Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

[Samuel Fuller]

Found Xenogears out in the wild the other day. Clocked 6 hours so far and it holds up pretty well.

Ver archivo adjunto 9297613

Xenogears fan excited to play Xenogears for the first time.

It’s all great until you switch discs.

 

[Billy_Sama!]

It’s all great until you switch discs.

What worse than switching discs is missing one is the discs when you get a multi disc used without checking.

 

[The Ultimate Ramotith]

Despite the disclaimers, I feel that he is incorrect when he says that playing the Mother 1 SNES remake is LARPing playing Mother 1.

 

[Computer Guardian]

Another breakthrough for RPCS3, if you use Linux, it is now possible to use any ATI GPUs that use the TeraScale archetecture, all the way down to the HD 2600 XT, which is a very tiny potato in this day in age,

 

[Samuel Fuller]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dr254Q7F214Despite the disclaimers, I feel that he is incorrect when he says that playing the Mother 1 SNES remake is LARPing playing Mother 1.

That’s got to be one of the most retarded things anyone could say. Is the same fucking game, just up-ported to an engine that was intended to be as close to what the original game was on as possible.

As much as I enjoyed Earthbound, its fanbase are the worst of the worst Ntienyearold faggots.

 

[Varretnon847]

If at all possible, you simply MUST get a CRT monitor for retro gaming! In my opinion it beats out any CRT TV in picture quality, this is running at a 640x480 native resolution with integer scaling scan lines in retroarch on a Trinitron monitor. You can use a displayport to VGA adapter to hook up your GPU, I recommend the Startech branded one, HDMI adapters often cause issues and should be avoided entirely.
Ver archivo adjunto 9257650

About a month ago I purchased an adapter to connect my computer to an old small Magnavox CRT TV that I had in my storage, and it's been great. I've found that it looks best for a lot of 5th gen games like Final Fantasy VII. I'm probably going acquire a CRT monitor though, because my TV is bordered in such a way that it hides some crucial UI elements in various games, and makes a lot of 2000s PC games a bit troublesome to see properly. I hear CRT monitors are much better for that which makes sense, but the TV works great for emulating old console games and playing media.


Obviously cameras don't do them justice. But in cases like Final Fantasy VII, the backgrounds looked a lot more clearer while still preserving the games native resolution.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

About a month ago I purchased an adapter to connect my computer to an old small Magnavox CRT TV that I had in my storage, and it's been great. I've found that it looks best for a lot of 5th gen games like Final Fantasy VII. I'm probably going acquire a CRT monitor though, because my TV is bordered in such a way that it hides some crucial UI elements in various games, and makes a lot of 2000s PC games a bit troublesome to see properly. I hear CRT monitors are much better for that which makes sense, but the TV works great for emulating old console games and playing media.

Ver archivo adjunto 9303364Ver archivo adjunto 9303365
Obviously cameras don't do them justice. But in cases like Final Fantasy VII, the backgrounds looked a lot more clearer while still preserving the games native resolution.

That tv is a piece of shit. Sorry to break it to you, but a lot of CRTs were horrible garbage back in the day.

Games weren’t meant to be played on a blurry, smeary fishbowl.

Back in the day I was lucky my dad gave a shit about picture and got a good TV, and then a big one with S-Video, and I can tell you from experience that an S-Video connected PS1 looked a lot better than any CRT filter, but only on a good set with a lower-curve screen that was properly calibrated. High overscan (lost data at the edges) is another hallmark of a junk tube.

As for monitors, I had the good luck to get my hands on a 24-inch Sun workstation monitor and then a 17-inch Dell when the Sun died, both with Sony Trinitron tubes, and had a VGA adaptor for my Dreamcast.

What those setups gave is so much closer to modern monitors that most people would not believe it, and developers were using high-end trinitrons for most arcade and console games, usually hooked up via RGB.

Poor picture quality isn’t suddenly not dogshit just because it’s a tube shitting into your eyes.

