Which picture looks "correct" to you? (4:3 vs 8:7, classic gaming aspect ratio question)

[oni-link]

I recently picked up a CRT to play some older games on, and came across an age old question with seemingly no answer, and that is "What is the correct aspect ratio for old games"

Now, old TV's were 4:3, so that's generally what you got, however when playing on modern screens 8:7 often looks better, or if not better, more "correct"

Ultimately the answer tends to be, whatever you prefer is the correct way to play, but I was curious as to what most people think, so took a few pics of ALTTP on my CRT for comparison:

Pic A (4:3)

Pic B (8:7)

Edit: see Threadmarks for more examples

 

[Astroroom]

A, compare the logs.

 

[Vex]

A: makes him look like a wideboi.

Answer is B.

Not to mention you get more screen period on B (look at the edges of the screen left & right side). It is missing almost entirely in A.

 

[Teenage Fansub]

The one that isn't pillarboxed.

 

[TheMoon]

inb4 Chrono Triger SNES/DS comparison pics

 

[NuclearCake]

4:3 for Super Nintendo games. It is what was intended, there were a few exceptions where 8:7 looks more "correct" but those seem to have been oversight errors on the part of the devs. I don't think any of them ever expected the games to be played in 8:7 AR.

4:3 is correct.

 

[Bansai]

I'd choose A, simply because it doesn't look like a cut square on your TV, like B does.

 

[xyla]

A: makes him look like a wideboi.

Answer is B.

Not to mention you get more screen period on B (look at the edges of the screen left & right side). It is missing almost entirely in A.

Click to shrink...

On the NES, there was a lot of overscan that was intended to be cut of by the TV. Think Super Mario Bros 3 for example.

It's kinda hard to say - I enjoy the look of A but also don't dislike the look of B.

 

[MaxAugust]

In theory 4:3. In practice whatever I looked at last. I don't think they look different enough consistently to make me think something is off.

I feel like the 4:3 UI in that shot looks a fair bit better. But I also kinda like skinny Link.

 

[Edge]

A is what we all played in the past and what we're used to, doesn't mean it's the correct one tho. It's stretched, obviously, 8:7 as you call it or "pixel perfect" as many retro collections or Nintendo Online calls is the correct ratio and always what I choose today.

 

[Slaythe]

It depends on each game.

Some games designed their visuals around the fact CRT would switch the ratio, and some games didn't account for it.

Same goes with old PC games that sometimes are distorted in 4/3. (you need 1:1 aspect ratio modes)

 

[Bishop89]

Whatever fills the screen up more

 

[Plasma]

4:3 because that's how I'm used to seeing it.

 

[oni-link]

A is what we all played in the past and what we're used to, doesn't mean it's the correct one tho. It's stretched, obviously, 8:7 as you call it or "pixel perfect" as many retro collections or Nintendo Online calls is the correct ratio and always what I choose today.

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I tend to look for something in the game world that is clearly meant to be a circle or a square, and then flick between 4:3 and 8:7 to see which looks accurate, and I tend to find that it looks stretched in 4:3 and correct in 8:7. That said, I think 4:3 also looks fine most of the time

In the Zelda pic from the OP, the box the lantern is in is probably mean to be a square, and it looks like one in 8:7, but it's slightly stretched in 4:3

 

[Vex]

I tend to look for something in the game world that is clearly meant to be a circle or a square, and then flick between 4:3 and 8:7 to see which looks accurate, and I tend to find that it looks stretched in 4:3 and correct in 8:7. That said, I think 4:3 also looks fine most of the time

In the Zelda pic from the OP, the box the lantern is in is probably mean to be a square, and it looks like one in 8:7, but it's slightly stretched in 4:3

Click to shrink...

This is where I'm at too. I wonder if the devs knew this back then? I mean, they had to, right? Cuz I'm pretty sure those objects were supposed to be square or perfect circles as you describe.

 

[Het_Nkik]

It's definitely game-by-game. Lots of retro games look super squished and skinny in 8:7.

 

[Vex]

OP, I think you just ruined sprites for me. I'm gonna go looking for obvious distortion on perfect circles or squares now.... OOF.

 

[Silver-Streak]

My understanding is that most NES and SNES games were not designed for square pixels, since CRTs didn't care about pixel size and could render them regardless.

