1y ago

Retro games really did look better on a CRT

You're viewing a single thread.

147 comments

I may be the only person in the planet that doesn’t agree. The left image just looks darker and blurrier to me. And I understand a lot of people think the blurring as makes it look better because it hides the pixels, but I suppose it just doesn’t work for me, since I can still see all the pixels just fine.
- To me raw pixels look like something out of mspaint and the crt one looks like there's depth and more detail present. Something to maybe also consider is that these are close ups? Probably looks better further away same at it would be zooming in on pixels for modern day content.
  There's also different crt filters that can lessen certain effects. Darkness stuff if this indeed a image of a crt screen isn't really an issue with crt filter.
  
  CRT filters seem even worse to me because almost none of them look realistic. The only one I’ve seen that came close is Loop Hero.
  
  I don't have a real life reference point for CRTs, so for me just going from these flat images to something that suddenly looked like there was more detail sold me on it. Prior to that my assumption had been old games on modern displays must be better until comparisons made me see how there was actually more attempts to be more than mspaint type pixel presentation back in the day.
  So these raw pixels look even less realistic to how the final product actually ended up coming out back on old devices to me. So between the two unrealistic options I prefer Crt filters now, and I in the past hadn't liked them either thinking all people had wanted was scanlines.
  
  What games are you playing that have CRT filters that make things look better for you? Most CRT filters I’ve just put fake scan lines over the image, which to me, looks neither more accurate nor better (but I suppose it’s all a matter of opinion.)

147 comments