CRT Pixels

So, rather than wait any more I got myself an early Christmas present! Now I can post AV Famicom examples AND we’ve got our NES flash cart!

The natural rounded “warping” of a CRT TV screen also was taken into account to make “trippy” levels in games extra trippy! You can see the optical illusion effect made by the coloring choices in this stage of Life Force no matter if you look at the raw pixels or the screen, but its definitely emphasized on the latter.

The fuzz and the more washed out coloring also served as what we’d call a “filter” today. It made relatively simple, “sharp” pixel art look much smoother, as if it the colors had been blended, achieving a distinctive faux 3D look seen here in Sonic & Knuckles and Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I personally love how the bricks look in the second one. They truly turn into a gradient!

This same effect also made darker palettes look lighter! This one is Vagrant Story, for the PS1, for an example of how playing around with the “limitations” of CRT monitors effect was still in vogue even when 3D games became a thing.

Screenshots of Shiren The Wanderer 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle! (2000, Chunsoft)

Screen captures sourced from CRTpixels, this account run by Jackal27 compares screenshots of games between the sharp pixels with the blended or interlaced output of CRT displays.

Picture 1, 3 & 5 display hard pixels

Picture 2 displays Shiren using a N64 S-Video via Sony KV-27S42