Composite vs. RGB for classic games

[DaMadFiddler]

If someone took something like the (absurdly priced) Analogue NT and put it in an enclosure like that, you'd have a very attractive system. It'd be good if they could properly reverse-engineer the components, though, rather than having to rely on actual Famicom ICs.

As for the image quality, I just use composite (or S-video, if available) on a nice, late-period Sony CRT set. I realize there is not an inexhaustible supply of CRTs; the last ones were made around 2004, and they tend to last 15-25 years before things start going wrong, depending on use and build quality. But I've probably got a good 10-15 years before i have to worry too much about that... at which point the consoles will start needing service of their own. Caps only last so long.

Composite is certainly good enough for sub-VGA systems, IMO. The slight lack of clarity between the CRT set and the composite connection gives the game a softer, less jaggy appeal that is more how I remember it looking... and doesn't look forced the way scanline filters do. (And the N64 in particular looks like crap on anything other than an SD CRT.) Plus, it's a heck of a lot cheaper to use a stock system with a Craigslist-freebie TV than it is to perform a long series of hardware mods trying to recreate that same thing

[DaMadFiddler]

Currently, we have an NES (ZIF connector replaced ~5 years ago), SNES, X'Eye, N64, PS2, and Wii connected to a Sony KV-27FS120 in the bedroom. NES and X'Eye are composite, SNES and N64 are S-Video, and PS2 and Wii are component.

Dreamcast, GameCube, Wii U, and PS3 are in the living room on a Sony KD-34XBR960. DC and GC are S-Video; Wii U and PS3 are HDMI.

This arrangement works very well. The 960 has a gorgeous picture and upscales SD sources very well, but since it is an HD set, it breaks compatibility with light guns. So pretty much everything that runs below VGA resolution is on the SD set, where it benefits most from the quirks of traditional CRT sets, and the HD systems (duh) and the native 640x480 systems are on the HD set. That also keeps all the "party systems" accessible in the living room.

The Wii U can also play Wii games, and the PS3 can play PS1/2 games, so moving the regular Wii and PS2 to the bedroom set allows us to play Wii/GameCube/PS1/PS2 games in both places, and gives us DVD and Netflix playback for that set. I was thinking for a while about getting a Retron 5 for the living room so that nearly all our games could be played in both places, but the constant stream of negative reactions to that system has kind of derailed that plan. And frankly, I'd probably continue using the original systems 90% of the time.

[DaMadFiddler]

My original plan was to keep it clean. The PS3 was supposed to handle all PlayStation content, and the Wii (between GC compatibility, VC, and homebrew emulation) would take care of everything else. I still had a Dreamcast, just because... but everything else was consolidated into either the PlayStation or the Wii. Everything was so clean and clutter-free.

But then the recession happened, and collectibles got cheap. So I got into physical cartridges. And then the PS3 broke, necessitating a change of strategy. So now we have a ridiculous media library, which--between movies, TV shows, music, and video games--is currently occupying seven bookcases and overflowing enough to half-fill a eighth, if we could squeeze one in. And that's not counting books.

When we finally get a house, it's going to end up looking like a library

[|darc|]

Jesus Christ, no, I can't even play in composite. It's fucking horrible.

Example, I'm playing Dragon Warrior II right now:

RGB:


Composhit:


And a little bit of Mario...




Go RGB or go home.


This is on a broadcast studio monitor (Sony BVM-14G1A). It's only a 14", but I have a 20" studio monitor (Ikegami TM20-80RH with a 2005 manufacturing date) being shipped to me right now that should be here on Monday, to replace this one (I wanted a bigger CRT). The CRT is used for playing NES and as a test monitor for my workstation as I work on mods. All of my other consoles are played on the 51" plasma with the XRGB-mini Framemeister.







One more comparison, this time being captured by a Game Capture HD (after being fed through Framemeister):

[DaMadFiddler]

Yeah, look how chunky and sharp all the pixels are. The combination of the CRT scanlines and the minor signal degradation from composite really helped soften and disguise that, while keeping the overall image pleasant and clean (unlike the mess made by RF). The only thing I can really compare it to is how some people prefer tube amplifiers for music. On a technical level it's worse, but some people find it more pleasing because of the slight blending effect.



Also, I must say... the last generation of consoles seems by far the worst, at least in terms of hardware life. All of our last-gen consoles broke while they were still current; the PS3 we had to replace (YLOD), the Wii needed a new optical drive, and the Xbox 360 we inherited from a friend RRoD'd just a few months after we started using it.

Aside from replacing the ZIF socket in my NES, I've never had a console flat-out break on me like that before, and BOTH the Wii and the PS3 couldn't even survive their own generation intact. And that's not even getting into all the issues with the 360.



Game Boy (original gray brick)--a couple of lines in the screen, but still worked fine when I sold it a few years ago.

NES--works fine, new ZIF socket in 2010

Master System--worked fine when I sold it a few years ago

X'Eye--works fine, starting to show slight "rainbow effect" (likely result of weak caps in video output)

SNES--works fine; rubber pads in controllers replaced in 2013

N64--works fine; analog sticks replaced in 2013

Dreamcast--works fine; buttons starting to feel worn

GBA--works fine; modded with backlight

GameCube--works fine

DS--works fine

Wii--broke in 2012; new optical drive

DS Lite--works fine

Xbox 360--broke in 2012; RRoD; not replaced

PS3--broke in 2012; YLoD; replaced with new system



...and of course, the new systems (3DS, Wii U, New 3DS, PS4) are new enough that I'd be surprised if they had issues already.

