BIZZARE QUESTION-do you ever get nostalgic for graphical imperfections from the past?

[nogoodnamesleft]

I have a pretty beefy pc right now and have dabbled in emulation-and dont get me wrong, stuff like ps2 in 4k look pretty fuckin great BUT...

I prefer to play them on my crt because i get nostalgic for the 480i flickering and low res-ness of the games. Why? It such a weird feeling

On pc i turn AA on everything as i cant STAND aliasing in my games but.....then when i look at ridge racer 5 ps2 jagged mess on my crt, it looks beautiful. warm. i love it.

also ridge racer type 4 for example-it looks stunning on a pc at 4k with texture warping correction!! but....then seeing those big fat unfiltered textures and jaggies just looks.....right. and i feel good seeing them as i play it. but i would never want that shit in my games now!!

These are just 2 examples-anyone else feel this way? My wife thinks im strange with this stuff and i dont blame her!

 

[Bradford]

I play most things on a CRT and really like early 3d.

So I suppose, if you want to consider that an imperfection.

 

[Stowaway Silfer]

Can't think of anything personally but I can see why you'd feel like that. The setup is a part of the experience and memories.

 

[Kurita]

No I get it. If anything, ultra smooth/clean emulated 3D games weird me out. Part of my brain goes "That's not how it's supposed to look!!!"

 

[Dylan]

I preferred the way final fantasy characters looked like in my head as a kid, when they were blurry 16-bit pixelated monsters, left open to interpretation by my visual cortex.

 

[Dylan]

I prefer to play them on my crt because i get nostalgic for the 480i flickering and low res-ness of the games. Why? It such a weird feeling

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I play most things on a CRT and really like early 3d.

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I'm willing to believe that CRTs have some aspect to them that affects our perception beyond the appearance of the image we are seeing. It's entirely possible that certain combinations of light frequencies and refresh rates are just more pleasant to process, even if they are technically lower 'quality' images.

 

[Mekanos]

Absolutely. I love the PS1/N64 look of early 3D games. The visuals left certain details to the imagination, especially for horror games.

 

[Bradford]

I'm willing to believe that CRTs have some aspect to them that affects our perception beyond the appearance of the image we are seeing. It's entirely possible that certain combinations of light frequencies and refresh rates are just more pleasant to process, even if they are technically lower 'quality' images.

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CRTs draw images differently than fixed pixel displays. As such, Aliasing is not as much of a concern. The way they draw an image is scientifically different and results in a higher clarity of motion as well.

There's no magic or subjectivity to it really, it's just how they work.

Good videos about some of this:

 

[FormatCompatible]

I still love the look of pre-rendered backgrounds from that era, but I don't think they look very good when playing in higher resolutions so I totally get you.

 

[Deleted member 79451]

Yes.

Nostalgic for:

• Terrible 8-bit and 16-bit DACs, sprite limits, etc
• Affine texture mapping without perspective correction and with integer texture warping
• Abysmal N64 tri-point filtering (I'd love to read a hard engineering article on just why it's so bad)
• 3dfx dithering (in columns)
• Early crisp low res trilinear texture mapping

And I know I'm going to be nostalgic for the temporal static of early RT (what we have now).

 

[skeezx]

short answer is no, not outside of basic display discrepancies (games obvs meant to be played CRT)

but back in the day i thought sub-30 fps/stutter was a "feature". like there's so much AWESOMENESS going onscreen it just HAS to slow down

 

[mikhailguy]

I like the shitty textures in DS games.

 

[Deleted member 23212]

In-game? I love the way PS1-texture warping looks.

 

[chandoog]

I, sometimes, miss games with pre-rendered backgrounds (if you count that as an 'imperfection').

It's always nice to go back and see how much detail the artists crammed into every single pre rendered background in FFIX, Resident Evil 3 etc.

The recent fan efforts like the Seamless HD mods and Moguri for FFIX really bring out the details on higher resolutions.

 

[maximumzero]

Games are best played as they're originally intended. Games that were published in the heyday of CRT televisions should be played on CRT televisions. Most developers were working around the limitations and visuals of composite video, cleaning it up too much is going against that vision.

But of course I understand the reality of the modern era; not every has or wants to deal with CRT displays anymore.

