can be replicated on an emulator which I've done here) the PS1 outputs a faint dithered pattern over the entire image. You might be able to see it if you look at solid blocks of colour in the unflitered images. When this dithered pattern is combined with the PS1 visuals and a CRT it has the effect of creating more natural colour grading and giving the illusion of greater resolution.
I'll let the screencaps do the talking
Ridge Racer R4
A sea of blocks turns into a much nicer and smoother image on a CRT. The PS1's dithered pattern is very evident here.
Wipeout 2097
Massive increase in fidelity on CRT and much less noticeable blockiness
Dino Crisis
Dino Crisis is a resident evil type game but the environments are entirely 3D. Lighting and ambience is so much better on a CRT
How about some games now with pre-rendered backgrounds?
Resident Evil
When viewed as raw picels the low res and low colour compressed backgrounds look woeful with very visible colour banding. On a CRT the colour banding is much less noticeable. 3D elements blend much better with the prerendered art rather than feeling like they are walking over a JPEG.
Parasite Eve 2
The CRT here makes an astonishing improvement. The 3D model and background art look like they co-exist and the character model looks far more realistic than polygon woman in the unfiltered image.
Gradius Gaiden
Lastly who said the PS1 wasn't as good at 2D as the Saturn? Gradius Gaiden is a gorgeous 2D game. The Saturn just would not be able to handle the crazy effects this game pulls.
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