But it does seem like systems are getting more fragile. Even the N64 is doing better than last-gen, and that thing is notoriously fragile.

And with so much content becoming add-on DLC, and so many desirable games being made available download-only, it doesn't really feel like consoles are the same thing any more. I doubt that the last generation and this generation will be as collectible or as enduring as the systems that came before. Dreamcast/GameCube/PS2 were kind of the end of "traditional" consoles, in a sense; everything after that has been in more of a transitional space as we await the next evolution.

[|darc|]

keeping the overall image pleasant and clean

In what world is this...



"pleasant and clean"

but this...



is not?


You can make an argument about the blurriness, but the dot crawl and the color bleed...

[DaMadFiddler]

...are much less apparent on a normal CRT set than a direct image capture. Even your broadcast monitor won't handle this quite the same way as a consumer TV.

Dot crawl is still an issue, but honestly, color bleed on a normal TV blends in with the general CRT artifacts and isn't really noticeable. I wasn't trying to say composite was cleaner; quite the opposite, as you've demonstrated. But that it has a softening effect while still keeping the image "good enough." Anything higher than S-video loses the softening effect, and anything lower than composite has too many quality compromises.

[|darc|]

I keep everything as close to stock as possible, or at the very least modify it in a way that it ends up looking like it could be stock. For example, for RGB-out on my NES, I'm using a 3D-printed Nintendo multiout socket so it's compatible with SNES, N64, and GameCube composite, s-video, and RGB cables.

I really liked the physical design of the Generation NEX; it's a shame their actual SoC was garbage.



If someone took something like the (absurdly priced) Analogue NT and put it in an enclosure like that, you'd have a very attractive system. It'd be good if they could properly reverse-engineer the components, though, rather than having to rely on actual Famicom ICs.

There's nothing special about the Analogue Nt, all the "new stuff" is made of the same components that hobbyists use (the s-video and RGB circuits are Tim Worthington's NESRGB kit, and the HDMI out is Kevin Horton's HiDefNES kit). Yes, they are using newly manufactured motherboards, but I don't see the improvement in doing that. I replaced all the capacitors and the bridge rectifier on my NES motherboard to take care of any issues that may arise.

I really don't see why you would want that abomination of a clone console case instead of original hardware in an original case hand-modified by someone with care.

[|darc|]

...are much less apparent on a normal CRT set than a direct image capture. Even your broadcast monitor won't handle this quite the same way as a consumer TV.

Dot crawl is still an issue, but honestly, color bleed on a normal TV blends in with the general CRT artifacts and isn't really noticeable. I wasn't trying to say composite was cleaner; quite the opposite, as you've demonstrated. But that it has a softening effect while still keeping the image "good enough." Anything higher than S-video loses the softening effect, and anything lower than composite has too many quality compromises.

What do you mean by "general CRT artifacts"? You mean a television set with poor convergence? Sure, if your set has poor convergence then I suppose you won't be able to tell that color bleed is going on because your guns are misaligned, but it sounds like you need to fix/calibrate your TV more than anything else.

And yes, it's more apparent on my broadcast monitor because my broadcast monitor is a high quality set. Do you purposely game on old CRTs with issues because it will match your poor signal quality?

[DaMadFiddler]

Your broadcast monitor is higher resolution and more precise than most consumer CRT sets, even good ones. It preserves pixel boundaries better and the scanlines are more pronounced with less blurring... both of which are kind of the opposite of the desired effect here. In fact, some games were specifically designed with the assumption of CRT blurring taking place, and don't look right without it.

A good example is the stippling used for fake transparencies in a lot of Genesis games. For example, a waterfall (or bush, or glass tube) in Sonic looks more or less like a transparent element on a normal TV set, but if you clean up the signal and get a "true" image (as you would on an LCD or even with an RGB connection on your broadcast monitor), you instead see the stippled graphic.

Surely, this isn't actually how you want Sonic to look:




I remember really noticing the difference in Sonic back when emulators first became a thing, and those Sonic effects were what led me to start learning about scanlines, signal quality, and CRT behavior in the first place.

I use S-video when it's available, but the NES doesn't support S-video, it's not worth the cost to me for the relatively moderate gains, and I don't want to hack it up when it works just fine in its native state.

[|darc|]

Your broadcast monitor is higher resolution and more precise than most consumer CRT sets, even good ones. It preserves pixel boundaries better and the scanlines are more pronounced with less blurring... both of which are kind of the opposite of the desired effect here. In fact, some games were specifically designed with the assumption of CRT blurring taking place, and don't look right without it.

I have never heard the claim that game creators specifically created games for television sets with fewer TV lines and poor convergence. Do you have any actual references or evidence to support your claim?

A good example is the stippling used for fake transparencies in a lot of Genesis games. For example, a waterfall (or bush, or glass tube) in Sonic looks more or less like a transparent element on a normal TV set, but if you clean up the signal and get a "true" image (as you would on an LCD or even with an RGB connection on your broadcast monitor), you instead see the stippled graphic.

Surely, this isn't actually how you want Sonic to look:

I have, on the other hand, heard the claim that game creators have used composite artifacts to their benefit to create effects, and it's evident in some games with dithering effects. That being said, let's take the same console and game series as your example and provide another example.

Surely, this isn't actually how you want Sonic to look:



Or do you think Sega actually intended for Chemical Zone to have rainbow tubes?

