In your examples, perhaps, though it's more that dithering techniques (not seen here) assume scanlines, and in those cases they can look a little abnormal without.
Resolution, CRT bloom, curvature, etc, are certainly nostalgia though. The blur of low res does have a sort of anti-aliasing effect, too, although that might be more a personal taste (and frankly high res anti-aliasing on pixel art is kind of my favorite). Like how old movies put Vaseline on the lens-- there are just better ways to do that decades later.
Fun side note: do play older emulated handheld games with the proper filter (e.g. GBA). It's more a color issue-- the old software assumes no backlight so colors are exaggerated. Playing with the filter generally gives better results, unless you like cartoonishly strong colors.
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.
1
Classic pixel art pops far better in clean HD than it ever did smudged across an old CRT | Spyke
Wow an unpopular opinion that's just unpopular. No bigotry toward anyone. What a concept.
I also kinda agree with you. I think CRT people are just into it for nostalgic reasons.
I SHOULD be into it for those reasons- I grew up on Atari, NES, and SNES and am nostalgic to a fault.
And I very clearly remember looking at things like this:
and thinking “why can’t I get the TV to look like the box art?”
I’ll take the image image on the left:
Or on the right:
ANY day.
As long as my 240p isn't being deinterlaced.
But I do prefer the CRT look https://x.com/CRTpixels
In your examples, perhaps, though it's more that dithering techniques (not seen here) assume scanlines, and in those cases they can look a little abnormal without.
Resolution, CRT bloom, curvature, etc, are certainly nostalgia though. The blur of low res does have a sort of anti-aliasing effect, too, although that might be more a personal taste (and frankly high res anti-aliasing on pixel art is kind of my favorite). Like how old movies put Vaseline on the lens-- there are just better ways to do that decades later.
Fun side note: do play older emulated handheld games with the proper filter (e.g. GBA). It's more a color issue-- the old software assumes no backlight so colors are exaggerated. Playing with the filter generally gives better results, unless you like cartoonishly strong colors.
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.