Sone pixel art games featurr optional crt filters that smooth out the pixels like for example, Signalis, so, you should play Signalis

I dislike when a pixellated style is animated smoothly, rather than incrementally to its pixel grid

VECTORMAN ONG they could modernize it by adding 3rd person sections with max Payne style me mechanics yo the game ontop of more beautiful side scrolling sections

CRT's even have a flaw, that can be abused to create even more colours. There's is a "demo" called "8088 Mph" that shows this technique. At the same time, you can have CRT's being SHARP, old computers using a "digital RGB" input, especially when people had to use their computers for text, small text. Some of the effects were intended, but not consistent, from ones like the top-end Sony Trinitron, or some cheap "Sharp" branded CRT from the mid 2000's.

Some games benefit from a CRT, some games were limited by it. Mega Man on NES looks better sharp, Mega Man X on SNES looks better smoothed. CRT’s came in all sorts of different mask shapes and blending amounts, not to mention the type of video cable you used for your console had a major impact on how the game would be displayed. My favorite retro visual quirk is dithering, when playing ps1 games on a crt you would never see it, but bust out a psp and both ps1 games and psp games alike are covered in it and it looks delightful imo, like seeing the canvas texture of a painting. There has never been one true way for these games to look, there’s always been variety and that’s awesome.

Hi, love your vids! I appreciate that you provided a counterpoint on the topic, but I think it could use a bit more nuance. Your response went too far in the opposite direction when the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, varying by era. As you mentioned, NES era graphics were quite basic, and developers rarely used smoothing techniques to the specific high degree often claimed. However, I think you're undershooting the number of games that used the effect at all the same way he overshot. Checker patterns for dithering and color blending were specifically made for this effect and are found fairly often in NES games, though usually for minor details. Some developers used these techniques consciously, while several others probably just followed industry standards. Systems like the Game Boy didn't offer the same smearing, so they probably knew diagonals and hard edges looked rounded on crts and just rolled with it without much thought. If I had to estimate, I'd say: 25% of NES games did absolutely nothing with CRT effects. 30% used them without thinking about it. 30% used them for minor things. 15% used them extensively (e.g., Batman NES, which uses all the CRT blending techniques available). In the 16-bit era, the higher resolution allowed for more detail, making this technique more common (e.g., the famous Sonic waterfalls). Load a random SNES ROM, and you'll likely find the effect used extensively or for minor details in around 70% of games. In the 32-bit era, sprite work was phased out in favor of 3D graphics, although the higher resolutions allowed for impressive visuals with blending techniques (e.g., SOTN, every SNK arcade games). Then, when early retro pixel art was created, it was likely based on studying spritesheets and emulator screenshots, as these were the only ways to closely examine old games. This means that while pixel art is a completely valid art style, it often evokes nostalgia for the emulator boom era (mid-2000s) more than the original era. Takeaways (that don't contradict each other): 1. NES devs rarely used CRT blending for intricate effects, but it was commonly used to smooth jagged edges. 2. Subsequent eras DID utilize the effect much more often. 3. The aesthetic pixel art more closely imitates is the emulator output. 4. It's a valid art form that originated from retro aesthetics but has grown into its own style that can be faithful or not. 5. Pixel Art as a deliberate artstyle is Retro now however you look at it because it's decades old by know 6. People like modern pixel art games regardless their nostalgic value. I suggest this vid from displaced gamers, it also offers different perspectives on the topic: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYmnqoSkjpp6fqs

"That's not how art is supposed to look! It doesn't look good or real at all!" Said the romanticist to the impressionist in the 1870 and 1880 Art is subjective and there can be no wrong style Pixel Art in games is a stylistic or sometimes a utilitarian choice (for example Budget or making the player use their imagination) Just like you can't fault a book for poor visuals, you can't judge utilitarian pixel art for being there to convey something It is true though, that when thinking about old arcade or consol games, to many have hard pixels in mind, when that's not how it looked like So when a game is specificaly trying to look old, be a game that could have come out way back, more should consider a good filter and possibly adapting their pixel art

I prefer old games on a LCD screen.

Good thing I was not the only one wondering. When I saw the very first gameplay of Smash Ultimate, the first thing that actually came to my mind is "Why is it washed out/desaturated compared to Smash 4?".

I prefer the blocky look so his argument falls on deaf ears

It's totally possible to create the look of an old CRT TV using shaders and post processing for a game.

9:34 and I just remembered something, some pixel art games DO come with a CRT filter, such as the amazing metroidvania style puzzle game, Animal Well.

