We now have enough of a basis to understand why retro games look like those on modern TVs. A major problem is that newer LCD and OLED TVs don’t offer great analog connections. If you’re lucky, your TV might have composite ports. But even if that’s the case, composite cables introduce a lot of noise into your console’s signal.
Chrono Trigger (1995, Squaresoft) – SNES
PC Emulator vs SNES Composite via Sony KV-14M10
I’m recycling this comparison I made last year for Toriyama’s passing to celebrate Chrono Trigger’s anniversary!
– CRT Pixels (@crtpixels.bsky.social) 2025-03-11T16:33:26.109Z
Another obstacle is that modern displays are not designed to display interlaced content. They use software to convert 480i content to 480p. This process, known as “deinterlacing,” introduces input lag, making games less responsive. Additionally, many modern TVs will detect 240p content as 480i, which they will then attempt to deinterlace again. In this case, the process produces visual artifacts like motion blur. All of this happens before your TV attempts to convert a 480p image to 1080p or 4K. Unless you have a dedicated scaler like the RetroTink 4K, upscaling a 240p image up to 4K won’t look good.
Final Fantasy Tactics (1997, Squaresoft) – PS1
Sharp Pixels vs PS1 Composite via Sony KV-27S43
FFT is actually THE game responsible for this blog. When I bought an HDTV in 2012, I plugged in my PS2, but when I first saw FFT’s dithering, I thought my console was broken!
– CRT Pixels (@crtpixels.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T15:08:48.777Z
Then there’s the fact that retro game artwork was designed to be displayed on CRT screens. Over the decades, video game artists have developed and perfected techniques to make pixel art (and later 2D textures) more realistic. Dithering was one such technique. This involved artists adding visual noise to sprites and textures, often in the form of a checkerboard pattern, to create smooth color gradients. Dithering is transformative on CRTs because of the way the technique interacts with a phosphor screen; on an LCD or OLED, it completely loses its effect. In fact, for the recent reissue of Final Fantasy TacticsSquare Enix removed dithering from the game’s Classic presentation mode for this very reason.
Separately there are games like Silent Hill 2 And Destiny 3 which look washed out unless you play them on a CRT or OLED. Until the recent advent of local dimming, LCD panels could not produce deep blacks due to the technology’s reliance on backlighting. This limitation of LCD screens changed the look of games for over a decade.