[DaMadFiddler]

That's exactly what I'm saying. The artist is taking advantage of a known CRT flaw to fake a transparency, since the Genesis can't do that in hardware. Lots of Genesis games use stippled graphics for this exact purpose, and while a cleaner picture will give you a sharper image, it will also "ruin" these cheater effects. Sort of like how when TV stations first started switching to HD, a lot of shows with low production values suddenly found the flaws in their sets and makeup to be a lot more apparent, and had to either upgrade their production values or find ways to "defeat" the HD image.

Nobody's trying to argue that a lower quality image isn't, in fact, lower quality. I'm just saying that it helps hide some of the flaws in the base image itself, both incidentally in terms of softening the harshly pixelated low-res images and (as in the case of Sonic) sometimes intentionally when a clever art director chooses to exploit image reproduction quirks.

As for composite "looking terrible," it's really not that noticeable when you're playing on a normal SD CRT set. Here are some images from my NES, hooked up to a typical standard-def Sony set via composite:







That image was taken from a normal viewing distance. Notice that the image has a slightly softer, more rounded look than a "perfect" output, but by no means does it look blurry the way a direct-capture image from a composite source does.

And here's one from ridiculously close to the screen, to show the pixel detail:



Does that look blurry or undetailed? Again, what you get on the CRT display does not look nearly as bad as the direct-capture image.

I agree that composite is assballs if you're using a flat-panel monitor or other high-end display. But in the case of low-res video games, it actually works rather nicely with the separate limitations of the CRT itself.

[|darc|]

Could you give an answer on this:

Your broadcast monitor is higher resolution and more precise than most consumer CRT sets, even good ones. It preserves pixel boundaries better and the scanlines are more pronounced with less blurring... both of which are kind of the opposite of the desired effect here. In fact, some games were specifically designed with the assumption of CRT blurring taking place, and don't look right without it.

I have never heard the claim that game creators specifically created games for television sets with fewer TV lines and poor convergence. Do you have any actual references or evidence to support your claim?

That's exactly what I'm saying. The artist is taking advantage of a known CRT flaw to fake a transparency, since the Genesis can't do that in hardware.

This isn't a "CRT flaw." It's a degradation of the signal (by encoding it into composite) causing in loss of resolution. For the purposes of this discussion, we're using "resolution" to mean the proper original analog definition, not the more modern digital definition (which is, more accurately, just "pixel dimensions"). That is, resolution is the ability to distinguish between consecutive lines on a display.

Lots of Genesis games use stippled graphics for this exact purpose, and while a cleaner picture will give you a sharper image, it will also "ruin" these cheater effects.

Yes. It does. However, the ratio of normally drawn graphics to dithered or semitransparent graphics in all classic video games is extremely high. You can choose detailed graphics or dithering/transparency effects. You can't choose both.

Here is a screenshot of Sonic Generations. This is the stage that is a remake in HD of Chemical Plant Zone:




We can clearly see that Sega intended for there to be semitransparent white tubes in Chemical Plant Zone.

So which one of these looks like semitransparent white tubes? (Taken on my 20" Ikegami TM20-80RH)



Well, one looks like a semitransparent rainbow tube. Nope.
The other looks like a metal-grated tube. Nope.

Neither image is ideal in this situation.
(Keep in mind the rainbow banding you see at the very bottom of the RGB image is from the photograph, not visible in real life)

Sort of like how when TV stations first started switching to HD, a lot of shows with low production values suddenly found the flaws in their sets and makeup to be a lot more apparent, and had to either upgrade their production values or find ways to "defeat" the HD image.

So does that mean you watch all television shows pre-2005ish in standard definition?! Do you oppose HD remasters of all content before HD sets were common?

Nobody's trying to argue that a lower quality image isn't, in fact, lower quality. I'm just saying that it helps hide some of the flaws in the base image itself, both incidentally in terms of softening the harshly pixelated low-res images and (as in the case of Sonic) sometimes intentionally when a clever art director chooses to exploit image reproduction quirks.

Of course it hides the flaws, because it's lowering the display's resolution. You are sacrificing image detail to eliminate flaws. With the elimination of flaws, you eliminate detail. Your pictures prove it.

As for composite "looking terrible," it's really not that noticeable when you're playing on a normal SD CRT set. Here are some images from my NES, hooked up to a typical standard-def Sony set via composite:

Loss of detail. Case in point:

And here's one from ridiculously close to the screen, to show the pixel detail:
Does that look blurry or undetailed? Again, what you get on the CRT display does not look nearly as bad as the direct-capture image.

Yes, it looks blurry and undetailed. Look at the dot crawl all over the edges of Rock. Look at the background, can you say with a straight face that you don't see a loss of detail in the computer imagery surrounding Rock? Can you tell that the thing at the top right is an application window on composite, like you can on RGB? My photograph was poorly taken with an extreme brightness/bloom and you can still tell so much more detail.

All of those things are 1 pixel wide or 1 pixel tall.

You can't logically say that in composite:
1. One pixel wide lines in a tube on Sonic 2 blur to the point where they are no longer distinguishable
without ALSO agreeing that
2. One pixel wide lines in Mega Man 4 blur to the point where they are no longer distinguishable


Read an old Nintendo Power magazine one day, the screenshots are taken with a custom setup that uses an RGB PPU (most of the time, but not all of the time, with color correction added afterwards as the NES RGB PPU has a slightly different palette than the NES composite PPU). If Nintendo was as vehement as you are about composite artifacts being the one true image type then surely they would have published composite images.

