I noticed a while back that all of the “retro gaming enthusiasts” tend to be people who are, well, enthusiasts.
They have setups with these old systems that almost no one back in the 80’s or 90’s would have had. SCART cables on NTSC systems, or other RGB video output mods. They aren’t using the wood-panneled “console” televisions that I grew up with in my living room, but rather professional-grade TV studio monitors sources from local TV stations which would have cost thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars back when they were new even before adjusting for inflation.
It would be like someone in the future comparing some shitty smartphone-based VR with AI upscaling to a theoretical 8k 240hz TV costing $40k, and thus concluding that “old-school” 2D LED TV’s were better. It’s survivorship bias.
The old CRT in my childhood living room was garbage. It was probably 10-20 years older than I was because TV’s were considerably expensive (and most appliances were expected to last at least 50 years back then). The phosphorus was worn out and the colors were bad. The only input was a coaxial, and I used a daisy chain of adapters so I could plug in 1 Nintendo console that was channel 4 and 1 Sony console that was channel 3, and there was never a remote so I had to get up off my ass to physically change the channel and adjust the volume.
Not to mention CRT’s were tiny by comparison. A quick internet search and it looks like the largest ever made was 43" diagonally and cost over $100,000 adjusted for inflation. I have to admit I hate how TV’s are measured by diagonal viewing area, which makes comparing this 4:3 screen to a modern 16:9 one difficult. Since it’s not cited anywhere and I’m too lazy to do math, I’m just gonna eyeball it and say it’s probably roughly equivalent to a 55" today.
Some people just want to claim the past was better and hate the idea that things are better now. Personally, I also prefer the sharpness of the picture that comes with emulating old games on modern hardware. The colors are brighter and more saturated. Motion looks better. Give me mods or romhacks to get to 60 FPS, or higher!
I also get annoyed watching most movies and TV shows because they’re usually 24.5 FPS. It’s mostly fine, but really egregious when there are panning shots and distant objects in the background that I can see stuttering. My film enthusiast friends claim this is more “cinematic” and that higher-framerate content looks like a soap opera, but I would argue soap operas look the way they do for a LOT of reasons (lighting, makeup, composition, camera movement, editing) and that the framerate is just a small part of that.
I noticed a while back that all of the “retro gaming enthusiasts” tend to be people who are, well, enthusiasts.
They have setups with these old systems that almost no one back in the 80’s or 90’s would have had. SCART cables on NTSC systems, or other RGB video output mods. They aren’t using the wood-panneled “console” televisions that I grew up with in my living room, but rather professional-grade TV studio monitors sources from local TV stations which would have cost thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars back when they were new even before adjusting for inflation.
It would be like someone in the future comparing some shitty smartphone-based VR with AI upscaling to a theoretical 8k 240hz TV costing $40k, and thus concluding that “old-school” 2D LED TV’s were better. It’s survivorship bias.
The old CRT in my childhood living room was garbage. It was probably 10-20 years older than I was because TV’s were considerably expensive (and most appliances were expected to last at least 50 years back then). The phosphorus was worn out and the colors were bad. The only input was a coaxial, and I used a daisy chain of adapters so I could plug in 1 Nintendo console that was channel 4 and 1 Sony console that was channel 3, and there was never a remote so I had to get up off my ass to physically change the channel and adjust the volume.
Not to mention CRT’s were tiny by comparison. A quick internet search and it looks like the largest ever made was 43" diagonally and cost over $100,000 adjusted for inflation. I have to admit I hate how TV’s are measured by diagonal viewing area, which makes comparing this 4:3 screen to a modern 16:9 one difficult. Since it’s not cited anywhere and I’m too lazy to do math, I’m just gonna eyeball it and say it’s probably roughly equivalent to a 55" today.
Some people just want to claim the past was better and hate the idea that things are better now. Personally, I also prefer the sharpness of the picture that comes with emulating old games on modern hardware. The colors are brighter and more saturated. Motion looks better. Give me mods or romhacks to get to 60 FPS, or higher!
I also get annoyed watching most movies and TV shows because they’re usually 24.5 FPS. It’s mostly fine, but really egregious when there are panning shots and distant objects in the background that I can see stuttering. My film enthusiast friends claim this is more “cinematic” and that higher-framerate content looks like a soap opera, but I would argue soap operas look the way they do for a LOT of reasons (lighting, makeup, composition, camera movement, editing) and that the framerate is just a small part of that.