 

[Varretnon847]

That tv is a piece of shit. Sorry to break it to you, but a lot of CRTs were horrible garbage back in the day.

Games weren’t meant to be played on a blurry, smeary fishbowl.

Back in the day I was lucky my dad gave a shit about picture and got a good TV, and then a big one with S-Video, and I can tell you from experience that an S-Video connected PS1 looked a lot better than any CRT filter, but only on a good set with a lower-curve screen that was properly calibrated. High overscan (lost data at the edges) is another hallmark of a junk tube.

As for monitors, I had the good luck to get my hands on a 24-inch Sun workstation monitor and then a 17-inch Dell when the Sun died, both with Sony Trinitron tubes, and had a VGA adaptor for my Dreamcast.

What those setups gave is so much closer to modern monitors that most people would not believe it, and developers were using high-end trinitrons for most arcade and console games, usually hooked up via RGB.

Poor picture quality isn’t suddenly not dogshit just because it’s a tube shitting into your eyes.

Yeah I know the TV is a piece of shit, it was something that a relative of mine got from someones garage sale. I was more curious to see how it would work when connected to my computer, and how it would work on both old and new games, but unfortunately I'm not enough of a CRT enthusiest to know which models are better then others.

I will take into consideration the monitor models that you suggested though.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Yeah I know the TV is a piece of shit, it was something that a relative of mine got from someones garage sale. I was more curious to see how it would work when connected to my computer, and how it would work on both old and new games, but unfortunately I'm not enough of a CRT enthusiest to know which models are better then others.

I will take into consideration the monitor models that you suggested though.

Stick to Japanese brands if you’re in North America, primarily Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Panasonic Tau. If you’re in Europe, Japanese brands and Bang and Olufsen are the ways to go.

Get a set of alignment tools off amazon or AliExpress and you can probably reduce the overscan and make things a little sharper and cleaner, which will also help colour accuracy.

The biggest advice is to seek out sets with S-Video or component ports, as those are the best connections for North America. The difference in going from composite (yellow single RCA plug) to S-VHS is a 50% gain in sharpness, things like the dust cloud behind a Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII going from a white blob to a little shaded cloud of grey and white.

When I got a laserdisc player and hunted down an S-Video cable, it was a huge shock. The desert scenes in Star Wars went from the only definition of the dunes being the horizon line over RF to seeing contours over composite, to seeing actual texture on S-Video was mind-blowing, and games got even bigger gains.

You can get S-Video for everything 16-bit up to Dreamcast, which comes in handy because a few games for DC didn’t have the flag set for VGA, even though it was a system-level capability (more SEGA stupidity), even Genesis and SNES can do S-Video and it’s glorious, but you need an original Genesis and the SNES cables weren’t easy to get in North America. Even for PlayStation and Saturn, S-Video is the best bet, and for PS2, unless your set has progressive scan, component is only a 5% improvement over S-Video.

There are some CRT TVs from JVC and Panasonic that had VGA ports in them, but they were rare and only on high-high-high end sets.

 

[DocAwe]

RGB= Analog King

 

[analrapist]

I'm not enough of a CRT enthusiest to know which models are better then others.

I should really pull my old CRT out of storage because its behavior astonished me. Late model, RF input only, still more clarity when running Raspberry Pi composite out through Chinesium RCA-to-RF adapter, compared to my old experiences with CRTs. In theory , this setup should be trash but in practice, no. Got my first flat screen in like 04 as a bundle with a mattress purchase and I didn't really look back much til recently.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I should really pull my old CRT out of storage because its behavior astonished me. Late model, RF input only, still more clarity when running Raspberry Pi composite out through Chinesium RCA-to-RF adapter, compared to my old experiences with CRTs. In theory , this setup should be trash but in practice, no. Got my first flat screen in like 04 as a bundle with a mattress purchase and I didn't really look back much til recently.