I agree that composite is assballs if you're using a flat-panel monitor or other high-end display. But in the case of low-res video games, it actually works rather nicely with the separate limitations of the CRT itself.

Composite is the same amount of assballs regardless of using a flat panel or CRT monitor. Composite often looks worse on flat panel monitors than it does on CRT monitors because CRT monitors contain analog logic that decodes the composite signal to RGB and the tube displays it natively, whereas flat panel displays require the image to be digitally processed and upscaled to the panel size. For 480i signals this includes deinterlacing which makes the resulting signal look like a blurry mess (and introduces lag). Unfortunately, most flat panels also deinterlace 240p signals as there is one processing path for all inputs to the composite jack on most flat panels. This means that a 240p signal that has no business being deinterlaced will still have the deinterlacing artifacts.

A properly processed 240p composite signal (e.g. through an XRGB) will look just as "good" (or shitty) on a flat panel display as it will a CRT.

[DaMadFiddler]

[sigh] You know what? You're right.

There is more signal degradation than I'd originally realized; perhaps the CRT plays a bit of a mind game. Things appear sharper because you assume "that's as good as it gets," with sort of an automatic background assumption that any lack of clarity or detail is due to the constraints of the picture, rather than lost information in the video signal (if that makes any sense). Since you made a big deal about the dot crawl, I've been noticing it a lot more. It never used to bother me that much, because in the 80s and 90s, composite WAS as good as it gets, outside of high-end gear. (S-video started showing up in consumer gear around '92 or '93, but most people didn't use it... and higher-end options like component and various forms of RGB didn't start leaving niche status until the 2000s.) And unfortunately, composite *IS* as good as it gets from an unmodified NES; unlike basically any other system, you have to perform a relatively expensive and invasive hardware mod to get anything better. Still not sure how I feel about that.

At the same time, I still think you pooh-pooh the composite connection a bit too much, when the display device is a "normal" CRT TV. I've seen composite feeds into flat-panel displays, including from sources that provide a much cleaner composite signal than the NES, and they do look like garbage on a digital, pixel-perfect display. But on an analog CRT? It *IS* what most people used (if they weren't still using a dirty RF signal), and I personally find a "pure," sharp output of low-res pixel art a bit jarring. It may be less accurate, but notice how the output in my screen caps looks more like a blended picture, rather than a grid of blocky pixels. It feels more like a picture constrained by the limitations of analogue equipment, rather than just a low-pixel-count source (again, this is not empirical; it's more aesthetic). For example, in the pictures I posted, notice how the text looks like actual letters in a somewhat blocky font, whereas in your objectively better image, I find myself hyper-aware of the scanlines and pixel grid. Similarly, I find the "rainbow tubes," as you call them, a much better representation of the object than the "metal grate" look you get from the clean pixel art.

As for that Sonic example: I recall seeing the deliberate use of dithering mentioned in a few different articles I read in high school and college (which is when I really started getting into the history and technology of video games), but I haven't been able to turn up a specific source to cite other than off-the-cuff comments in other retrogaming articles and forum discussions. I do specifically remember the tubes and waterfalls in Sonic being used as examples, though. Maybe it was just an assumption I picked up from others along the way; after all, an SD CRT receiving a composite signal (or worse, RF) is what 90%+ would have been using for these systems originally, so it seems reasonable to assume that artists working on console games would take this into account in their designs.

The resolution of the game is low enough that you're not losing any vital information, and I am willing to sacrifice a certain amount of image quality for a more well-blended picture. The dot crawl is still bothersome, and appears to be responsible for a lot of the "lost" picture information--if there was a way to eliminate the dot crawl without losing the softening/blending, I think that would probably be my ideal result. However, I realize that the dot crawl itself is probably a significant factor in the way the image looks. I've seen some emulators with filters that mimic an "NTSC blend," but even when combined with scan lines, this doesn't really look right on a high-resolution, pixel-perfect display such as a flat-panel computer monitor or HDTV.

One problem with the NES in particular is that it provides a notoriously dirty composite signal. And, due to the (by modern conventions) oddball way the hardware works, it doesn't natively generate anything higher-quality. I've done a fair amount of reading over the last couple of days, and it seems the ONLY way to get a better image out of the NES (even just a cleaner composite feed with less signal noise) is to completely replace the PPU, either with an RGB-capable one scavenged from butchered arcade hardware or with an HDMI-based solution for digital output. That can get pretty pricey, there is a finite supply of parts, and it requires seriously and permanently modifying the hardware, both electronically and cosmetically. Plus, since you're swapping out the PPU and replacing it with a different one, the color palette will be slightly different. Not that any two people have ever completely agreed on what the NES color palette should look like, but still.

Actually, after all that, I'm starting to see the appeal of something like the Super 8 Bit or the Analogue NT, though neither of those projects are without their own problems.

The dot crawl is irksome, but I still think I'll stick with my stock NES for the time being; the alternatives are too expensive to be worth it, and I can't solder for shit anyway. (That's why I love working on antique electronics; hand-wired components with point-to-point wiring. Super easy to work on.)

Also, autocorrect keeps wanting to change "scan lines" to "scaliness."

