Yeah, there’s a crazy amount of tricks they employed to bring the sprites to life in a way that just isn’t possible on modern displays. The sharp pixel look is actually an unfortunate byproduct of the transition to newer tech.
Abusing and exploiting slotmasks and such were what made games designed for CRTs look so much better on them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work backwards, because newer games designed for LCDs and LEDs don’t look any better or worse on CRTs, outside of overscan and resolution issues.
For real though many modern pixel art titles use these same color techniques, and while they do not depend on crt blending them at all, they can often see slight visual benefits from the pixel blending that is possible with a modern shader adding that effect.
Fight n’ Rage has a built in set of shaders that do just this and it is beautiful. It is on by default, but still optional.
Running shredders revenge with a very mild crt effect also looks really good on a lot of the blended colors.
Sonic Mania has a very good built-in CRT shader. It’s not a perfect recreation, but it think it looks excellent! And I also think it looks really great on a CRT using a downscaler.
Yeah, there’s a crazy amount of tricks they employed to bring the sprites to life in a way that just isn’t possible on modern displays. The sharp pixel look is actually an unfortunate byproduct of the transition to newer tech.
Abusing and exploiting slotmasks and such were what made games designed for CRTs look so much better on them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work backwards, because newer games designed for LCDs and LEDs don’t look any better or worse on CRTs, outside of overscan and resolution issues.
Shredder’s Revenge has entered the chat.
For real though many modern pixel art titles use these same color techniques, and while they do not depend on crt blending them at all, they can often see slight visual benefits from the pixel blending that is possible with a modern shader adding that effect.
Fight n’ Rage has a built in set of shaders that do just this and it is beautiful. It is on by default, but still optional.
Running shredders revenge with a very mild crt effect also looks really good on a lot of the blended colors.
Sonic Mania has a very good built-in CRT shader. It’s not a perfect recreation, but it think it looks excellent! And I also think it looks really great on a CRT using a downscaler.