A good RF converter could give a great picture if it had power injection.

When people wanted to buy RF modulators for N64s when I worked at Radio Shack, I’d ask if they had a VCR on the TV they wanted to put the N64 on, and if they did, I’d tell them how to hook it up that way.

I actually had a few people come back and thank me because their setup looked so much better than the friend of theirs who bought a modulator’s setup did, and I saved them $30.

The only system that had good RF output was the first PlayStation models that used a Sony camcorder modulator hooked to the composite out, as that modulator was powered by the system. Me and my friend did a side-by side with another friend who bought a third-party modulator that used the multi-out. It was night and day, and the Sony modulator was within a hair of composite quality.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

One other thing, and it is worthy of a double post.

HD tube TVs can be found with HDMI ports, but they are rare, and often have weird modes. I had a Tau that could only do 480p, 480i and 1080p over HDMI, so it was a problem for some PS3 games as they only supported 720p or 720p and 1080i, and I think I even had one that only did 1080i for HD modes, so I had a beautiful 39-inch HD tube but could only play that game in SD on it!

The fucker also weighed as much as a small car.

 

[73_Autistic_Fuck_54]

That tv is a piece of shit. Sorry to break it to you, but a lot of CRTs were horrible garbage back in the day.

Games weren’t meant to be played on a blurry, smeary fishbowl.

Back in the day I was lucky my dad gave a shit about picture and got a good TV, and then a big one with S-Video, and I can tell you from experience that an S-Video connected PS1 looked a lot better than any CRT filter, but only on a good set with a lower-curve screen that was properly calibrated. High overscan (lost data at the edges) is another hallmark of a junk tube.

As for monitors, I had the good luck to get my hands on a 24-inch Sun workstation monitor and then a 17-inch Dell when the Sun died, both with Sony Trinitron tubes, and had a VGA adaptor for my Dreamcast.

What those setups gave is so much closer to modern monitors that most people would not believe it, and developers were using high-end trinitrons for most arcade and console games, usually hooked up via RGB.

Poor picture quality isn’t suddenly not dogshit just because it’s a tube shitting into your eyes.

Round tube TVs are actually quite good for older console games and movies, but terrible for the setup, even the cheap branded ones can be quite nice provided everything still works properly. Some of the worst TVs are actually flat panel CRTs, as they all have some degree of geometry distortion, even high end Sony Trinitrons are prone to this failure if they're flat paneled.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Round tube TVs are actually quite good for older console games and movies, but terrible for the setup, even the cheap branded ones can be quite nice provided everything still works properly. Some of the worst TVs are actually flat panel CRTs, as they all have some degree of geometry distortion, even high end Sony Trinitrons are prone to this failure if they're flat paneled.

The image distortion on sets with a bowl curve is horrendous and anyone saying round tubes were best never saw a truly good flat-front tube.

I laughed my ass off when I saw the official Xbox TV by RCA. That thing looked like it should be a home for a fucking goldfish, and the image quality was fucking terrible for a 2002 TV.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I'm probably going acquire a CRT monitor though, because my TV is bordered in such a way that it hides some crucial UI elements in various games, and makes a lot of 2000s PC games a bit troublesome to see properly. I hear CRT monitors are much better for that which makes sense, but the TV works great for emulating old console games and playing media.

If you're going to play DOS games on a real vintage PC I highly recommend a CRT, I couldn't find a single LCD that handled the 320x200 13h VGA mode used by video cards of the late 90s properly, and short of getting a retrotink 5x or 4k that still seems to be the case. But they look amazing on a CRT.

The biggest advice is to seek out sets with S-Video or component ports, as those are the best connections for North America. The difference in going from composite (yellow single RCA plug) to S-VHS is a 50% gain in sharpness, things like the dust cloud behind a Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII going from a white blob to a little shaded cloud of grey and white.

All my CRT tvs have s-video but I wouldn't spend extra for it today. Composite is great.