[DaMadFiddler]

On a semi-related note, it is disappointing that even now, nobody has brought an NES clone to market that's actually any good. The SNES has been cloned to near perfection, and they've done pretty well with the Genesis (even if they can't seem to get the sound quite right--though that varied a bit even amongst actual SEGA hardware revisions), but there just don't seem to be any Famiclones that don't have significant quality and compatibility issues. Not sure how much of that has to do with the system's unusual architecture (sort of like how there aren't any accurate VCS clones because the system was an analog-digital hybrid), and how much is just laziness by manufacturers looking to use the readily available NOACs that were developed years ago based on imperfect analyses of the Famicom hardware, rather than starting from scratch on something better.

Still: potentially untapped market, especially since there doesn't seem to be a "perfect NES" outside of a system that has had a couple hundred dollars (or more) put into hand-modified hardware.

[|darc|]

[sigh] You know what? You're right.

Wow! I've won an argument on the internet!

There is more signal degradation than I'd originally realized; perhaps the CRT plays a bit of a mind game. Things appear sharper because you assume "that's as good as it gets," with sort of an automatic background assumption that any lack of clarity or detail is due to the constraints of the picture, rather than lost information in the video signal (if that makes any sense). Since you made a big deal about the dot crawl, I've been noticing it a lot more. It never used to bother me that much, because in the 80s and 90s, composite WAS as good as it gets, outside of high-end gear. (S-video started showing up in consumer gear around '92 or '93, but most people didn't use it... and higher-end options like component and various forms of RGB didn't start leaving niche status until the 2000s.) And unfortunately, composite *IS* as good as it gets from an unmodified NES; unlike basically any other system, you have to perform a relatively expensive and invasive hardware mod to get anything better. Still not sure how I feel about that.

Keep in mind, though, that this was only the case in North America. In Japan, Nintendo made official JP21 RGB cables for the Super Nintendo, and in Europe SCART has been the standard since early on. The French NES had RGB output (converted from composite, though, so it's still crud).

At the same time, I still think you pooh-pooh the composite connection a bit too much, when the display device is a "normal" CRT TV. I've seen composite feeds into flat-panel displays, including from sources that provide a much cleaner composite signal than the NES, and they do look like garbage on a digital, pixel-perfect display.

Again, though, this is largely because flat-panel displays process composite signals incorrectly. The scalers connected to the composite inputs in most panels are designed for 480i motion video and just don't process pixel art properly, creating all sorts of even worse issues. If you ever get a chance to play with an XRGB-mini, try its composite input--I think you'll find it just as good as a CRT's composite display.

But on an analog CRT? It *IS* what most people used (if they weren't still using a dirty RF signal), and I personally find a "pure," sharp output of low-res pixel art a bit jarring. It may be less accurate, but notice how the output in my screen caps looks more like a blended picture, rather than a grid of blocky pixels. It feels more like a picture constrained by the limitations of analogue equipment, rather than just a low-pixel-count source (again, this is not empirical; it's more aesthetic). For example, in the pictures I posted, notice how the text looks like actual letters in a somewhat blocky font, whereas in your objectively better image, I find myself hyper-aware of the scanlines and pixel grid. Similarly, I find the "rainbow tubes," as you call them, a much better representation of the object than the "metal grate" look you get from the clean pixel art.

I do understand your sentiments; I agree with some of what you're saying. For example, the tubes would look much better with the composite-blurring, at least if it didn't have the rainbow color bleed issue. However, the stuff like the text actually looks great when viewed from a proper distance. I think the blooming in my photograph makes the scanlines look worse than they really are, the text has a ridgy-looking effect on the photographs whereas in real life they look very solid.

As for that Sonic example: I recall seeing the deliberate use of dithering mentioned in a few different articles I read in high school and college (which is when I really started getting into the history and technology of video games), but I haven't been able to turn up a specific source to cite other than off-the-cuff comments in other retrogaming articles and forum discussions. I do specifically remember the tubes and waterfalls in Sonic being used as examples, though. Maybe it was just an assumption I picked up from others along the way; after all, an SD CRT receiving a composite signal (or worse, RF) is what 90%+ would have been using for these systems originally, so it seems reasonable to assume that artists working on console games would take this into account in their designs.

There's definitely solid evidence that they took into account the composite signal, especially on the Genesis/MD, which could only display 64 colors on screen at a time and couldn't do any transparencies. Dithering was used to create transparency and the illusion of more colors, and composite's blending helped that. Because of the NES's limitations, dithering wasn't really used much on it, and the Super NES had support for way more colors, so it doesn't really happen much on those consoles. This is another reason why the Genesis sucks. (I kid about it "sucking," but I am firmly in the camp that the Super NES was the much, much better console of the two).

What I have never seen evidence for though is the limitations of a CRT display being used for effects. I used to hate CRTs when flat panel/HD sets were becoming more prominent, but that was more because I was associating composite quality with the quality of a CRT display. As I went back and researched classic gaming consoles and CRTs in the last 2-3 years, I have found that CRT displays are actually really beautiful if you get a quality one. I'm a huge fan of CRTs now; I realize that their only big limitations are their huge bulky size and geometry issues (the picture appearing rounded on the edges due to the curvature of the display tube). The blacks are deep black, the colors are loud and vibrant, there's no input lag, there's no concerns of image scaling or what the native display resolution is, and the picture is razor sharp if you have a quality CRT. I lament that they're not manufactured anymore, because in a lot of ways they are a superior display technology to what we have now, but unfortunately most of those advantages best apply to gaming, and classic gaming even more so, so their advantages are really niche. That's why I bought the Ikegami monitor, because it has a beautiful picture, robust controls, RGB input, and a late manufacturing date (2005). I really hope it lasts a long time.