Professional pixel artist here to butt in. It does not matter, CRT displays are getting harder to procure and the components are decaying, so unless you are a crazed purist, you won't get to see these effects. I mostly gear my art towards LCD displays, like what you'd see on handheld consoles, now sure, some works definitely look pretty nice through CRT filters, but others lose a lot of vital detail through that blurring, especially since I like to implement mono-pixel details to represent textures, the dithered stubble on one of my OCs for example gets lost when you place it through a CRT display or filter.

Thanks for the video, I appreciate your opinion. Just a heads up, your audio is favoring to the right channel. I put my ear buds in partway through and it became very noticeable.

Funnily enough, the NES didn't allow enough colors per tile/sprite to do any of that kind of blending on CRTs. You needed the expanded palettes and on screen colors of the 16 bit generation to pull off those kinds of effects. What gives the NES its distinct style is developers learned to emphasize shadow and negative space since there was almost always a lot of black on screen. The best looking NES games blackout a lot of environmental details. Shovel Knight emulated this fantastically

It should be noted that certain graphical effects work way better on CRTs such as Dithering & Mesh transparencies as dithering was used to give images with a restricted color palette the ability to show more colors than are actually on the screen by placing pixels of different colors next to each other and due to how color CRTs produced color, the 2 differently colored pixels would blend together creating a new color and mesh transparency basically follows the same principle except instead of making an image appear more colorful, it puts a color pixel next to a pixel with no color value as having no assigned color value makes that pixel transparent. Both of these effects only really work on CRTs although the look of a CRT that causes both effects to work can be emulated pretty easily and also, even on CRT displays these effects can work less well depending on certain factors such as which signal the display is using (PAL/NTSC/SECAM) or what kind of connection technology you are using as the effect looks best when viewed through a display connected through AV Composite or RF cables rather than RGB or S-Video cables. But, even then these effects were not always used.

This video is like "yeah some animation had perspective and volume like Dragon ball or One piece but there was also peppa pig and south park"

Only the american NES games box art use pixel art; Japanese NES box art are beatufilly hand drawn. Literally all '90s The Simpsons clips you showed contradicts your own argument because none of them, except the first one, have visual pixelation effects.

I don't mind pixel art looking like pixels, but what does annoy me is the misuse and misunderstanding of dithering. Dithering is a legitimate shading technique and I'm fine with visible dithering when it's intended by the artist to be seen as dithering when appropriate, but a lot of dithering in classic games was actually meant to trick CRT TV's into displaying more shades of colors than the old gaming hardware of the time could render at once. As such, remakes of old games that reuse the original sprites trying to stay faithful to the original experience should rework sprites whenever possible to incorporate the additional shades where they should be instead of just plopping in the dithered sprites. It looks ugly. Nobody cares about original hardware limitations when it comes to game re-releases and remakes, it's that original experience of playing the game that's important to stay faithful to, and that includes the games looking as intended instead of having the unintended dithering being visible in place of the additional shades of colors that should be there instead. If they don't want to go to all that work, at least include a good faithful CRT filter so the games can be viewed as originally intended. Not just a scanlines filter, a proper CRT filter. Yes I know there were multiple types of CRT displays with their own differences in appearance and it would be appreciated if they included filters for reproducing each of these experiences, but I feel it's more important in general to have at least one decent looking one that captures the experience the devs were originally intending on.

I don't think that pixels getting smoothed out by crt tvs is "the purpose of pixel art" as much as just... A limitation of Technology at the time? Like, I get it, that's how games like Mario RPG and DKC were conceived, but I doubt ghey took that into account for like, Super Mario Bros on the NES

i hope people like CRT's less so the price stays lower. i dont care if people agree that with me that CRT's are better.

It is a good idea. I'm still planning on buying a Sega saturn with panzer dragoon. Also altered beast is on my buy list.

(Both have their own charm)

games like earthbound look good in pixel per pixel look, and yoshis island, a lot of pixel art for old games mean in the pixel art more than see that on a ctr tv, but, the man its a rpg lover, most of the rpg on that time look weird in hd pixel art so, yeah

With the caveat being no art is correct art evolves and changes I think both things can be valid So orginal pixel art was designed for crt and smoothing. But modern pixel art is not and that’s okay that it’s evolved and changed! to be even more nit picky og pixel art typically couldn’t have as many colors or shading depth as modern pixel art can which is why it had to rely on crt So I think it’s great people appreciate shaders and pixel art as seen on CRT but it’s also great that modern pixel artists have managed to take pixel art to the next level

"Modern" pixel artists have evidently been getting it wrong since the Game Boy and continued it through the DS.

I love some modern indie pixel games and most people react to this with "oh, you're just nostalgic, blah". How can i be nostalgic for something i didn't really experience? Yes, I'm a child from the 90s, but i started gaming when i was a teen. I literally didn't know this games as a child and if i saw old games i definitely saw them on crts and yes, i definitely remember them as being smoother than this chunky pixel games some indie developers make nowadays. I just love different art styles, especially when they are stylized.

