Keatah

Thanks Captain Obvious.

Since semantics has taken center stage.. The interplay of rom instructions and console hardware is the soul of the game. The classic case of the whole is more than the sum. I'll consult with our theologist and get a 2nd opinion. But I'm pretty sure I'm right on this.

That's quite funny. But accurate. I like to play the classics the way I remember them. Back in the 1st days of videogaming we were all positively impressed with seeing and controlling things on the TV set. Huge difference compared to board games or otherwise static forms of entertainment. Here we had things moving and doing things. We didn't know about or even care about image quality. We hooked up the RF switchbox and got down to it. We didn't know of geometrical distortion in the 70's and 80's. Whatever the CRT provided us we accepted. After years of CRT use, and all of a sudden switching to a flat panel, for several days the images on my new monitors looked downright concave. It was downright disconcerting. Well.. A lot of the fun was changing cartridges, moving from game to game, running hi-score competitions, exploring what ever game world was presented us. All that. And through the rose-tinted spectacles of time RF + CRT looked awesome in the day. Bright, brilliant, a certain ineffable quality of dithering and mixing and glow. All that. Most modern emulators today have a plethora of sliders and values that can be tweaked to provide an image the way I remember it. Not necessarily an exact replica. And that is the goal. Besides I've been gaming with emulators and modern displays for such a long time I couldn't go back to real hardware and deal with all the annoying nuances. The care & feeding would drive me nuts!

This is how I see the NES-mini Classic Edition. Emulation today is at the core of classic gaming. Emulation has delivered the classic games we know and love to thousands upon thousands of people. Look at the proliferation of mobile devices and their "retro" compilation apps. Look at the Xbox and Playstation compilation packs. And then all the material on PC emulators and R-Pi rigs. If not for accuracy and exactness, emulation (software, Soc, FPGA simulation), is at the forefront and is the #1 choice when it comes to playing the classics today. Because of availability. Numbers and sales figures are indisputable. I'd rather see a nice Dusenberg replica which has been painstakingly assembled and detailed for 2 years as opposed to an original one that's rusted and falling apart. And bonus points because the heir of the marque put their stamp of approval on it! A more familiar example is the DeLorean restoration/replication company. Look it up. This is what the NES-mini is! It's emulation. It's replication. A big portion of its audience isn't going to mind the under-the-hood differences. They'll appreciate the ability to play the games and go for a ride in the countryside. Nintendo knows this. Most of us here know this. In our classic car analogy: The subtle differences that show up are like the tires sounding different because they are constructed with modern rubber compounds. The sound of the starter motor using high-efficiency magnets is going to be different too compared to the original. The smell of the interior different because it has been treated with modern surface protection chemistry. Individually we see these aspects as being fakery and replication. All combined they do add up to create the aura of the original. And that is THE point. While not exactly 100% perfect and original, it's sufficient enough to uncover the goodness of the way things were. And doing new things (new tech, SoC, etc) in old-style bodywork and plastic housings does have a certain appeal. The future: Going forward, Emulation/Replication are the only methods for the masses to enjoy classic gaming. And because of convenience of modern hardware used in emu/rep it can (already is) the preferred method of classic gaming. Millions can't be wrong.

I have a small group of folks working on exactly that. Since this is a spare time leisure project I expect it to be 2-3 years in the running before we have anything to demonstrate. Emissive display tech is a plus because of blacks and contrast and dynamic range, but by no means required. The goal is how to model light is generated at the phosphor level and how it it interacts with itself and glass and any other in-between material.

So much for forums as social media. Woot! And just don't assign mission critical work to them kids.. Being sorry will take on a whole new meaning. This thread being an example. Them kids at Nintendo can't seem to get the balance of features in the NES-mini just right to everyone's liking. And there's more than enough posts here to exemplify that. Kids are simply not instructed properly these days.

Yeh what a farce. The search for life on mars and elsewhere is a dead endeavor. And if we did find any kind of life, imagine the religious upheaval. So they kinda skirt around the issue..