This means that no matter how 8:7 might look more "correct", intended design was the thiccboy link at 4:3.

However, not every game was designed that way.

 

[oni-link]

OP, I think you just ruined sprites for me. I'm gonna go looking for obvious distortion on perfect circles or squares now.... OOF.

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If it makes you feel better (worse?) it really changes on a game by game basis

Mega Man X looks awful in 4:3 and great in 8:7 on that same CRT, but FFVI (III) looks too narrow in 8:7 but great in 4:3

 

[NuclearCake]

This is where I'm at too. I wonder if the devs knew this back then? I mean, they had to, right? Cuz I'm pretty sure those objects were supposed to be square or perfect circles as you describe.

Click to shrink...

The thing is even with elements in games that look incorrect in 4:3. You really shouldn't use 8:7 Simply because you can't know with 100% certainty that everything else in the game looks correct with 8:7. Just because one circle or two looks oval in 4:3, that doesn't mean that the rest of the game looks off. The sprites that look off in 4:3 were just a handful of mistakes that slipped the cracks during development and weren't corrected, it still doesn't mean you should play the full game in 8:7 if you value accuracy. As that can make everything else look skinny. Devs never intended the games to be displayed in 8:7.

 

[johan]

I tend to look for something in the game world that is clearly meant to be a circle or a square, and then flick between 4:3 and 8:7 to see which looks accurate, and I tend to find that it looks stretched in 4:3 and correct in 8:7. That said, I think 4:3 also looks fine most of the time

In the Zelda pic from the OP, the box the lantern is in is probably mean to be a square, and it looks like one in 8:7, but it's slightly stretched in 4:3

Click to shrink...

It's this, but it does depend on the game. for ALTTP it's B.

A doesn't look bad though. At least it's not stretched to 16:9 lol

 

[| TrusT |]

I'm not sure either look good on a Bush TV :p (Sorry op)

But those of us of a certain age all remember the PAL versions not filling up the entire screen anyway due to the large forced borders. Personally I prefer the full screen 4:3 with the fun wonky corner geometry. 4:3 is just ingrained after all of the years of 8bit home and arcade games.

RGB Scart for life though.

 

[ZeroX]

Yeah it's on a game by game basis

You can usually tell pretty quickly, ALTTP looks stretched in A, but looks clean in B. Sometimes if you play games in 8:7 the characters will look skinny, because the devs knew it would be stretched and adjusted to suit.

 

[ghostcrew]

I know that 4:3 is usually the right choice but A Link to the Past absolutely looks better in B. It's clearly stretched at 4:3

 

[Tokyo_Funk]

Whichever doesn't sqash or stretch pixels for the game that is being played.

 

[Symphony]

CRT TVs never displayed anything as "pixel perfect" because they have no concept of square pixels, so A is 100% correct for how NES/SNES games looked for everyone playing on original hardware - some devs accounted for that and others didn't which means that what "looks right" varies on a game by game basis, but for ALttP in particular the wideboy look is accurate. Now, the issue is that if you stretch the true output of the game to the correct aspect ratio on a modern display, it's going to look a mess because they use fixed square pixels unlike a CRT, so everyone ends up thinking that pixel perfect is right when the answer is far more nuanced than that.

 

[Nugnip]

I know that 4:3 is usually the right choice but A Link to the Past absolutely looks better in B. It's clearly stretched at 4:3

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Yeah but 4:3 is how it's been burned into my memory when I was a kid, so it still looks right to me

 

[Joule]

Which ever one doesn't cut any of the picture out like overscan on modern TVs. Pic B in this scenario is what I'd prefer

 

[NuclearCake]

Which ever one doesn't cut any of the picture out like overscan on modern TVs. Pic B in this scenario is what I'd prefer

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Well both of those wouldn't cut out any picture on a modern display, assuming the overscan on your set is turned off.

 

[TSM]

It's basically a question that's impossible to answer. There are games where some of the art looks "correct" at 8:7 and other art from the same game looks "correct" at 4:3. I have a feeling that if you asked the original artists they'd tell you that neither is correct and they designed most of the artwork simply to look it's best within the constraints of the tiles they had available to use for each sprite. There was only so much granularity to use for adjusting sprites for aspect ratio when they were creating the sprites back then.