 

[MrWindUpBird]

I'll be honest, I absolutely miss the early PS1/Saturn/N64 days of 3D. While yeah, games look better than ever, I don't feel like ANY generation has captured the charm for me like playing all those chunky 3D games back then.

 

[Dezzy]

Sometimes I do enjoy that stuff. When I played DUSK on PC, I played half the game with the settings that make it look like it's on 90s hardware.

For me I think it's more to do with nostalgia than the actual look of it.

 

[Lant_War]

Love the texture warping in PS1 games, have it enabled in pretty much all retro-styled games that let you turn it on.

 

[Agamon]

Pre-PS1/N64, yes. 16-bit, 8-bit, even Atari 2600. But I shudder at the early days of polygons...

 

[Jawmuncher]

Not necessarily the same thing. But always bummed with how many games we get that are "inspired" by the NES or SNES graphical style.

but nice fat polygons like on the N64 or PS1 are few and far between.
Thankfully we've at least been getting more "boomer shooters" that do a good job carrying the 90s graphical style

 

[Ottaro]

Game visuals peaked with Gamecube-on-a-CRT.

 

[DanteMenethil]

Of course, games were made with the imperfections of crts in mind

 

[MXG]

Yes, I do.
one particular is framerate

 

[Phellps]

I started replaying Tomb Raider (1996) recently. Shit runs on a DOS emulator at, like, 480p, no anti-aliasing, blurry textures all around.

Then I installed GliDOS, a HD texture pack and never looked back. I still respect what the game was for its time, but if I can make it look better, I will.

 

[MrNelson]

In-game? I love the way PS1-texture warping looks.

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YES

I absolutely love just running around and seeing the walls and floor jitter in PS1 games

 

[Brhoom]

Of course, games were made with the imperfections of crts in mind

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What shader is that?

 

[Flon]

Yeah. And not just graphical imperfections with old games either. I love the look of old UI's, hardware design, even web design. Give me weird dithering gif images any day.

It's not exactly a strange thing. I find that you can't go five seconds in the music production industry without something clamouring over low bit depth samples and vintage saturated sounds from old analog hardware.

I don't think it's strange to not want to approach perfection, and I find that people tend to find more "character" in imperfections that they grow attached to.

 

[Mugman]

I didn't realize how much I missed PS1 graphics until Anodyne 2. Low poly when done right is amazing and hits my nostalgia way harder than 8 or 16 bit style

 

[DanteMenethil]

What shader is that?

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I *think* its crt royale

 

[Aske]

Definitely slowdown. It almost never bugged me; I generally loved it. The pre-patch staircase in Ninja Gaiden 2 is one of my favourite recent gaming memories. I certainly don't miss sprite shimmer or texture glitches or screen tearing, although I don't give them much thought.

The graphical imperfection that I always memorably loathed in the past was aliasing. No nostalgia, only hate. I remember playing one of the Onimusha games, and watching the ending, and there were a bunch of cherry blossoms, and thinking "these graphics are so utterly stunning, BUT THE ALIASING RUINS EVERYTHING". The death of aliasing was the greatest graphical enhancement I witnessed prior to last gen's facial capture.

 

[KillLaCam]

Thats kinda the one area I dont have nostalgia for, I want my games to look more advanced every time. But I get nostalgic for old voice acting "quality", music and stuff like that

 

[Kr1spy]

Of course, games were made with the imperfections of crts in mind

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Oh man. This comparison makes me want to buy an old CRT.

 

[The Shape]

I play most things on a CRT and really like early 3d.

So I suppose, if you want to consider that an imperfection.

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You mean current games? Like a PS4 or PS5 on a CRT?

 

[Rats]

PS1 games have a look and I love it.

I, sometimes, miss games with pre-rendered backgrounds (if you count that as an 'imperfection').

It's always nice to go back and see how much detail the artists crammed into every single pre rendered background in FFIX, Resident Evil 3 etc.

The recent fan efforts like the Seamless HD mods and Moguri for FFIX really bring out the details on higher resolutions.

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It will never happen but I would absolutely love to see what a modern Final Fantasy game would look like with pre-rendered backgrounds. Just imagine all the vibrant, gorgeous 4K detail they could cram in. And 100% of the polygon budget would go to the character models.