Funny thing Shovel Knight fans have both run the game on a crt and made pixel perfect filters for the game. It looks wonderful both in the crt/filtered form and on modern screens

One of the best uses of the crt effect I think is in sonic 1 where the waterfalls look like they’re transparent and even have a rainbow effect that you just can’t see in remakes or emulation.

I was born in '85 and played a lot of games from the NES onward. My main problem with playing retro games on modern LCDs is with 5th generation consoles (N64 and PSX). The N64 uses anti-aliasing that looks great on CRTs but terrible on LCDs and it seems like Playstation games don't display at the correct pixel size ratio (or something, honestly I'm not sure but something is off). It does seem like some pixel art was made with CRTs in mind and looks better on them, but that seems to be an exception rather than a rule.

earthbound but bad

I haven't finished watching the video but something I don't share is the common "widespread necessity" of CRT scan lines. I mostly play my old games natively (with the console) on a CRT monitor that has no scan lines, or with a 2000 LG Flatron TV with a max resolution of 480p that uses early LCD technology that would have coexisted with the PSone and PS2. i think if anything the real argument should be with the usage of component and composite cables.

I mean with Microsoft Xbox bowing out of consoles supposedly that leaves a pretty decent opening for Sega as soon as Xbox does actually leave if they do. Or better yet we could just get that steam console I'm really hoping for

It's PIXEL ART style, not necessarily OLD GRAPHICS style. But! I love to play my old games emulated with a good modern CRT filter on. Exactly as I remember.

Im sorry to say but comparing ps5 sales to switch sales to try and make your point is just stupid. Switch released nearly 4 years earlier then the ps5 and thus has a huge headstart in sales.

Sega Exodus would technically be the Sega Genesis 2.

What if Sega

The first thing I always notice about these arguments about how different the old CRT screens show pixels is that none of the pictures or videos shown to illustrate what it looked like are accurate. Emulations have too much black space between the pixels, and videos of screens are overexposed or otherwise bad quality. They're also putting the cart before the horse. It wasn't that they had this special art style that was dependent on the old screens, but that they just created the art the way they thought it looked best on those screens. It's like how you work with pixel art on zoomed-in views so you can accurately draw the pixels, but then you zoom out to see what it actually look like. Same back then, they just took a look at what their creations looked like on the screens they used at the time, and adjusted the art after that. And this is all excluding that it's always been its own art form. Pixel art is actually older than electricity, if you take a wider perspective, since you have cross stitching and mosaic. In the end, it doesn't even matter. All the "pixel art is misused argument" means is, "I like something else." For everyone else who's reasonable, do art your way, the way you like it.

its mainly due to people using that artstyle because "its looks retro" rather than "we need to make this look good with these limitations". there is no limitations anymore, so theyre imitating things that they dont understand the context of and thats why most of the time modern pixel art graphics just looks.. ugly. its either a pastel palette mess, a glorified atari style, or just blobs of 2 quintillion bits pixels that are trying to resemble something.

I must say I agree that they miss the point a little bit, but it can easily be remedied by giving most of these games a CRT filter. That said I do enjoy pixel art, hence I do embroidery.

The Zoo is at the near end of the demo.

Congratulations, a straw man defeated, fatality.

I agree with the TikTok guy and disagree with you. Modern pixel games are a simulacrum, they make me sick.

Video shouldve been 4 seconds longer

Great video. Subscribed.

You guys are all arguing about other peoples’ opinions when you can just not listen to anything and enjoy what you like.

I really don't like re-releases of old games that don't even give you even a basic scanline option, making the graphics look worse on a modern tv. The only re-release I saw that actually gave you at least SOMETHING was the Contra Collection, everything else seems to have nothing, even Sonic Origins doesn't have it. Half of the effects, like the waterfalls for Sonic 1 don't look good on a modern monitor.

Mario Kart 64 also benefits on CRT I think it really comes down to the game, as you say.

What about pixel art done on mobile game consoles like the Gameboy? Those weren’t meant to be smoothen out by anything! I think people don’t really understand what they are talking about.

This is the worst form of Gas Lighting, listen Ive been playing games since NES, and Genesis, they never, and I mean NEVER looked blurry, and shitty looking like in these CRT example images. You HAVE to remember these CRT TVs are 30+ years old, and the tubes have all worn out. CRT TVs were WAYYYYY clearer than you remember. You are simply misremembering due to the degradation of surviving CRT TVs, and degraded re-re-recordings of television programs. My CRT TVs always looked like the pixel art we have now. Stop with the bullshit.