Isn’t it a weird effect? I assume it has a name but I don’t know what it is. But what I do know is: I remember some older games looking better than anything, because when I was playing, they did. When I revisit them years later, they’re not how I remember.
Even stuff that’s more modern gets me, like Skyrim. When I first booted that up, I couldn’t imagine graphics getting much better. Now, I go back and see flat textures with sporadic grass nodes…
They did look better on CRTs. Modern displays will smooth things in a way the original developers didn’t intend. It’s less pronounced in the PS1/N64 era, but SNES/NES has some games that look noticeably worse without applying a filter.
I find it interesting that people seem to remember graphics being so much better. I remember back then thinking “WTF? Why are the walls wobbling around so much?” Or why characters bodies were broken up into chunky blocks instead of a single shape?
Final Fantasy VII drove me nuts with the blocky characters while you were exploring, but the much more detailed characters during combat.
I will concede, though, I don’t remember the N64 looking so blurry back then. Playing it now, it’s like goddamn! There’s excessive antialiasing and motion blur.
Yeah, that’s a huge issue with “retro” games being played in the modern day. At the time everyone had low resolution smaller CRTs and you couldn’t see the issues as easily. CRTs has built in anti-aliasing because of the way the technology works. If you throw it onto a modern day display it looks horrible, but that’s not the way it looked back then.
Isn’t it a weird effect? I assume it has a name but I don’t know what it is. But what I do know is: I remember some older games looking better than anything, because when I was playing, they did. When I revisit them years later, they’re not how I remember.
Even stuff that’s more modern gets me, like Skyrim. When I first booted that up, I couldn’t imagine graphics getting much better. Now, I go back and see flat textures with sporadic grass nodes…
They did look better on CRTs. Modern displays will smooth things in a way the original developers didn’t intend. It’s less pronounced in the PS1/N64 era, but SNES/NES has some games that look noticeably worse without applying a filter.
This is true of SD media as well. Watching a VHS rip for example is pretty jarring on an HD display, but it didn’t look that way on a CRT.
I find it interesting that people seem to remember graphics being so much better. I remember back then thinking “WTF? Why are the walls wobbling around so much?” Or why characters bodies were broken up into chunky blocks instead of a single shape?
Final Fantasy VII drove me nuts with the blocky characters while you were exploring, but the much more detailed characters during combat.
I will concede, though, I don’t remember the N64 looking so blurry back then. Playing it now, it’s like goddamn! There’s excessive antialiasing and motion blur.
Graphics were designed for the consumer. The average consumer used a CRT, which blurred the edges, so the sprites were designed around that.
Yeah, that’s a huge issue with “retro” games being played in the modern day. At the time everyone had low resolution smaller CRTs and you couldn’t see the issues as easily. CRTs has built in anti-aliasing because of the way the technology works. If you throw it onto a modern day display it looks horrible, but that’s not the way it looked back then.