Sonic behind waterfall - RetroArch shader comparison

Another example of this, is the waterfalls in Sonic the Hedgehog. No, it’s not meant to look like alternating blue lines on the remasters (even though that looks decent enough). In a CRT TV, that alternating pattern would have created a translucency effect after the smearing. Here’s a shader comparison which tries to properly recreate this: ▶ this video

> I think there's an argument that pixel art was designed for CRT displays and thus optimized for it In many cases there is no argument to be had. link These sprites are terrible without CRT-ness (skeleton has pixels unbalanced, clearly placed for an antialiasing effect; beast is unshaded). Also, look at that waterfall, for which filters have a hard time, either inefficient or making the rest of the scene excessively blurry. ▶ this video For some games I think the flat pixely look is OK, e.g Zelda III, although I personally prefer the darker, smoother, less saturated look of CRT which in my mind betters conveys the grim ambience than the unfiltered cel-shaded-y one. For others, either specific bits (Chrono Trigger's overworld map) or the whole thing is plain bad. > However, I think modern games with the pixel art aesthetic look best crisp. I would concur. Old game art was designed for CRT... and on CRT , whereas modern games are designed for and on pixel-perfect LCDs, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a bit like viewing a hinted vector font with vs without antialiasing (old games) link vs a bitmap font meant to land on the pixel grid exactly (modern pixel art) link Old games that were designed in the latter way are perfectly fine on LCDs, but those that hinged on it are terrible.

For interested parties, here's a video that shows the Sonic waterfall in motion with various CRT-simulating shaders applied on top: ▶ this video

CRT emulation of some kind is sometimes necessary to accurately render effects that were intended by the original artists. For example, this waterfall transparency: ▶ this video Then there's the fact that a lot of early console artwork was designed to be output on a composite video cable instead of as separate RGB channels, so the crosstalk may need to be emulated to get the right color blending: link (The reduced effective spatial resolution is often more of a detriment, so plenty of games do look much better in pure crisp RGB from an emulator.)