 

[Combo]

I think there is an aspect of this that is overlooked and that is the designers took the limitations into account when designing those graphics. Those graphics were not just inferior to modern graphics, rather they were modified to fit into a certain look. And that is why pixel art looks good.

E.g. it would be like saying cubism is bad graphics.

 

[Kickfister]

Even a shitty CRT has a way of making any old system shine in a way that even the best modern TV simply can't, even if you spend hundreds on high end equipment to get them looking their best on modern displays. Because of that, I find that I tend to long for the full setup that goes with those limitations and not just the technical limitations themselves. That FFVIII comparison above says it best really, and that doesn't even fully capture how much better it looks on a CRT.

Oh and a lot of the charm of the era is the love and care that went into making the artistry work with those limitations. Modern games can copy those limitations all they want, but the odds of it hitting the same are very slim.

 

[Deleted member 48813]

Not really, I love seeing old 3D graphics with a nice rez bump. Makes them look so clean and it makes the low poly graphics pop more to me, it's charming in its own way.

 

[Bradford]

You mean current games? Like a PS4 or PS5 on a CRT?

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My primary platform is PC. But yes. A 120hz CRT is my primary gaming monitor.

 

[The Shape]

My primary platform is PC. But yes. A 120hz CRT is my primary gaming monitor.

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Damn, very interesting and different I'd say.

 

[Issen]

CRT Lottes Multipass straight into my fucking veins please.

 

[bionic77]

I do think CRT is better suited for anyone quick moving.

Giant HDTVs are much better for movies and passive viewing.

I don't miss having to sit 6 feet from the screen though.

 

[Bradford]

Damn, very interesting and different I'd say.

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It's very nice. It allows me to play games with graphics settings cranked way up without needing to worry about resolution for clarity. Control at 1024*768 with full RTX at 120fps was amazing, and it looked better than it did on my fixed-pixel 1080p monitor.

CRTs went out before their time. On the topic of discussion, as many people have noted games used to be able to utilized and account for the benefits of a non-fixed pixel display while also sidestepping issues like low resolution output aliasing simply by nature of how the tech worked.

This is why a lot of old games do not look like people remember them looking -- because they were designed around these technologies that died for the sake of convenience rather than a pure performance benefit.

 

[julia crawford]

yes all days

 

[knightmawk]

Not in games. I do miss and want to see more puppets, miniatures and practical effects in films, but that's something else.

I did have a weird related thing recently. I was listening to the Final Fantasy Tactics soundtrack, which is a game I used to play at least annually, and it didn't sound right in some songs. Eventually I realized I was expecting to hear the sort of crunch the Playstation disc reader would always make when playing the game at certain points and it sounded weird without it. I don't really miss it, but I had gotten so used to it that it didn't sound right without it. Like growing up listening to a scratched CD and then hearing a song on the radio without the skips for the first time.

 

[My Blue Heaven]

realism is overrated, give me gaudy bubsy 3d nightmare worlds over boring cityscapes with lifeless sims walking around

 

[Why would you do that?]

I really love the PS1 texture warping stuff for some reason. I didn't really grow up with a PS1 (I was an N64 kid) but I always thought the warping was kinda cool... Probably because I think technology is most interesting when you see its limitations when you push it to the limits.

But also I guess it adds some visual interest to some camera moments that would otherwise be a little more boring.

 

[Stencil]

I get nostalgic for it simply because i feel like the crude graphical limitations caused a lot of devs to try a more creative direction with the art style. These days since anything is really possible, it's easy for studios to just default to boring shit like "ok so this man got in the car and drove on the street"

 

[noinspiration]

I love the look of PS1-era games and wish like hell that most of them didn't control like you were sliding around on ball bearings.

 

[EggmaniMN]

Ps1 texture warp is the greatest look ever

 

[eraFROMAN]

Yes, absolutely; from the shitty pixelated 3D on the DS, 8-bit GBC, sharp but lo-fi PS2, and fuzzy assed N64, I miss how mysterious and filled with potential it all felt. Might sound cliché, but imagination did a LOT to get those crusty old games stuck in my memory in a way remakes and remasters usually can't recapture.