The resolution of the game is low enough that you're not losing any vital information, and I am willing to sacrifice a certain amount of image quality for a more well-blended picture. The dot crawl is still bothersome, and appears to be responsible for a lot of the "lost" picture information--if there was a way to eliminate the dot crawl without losing the softening/blending, I think that would probably be my ideal result. However, I realize that the dot crawl itself is probably a significant factor in the way the image looks. I've seen some emulators with filters that mimic an "NTSC blend," but even when combined with scan lines, this doesn't really look right on a high-resolution, pixel-perfect display such as a flat-panel computer monitor or HDTV.

I would argue that the resolution of the game being low means you're more likely to be losing vital information. So many details in classic games have to be done with just a few pixels that blurring them means you blur out the details completely. When you game in RGB, you start to see things that you didn't even realize were there in composite, because they were only a few pixels large and the composite artifacts blurred them beyond recognition.

One problem with the NES in particular is that it provides a notoriously dirty composite signal. And, due to the (by modern conventions) oddball way the hardware works, it doesn't natively generate anything higher-quality. I've done a fair amount of reading over the last couple of days, and it seems the ONLY way to get a better image out of the NES (even just a cleaner composite feed with less signal noise) is to completely replace the PPU, either with an RGB-capable one scavenged from butchered arcade hardware or with an HDMI-based solution for digital output. That can get pretty pricey, there is a finite supply of parts, and it requires seriously and permanently modifying the hardware, both electronically and cosmetically. Plus, since you're swapping out the PPU and replacing it with a different one, the color palette will be slightly different. Not that any two people have ever completely agreed on what the NES color palette should look like, but still.

That's not true. The RGB PPU replacement stopped being a thing in 2013, due to the introduction of Tim Worthington's NESRGB kit. It's hard to explain exactly how it works, but the NES PPU actually had a special, never-used mode that allows two PPUs to be linked together. This means that there are some pins on the PPU that output data about the picture being drawn. Tim's board sits between the PPU and the motherboard and spies on this data as it's being created, and regenerates the image. The kit then gives you the option of outputting RGB, S-video, or composite output, all analog without any picture processing or lag whatsoever. Nobody really uses the composite signal, but the composite generated by this board is cleaner than the NES's native composite output. Unlike the RGB PPU method, it has 99.9999% compatibility (the only known incompatible cartridges are 2 Asian pirate cartridges that nobody ever heard of), and instead of being stuck with the odd arcade color palette, you have the ability to mount a palette switch that has original palette, arcade palette, and an "improved" palette that looks beautiful. The palette switch isn't required though, you can install it with any palette permanently if you wished.

All of the photos in this thread were with Tim's kit, that's why the colors are the same in the composite vs. RGB comparisons.

When the kit was released, the "market" for the cannibalized RGB PPUs crashed down, and I haven't seen anyone in the modding scene ever use it again--the new method is completely superior in every way. The boards run $90AUD, which is about $70USD.

Actually, after all that, I'm starting to see the appeal of something like the Super 8 Bit or the Analogue NT, though neither of those projects are without their own problems.

The Super8 and Analogue NT consoles both use Tim Worthington's NESRGB kit for their RGB output; and the Analogue NT uses Kevin Horton's HiDefNES board if you go for the HDMI option. That's why I laugh so much at the Analogue NT--it's all the same damn thing the modding community has been doing themselves for a while now, but just in a shiny metal case. Analogue Interactive also announced their product on some of the modders' boards I visit, and when asked about what methods they were using to get RGB and HDMI output, they skirted around the questions and avoided answering anything of the sort to make it look like they had something exclusive on their hands. It wasn't until the consoles starting shipping and people cracked them open that we realized they just used NESRGB and HiDefNES kits like we all do!

The dot crawl is irksome, but I still think I'll stick with my stock NES for the time being; the alternatives are too expensive to be worth it, and I can't solder for shit anyway. (That's why I love working on antique electronics; hand-wired components with point-to-point wiring. Super easy to work on.)

I've done a few NESRGB installations before. If you want one done, you know where to reach me. I also use 3D-printed Nintendo multiout connectors on my installations, so these NES consoles use the same exact cables as the Super Nintendo, N64, and GameCube. My intention there is to make the console as stock-like as possible. The hardest part of the installation is desoldering the PPU to get the NESRGB board between it, but I bought a desoldering gun that makes through-hole desoldering absolutely cake. Even if you don't have an RGB-capable TV, the S-video output of the NESRGB is pretty beautiful.

On a semi-related note, it is disappointing that even now, nobody has brought an NES clone to market that's actually any good. The SNES has been cloned to near perfection, and they've done pretty well with the Genesis (even if they can't seem to get the sound quite right--though that varied a bit even amongst actual SEGA hardware revisions), but there just don't seem to be any Famiclones that don't have significant quality and compatibility issues. Not sure how much of that has to do with the system's unusual architecture (sort of like how there aren't any accurate VCS clones because the system was an analog-digital hybrid), and how much is just laziness by manufacturers looking to use the readily available NOACs that were developed years ago based on imperfect analyses of the Famicom hardware, rather than starting from scratch on something better.

Still: potentially untapped market, especially since there doesn't seem to be a "perfect NES" outside of a system that has had a couple hundred dollars (or more) put into hand-modified hardware.