 

[Sieffre]

Being a teenager in the early 90s, I remember how particular I was with my SNES to get as clean of a picture as possible. For as much as I played Street Fighter II, 4:3 looks way too fat to me for that game, and 8:7 looks more correct to how I remember it on my TV at the time.

 

[Benzychenz]

I've actually never heard of an 8:7 ratio until this thread.

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

4:3 looks better to me for that game but it probably depends on the horizontal resolution of the game and if the art was created to be displayed with some amount of distortion.

 

[blame space]

Whatever fills the screen up more

Click to shrink...

GOAT opinion

 

[Edward850]

Whichever doesn't sqash or stretch pixels for the game that is being played.

Click to shrink...

This would be an incorrect assumption, display resolutions in the 80s and 90s were built around the idea that the thing that scaled were the pixels, not the physical screen ratio. This is especially evident in the DOS era where the default EGA and VGA resolution was 320x200 for your average 4:3 screen, the pixels were explicitly expected to be stretched to 1:1.2 (20% taller). You'll know this famously with Doom.

TVs worked much the same way, though with usually inconstant standards due to the difference between PAL and NTSC resolutions, which is likely the result in the debate here, as no answer is immediately clear in the intent. What's interesting here though, there is no display standard for 8:7, so that can't really be the intended resolution outside of maybe the artists not paying that much attention (or simply deciding it was an acceptable comprise for how they needed to draw it)?

 

[Symphony]

Being a teenager in the early 90s, I remember how particular I was with my SNES to get as clean of a picture as possible. For as much as I played Street Fighter II, 4:3 looks way too fat to me for that game, and 8:7 looks more correct to how I remember it on my TV at the time.

Click to shrink...

See that's the funny thing, 8:7 is not how you ever saw it because aside from opening up your TV and changing the geometry (ruining it for everything else) there was no way to make a real SNES display at that aspect ratio back in the day. Many years of emulation has muddied the waters for what people consider correct.

 

[Deleted member 17860]

lol never even knew 8:7 was used lol im using all of my 4:3 thank you very much lol ;p

 

[Sieffre]

See that's the funny thing, 8:7 is not how you ever saw it because aside from opening up your TV and changing the geometry (ruining it for everything else) there was no way to make a real SNES display at that aspect ratio back in the day. Many years of emulation has muddied the waters for what people consider correct.

Click to shrink...

Nah, TVs from the 80s had knobs that you would use to adjust the geometry of the image. Horizontal and vertical size was common; you could squash and stretch the image. My TV also had a knob that you could use to adjust the "curve" of the image, as squashing it inward would sometimes give it an hourglass shape, and you could use a knob to help correct that. I was always messing with those knobs so that the image wasn't cut-off from overscan, and tried to balance it with getting the edges straight instead of skewed.

 

[Deleted member 49611]

4:3

Which ever one doesn't cut any of the picture out like overscan on modern TVs. Pic B in this scenario is what I'd prefer

Click to shrink...

i would agree but the 4:3 image isn't leaving much out. a bit of grass and a tiny bit of a path. if it was cutting out the UI then that'd annoy me. but in this case i don't mind losing a tiny bit of the image if it means not having to deal with black bars.

 

[halcali]

8:7 looks better.

 

[Homura]

They look the same.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

4:3

8:7

/thread

 

[Atom]

Depends on the game. I think 4:3 usually looks fine for most games, whereas 8:7 can look noticeably bad for some.

Basically I find a slight stretch less offensive than a squish. I think you might also end up seeing stuff you aren't meant to with some games in 8:7. Often see that sort of stuff on emulators.

 

[oni-link]

Some more examples:

 

[Red]

There is no right answer. It's per-game. Whatever ratio allows squares to be square and circles to be circles, that's correct for the game.

 

[oni-link]

I've actually never heard of an 8:7 ratio until this thread.

Click to shrink...

Nor had I until 2017 when I first started looking into this and playing all the classic games I missed out on growing up

It's quite the rabbit hole when you really look into it

 

[KainXVIII]

It's per-game

Click to shrink...

Sometimes its per-ingame screen.

 

[Red]

Sometimes its per-ingame screen.

Click to shrink...

Sometimes!

 

[oni-link]

I will add that I would absolutely love to see a DF Retro on this subject

 

[Navid]

Picture B looks more correct, but I always preferred having the image fill our CRT 4:3 screen so that is what I would use...