I don't really see the point of clone hardware. They all reek of cheapness to me. I'd rather just play on an emulator at that rate.

Speaking of the 2600, Tim Worthington also released a 2600RGB kit last month that works pretty much just like the NESRGB kit. So now I have an upgraded VCS that does RGB, S-video, and composite.

[DaMadFiddler]

I could never get into Atari games. While I do love an occasional round of Asteroids, overall the games were too primitive (both visually and in terms of gameplay) to hold much appeal for me. This is pretty impressive, though:

You don't need to tell me about the quality of a good CRT; our main TV is a Sony KD-34XBR960. I traded my rear-projection set for it about 4 years ago. There are some geometry issues, but the black and color depth blows away all but the very best plasma sets (which also aren't made any more). It also does a much better job upscaling analogue SD sources than any flat panels I've seen... though I'm not crazy about how sub-640x480 game systems look on it. N64 looks extra blurry, and NES looks oversharp.

We'll probably replace it sometime in the next year, though. Eva recently got a PS4, and she's finding that the slightly sub-HD resolution (the set's actual resolution is something like 1440x1080i) is causing problems with the text in some games. Still legible, but enough of a strain to make a few titles (e.g., The Witcher 3) annoying to play.

As for the NES itself: I was unaware that the NESRGB kit did not use an arcade PPU. An RGB mod isn't worth the cost for me, because the set my cartridge systems are connected to doesn't have any sort of RGB input. It has composite, it has S-Video, and it even has one component (though that's taken up by the PS2), but that's it. It'd be nice to have a system with both the RGB kit and the HDMI kit for future-proofing, but from what I understand, they don't currently work in tandem. And unfortunately, the HDMI kit breaks compatibility with the Everdrive, which is very much on my list of things to pick up.

I should also mention the cost factor: both of our TVs (the HD CRT in the living room and the more typical CRT that the cartridge systems are connected to) were free Craigslist finds. The 960 is something I'd been keeping an eye out for, and the SD set--a Sony KV-27FS120--isn't anything too special, but it is a Sony from the final generation of CRT TVs, and does benefit from that (better picture, flat screen, component in, 16:9 scan line compression for widescreen sources).

I've been following the Analogue NT project since it started, and while the original concept was intriguing, it sounds like they put all their effort into form and took the easy way out on all the actual hardware. Not an acceptable answer at that price point. The Super 8 Bit seems to solve some of its problems, but it's not as feature-rich and it's ugly as sin. And you still have to choose between analogue and digital output. In a lot of ways, it strikes me as a higher-end retelling of the Generation NEX story: they show up out of nowhere with a really sleek design and some appealing features, make vague claims about a unique/improved approach to hardware (the NEX claimed to use a custom, in-house NOAC that didn't have other clones' compatibility issues but ultimately launched with the same crap as everything else), take a bunch of preorders, get hit by a ton of delays that they're less than transparent about, and ultimately release a system that turns out to use off-the-shelf parts with disappointing results. At least the NEX wasn't $500

As for clone hardware: I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was actually good. My issues are all with compatibility and build quality. The fact of the matter is that there are only so many of each original console in the world, and while they can be repaired to a certain extent, the NES is now 30 years old and the supply dwindles a bit each year. There WILL be a day when the last "real" NES stops working, and it would be nice to see a viable option for more casual enthusiasts. it would also be nice to have an option for having access to modern improvements (improved output, added features such as expansion audio and stereo sound) without carving up original hardware. These are both needs clone hardware could meet, if only there was actually a worthwhile Famiclone.

[Calavera]

I believe CRTs can last much longer than 15-25 years. I actually have a small old RCA TV still hooked up in another room and it was manufactured January 1982 and still works perfectly with no problems at all. The only time I have had a CRT quit working is my old Gateway VX1120 22" CRT monitor I think that lasted about 7-8 years. The only CRT TV I ever had quit was my own fault. It was about 2 years ago I had an old 27" 1986 TV hooked up out in my garage. I went to turn it on when it was really foggy and the air was moist and it fried it.

[|darc|]

It also does a much better job upscaling analogue SD sources than any flat panels I've seen... though I'm not crazy about how sub-640x480 game systems look on it. N64 looks extra blurry, and NES looks oversharp.

AFAIK that set does not have an upscaler. It just scans at native resolutions. It does have a deinterlacer though from what I've read.

As for the NES itself: I was unaware that the NESRGB kit did not use an arcade PPU. An RGB mod isn't worth the cost for me, because the set my cartridge systems are connected to doesn't have any sort of RGB input. It has composite, it has S-Video, and it even has one component (though that's taken up by the PS2), but that's it. It'd be nice to have a system with both the RGB kit and the HDMI kit for future-proofing, but from what I understand, they don't currently work in tandem. And unfortunately, the HDMI kit breaks compatibility with the Everdrive, which is very much on my list of things to pick up.

The NESRGB has an expansion board to add PbPr (Y is already generated as part of the S-video signal), so you can do YPbPr/component. As long as your TV supports it, that is. A lot of TVs don't support 240p over component, best way to test is to use a PS2 with component cables to play a PS1 game.

As for clone hardware: I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was actually good. My issues are all with compatibility and build quality. The fact of the matter is that there are only so many of each original console in the world, and while they can be repaired to a certain extent, the NES is now 30 years old and the supply dwindles a bit each year. There WILL be a day when the last "real" NES stops working, and it would be nice to see a viable option for more casual enthusiasts. it would also be nice to have an option for having access to modern improvements (improved output, added features such as expansion audio and stereo sound) without carving up original hardware. These are both needs clone hardware could meet, if only there was actually a worthwhile Famiclone.

The NES is extremely repairable though. The schematics are available online easily, and all of the parts inside are perfectly replaceable with standard stuff you can get at places like Mouser and Digikey. The only exceptions are the CPU and PPU chips themselves.

We will be long dead by the time these consoles stop working. That doesn't mean we shouldn't preserve things for future generations, but by then I expect a cycle-accurate emulator to exist (i.e. 100.00% compatibility). I would also expect that if there were ever a shortage of working CPU or PPU chips that someone would write an FPGA implementation that works well enough--there's already an open source FPGA PPU out there.

I believe CRTs can last much longer than 15-25 years. I actually have a small old RCA TV still hooked up in another room and it was manufactured January 1982 and still works perfectly with no problems at all. The only time I have had a CRT quit working is my old Gateway VX1120 22" CRT monitor I think that lasted about 7-8 years. The only CRT TV I ever had quit was my own fault. It was about 2 years ago I had an old 27" 1986 TV hooked up out in my garage. I went to turn it on when it was really foggy and the air was moist and it fried it.

They can definitely last long, but will likely require some basic servicing. Capacitors are very easy to replace on old electronics with basic soldering skills, but they go bad after time and cause all kinds of problems. In addition, the more hours a tube is used, the brightness on the set is reduced due to the aging of the phosphors on the front of the tube. So as time goes on and CRTs become more rare, I would definitely recommend turning off a CRT if you're not using it and to only really use it for things that are necessary to have a CRT for (i.e. classic games, etc.).

[DaMadFiddler]

There's definitely solid evidence that they took into account the composite signal, especially on the Genesis/MD, which could only display 64 colors on screen at a time and couldn't do any transparencies. Dithering was used to create transparency and the illusion of more colors, and composite's blending helped that. Because of the NES's limitations, dithering wasn't really used much on it, and the Super NES had support for way more colors, so it doesn't really happen much on those consoles. This is another reason why the Genesis sucks. (I kid about it "sucking," but I am firmly in the camp that the Super NES was the much, much better console of the two).

Yes and no. Mostly yes, but not entirely.

Starting with the usual caveat that the system with the best games library is the best, regardless of theoretical capability, that really depends at least partially on your preference. Both systems had a really strong line-up of exclusives, and the SNES/Genesis battle was the beginning of strong cross-platform support. I typically prefer the SNES versions of cross-platform games due to better audio and the presence of occasional missing or faked effects, but on the other hand the Genesis versions usually run more smoothly (and SEGA was not nearly as heavy-handed about censorship).

On the hardware end: The SNES has a LOT more hardware effects than the Genesis: scaling and rotation, transparencies, a wider color palette, and a wavetable synthesizer and fairly capable (for the time) DSP for the audio.

However, one thing it did NOT have was speed. The Genesis had a much faster CPU (a 7.68 MHz 32-bit chip on a 16-bit system bus, vs. a 3.58 MHz 16-bit chip on an 8-bit system bus in the SNES), and the system's simpler architecture made it easy for skilled programmers to pull off a number of effects not directly supported by the hardware.

Nintendo and its partners had to compensate for this with an array of complex and expensive support chips inside the games themselves. Almost every Genesis game ran purely on the stock hardware; the only exception I can think of is Virtua Racing, which was full polygonal 3D.

It was an older system (1989 vs 1991), built on an older design philosophy (raw power vs. specialized subsystems), but that was part of the key to its success. I don't think the Genesis would have gotten anywhere near the developer support it had if not for that raw, easily accessible processing power. Developers were willing to learn the more complicated SNES architecture because Nintendo was the industry leader... but as a challenger, SEGA needed to make it easy and appealing. The Genesis hardware did exactly that.

In the eary days, this made it easier to do arcade conversions (arguably still important in the late 80s), as well as develop fast-paced, showy titles. As time passed and SNES development matured, developers could at least partially compensate for the superior SNES feature set by faking some of those things on the Genesis. The system would not have been able to attract the developers it needed--or to remain competitive in the SNES' later years--if not for its simple architecture and beefier processor.

SEGA forgot that lesson with the Saturn, and suffered mightily for it. And that same approach that worked for the Genesis is what made the Dreamcast what it is, instead of just a forgotten footnote in gaming history.

So, again: yes and no.

The SNES could do things the Genesis simply couldn't, or had to fake. But other things that developers could pull off on the Genesis required costly support hardware on the SNES.

In theory, Genesis games could have reached parity (and probably exceeded) what the SNES could do, if SEGA had been interested in supporting developers with support chips as well. But that's an expensive and wasteful endeavor; SEGA figured it would make more sense to have one universal add-on that all games needing extra hardware effects could share, rather than having the cost of those chips added to every game by building them into each cartridge. That's how we ended up with the 32x. Unfortunately, like so many of SEGA's decisions over the years, that approach didn't work from the marketing end.

So again, it all comes down to the software library. Now that we have 20-25 years' perspective on these systems: yes, the SNES' library has more stand-out titles, and overall its key titles have probably stood the test of time better. But the Genesis is no slouch, and to dismiss it is to forget its importance within its historical content. And there are quite a few Genesis exclusives I'd be very sorry not to have in my library.