I think you're talking about The Last Starfighter..?

And one more thing, before anyone thinks I'm a CRT hater. I'm not. I have a skid of C1084s monitors for the future. And I'm also formulating plans to clean and restore my old Sony KV-5000 and CrystalScan 1024 Gateway monitor - essentially they're getting alignments and re-caps and a thorough cleaning.

I think the inconsistencies in original 70's and 80's hardware had more to do with tolerances of components and even slight substitutions & differences between suppliers, or revisions of PCB. Inconsistencies here in the NES-mini are going be (I believe) related to software revisions rather than any hardware variances.

This is a most sensible line of reasoning. I also follow it. I don't fret or mess around with converters or manhandling one type of signal into another. The most complex thing I got going is an Apple II into my VIVO graphics board so that I may have real hardware side-by-side with an emulator window on the same monitor. Picture-in-picture. You know. Lucky for me it worked right off the bat. Look. When they upgraded the Space Shuttle from tape and steam to glass they also redid a huge portion of the flight computer and its software. So as to be matched and compatible from one end to the other. When a modern 1080p or 4K monitor is connected to the VCS, you essentially didn't match the display to its source. See. It's like trying to modify an AM radio to pick up FM broadcasts or patching in a cassette/CD adapter. This mismatch creates all sorts of visual anomalies in the final picture. This even happens with those cheap-o half-assed S-Video and Component RGB mods. Half the time they don't work, or make new and interesting interference patterns aside from what you had with the original RF. Modern matrix displays were (and are) not intended for any exotic sports like racing the beam. My preferred classic gaming rig is a rather simple set-top-box style PC running emulators and going to matrix display. Here time is spent generating a compatible signal for modern displays. Blargg and other TV effects in addition to new GPU routines I'm developing bring CRT styled images another step closer. And the first thing to go is that stupid bi-linear filtering and anything that's subtractive. That's so dot-com. You have to build the image with algorithms that understand how emitted light behaves and interacts with itself and the display's surface. Only then can you get a nice glow or softer rounded edges that melt into each other. MAME's shading is a good start. I'm going further. And, yup, it's GPU hogging alright. I hope to roll out a package in conjunction with the industry releasing emissive QLED displays. Not the "fake" LED passive sets we have today.

I never put people on block, following the old adage - keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

As for this nonsensical CRT vs LCD debate brewing, give it up. LCD and similar addressable technologies are here to stay. The classic game community would be best served by adding effects to the old games and old hardware to make them look closer to CRT. It is the way of things. The switch to addressable matrix displays was one move the industry got right. And everyone loves it!

Never really felt the extravagant art of early videogames was deceitful in any way. We all expected blocky and pixelated graphics. We also joked about future days when games could look like their box art.

Have you done any RAM bandwidth testing?

Each print can be photographed, or hand-scanned in sections. Then spliced together. No need for huge pro-level equipment. Do it carefully, do it right, and it'll look awesome.

That's right. But it depends on the style and taste of the developer. They *might* have wanted you to see each and every pixel. Others may have wanted to use extra pixels/clarity to precisely shade and hide imperfections.

Today's artists and designers would be equally adept if they weren't spoiled by modern tools and smartphones and internet-everything. The same talent which gives you a good game is the same talent that allows one to work with tools that don't get in the way.

I was. But I remember so little about it.

Sprite and image designers of the day took advantage of and factored in the characteristics of CRTs. Sometimes they used the display itself as a natural anti-aliasing and smoothing mechanism. They relied on bleed & bloom to hide pixelation. They even did the same thing with the NTSC signal itself, by using certain color combos and this-color-adjacent-to-that color to make an entirely new color. An interference of frequencies, if you will. This can even be extended to sound, and we're all familiar with mixing and resonance. No need to expound there.

Because they are like gods compared against the uneducated masses (us consumers).

Can't wait to see multi-color extension cables released. Nintendo fanbois will buy one of each!

Best thing to do is filter the noise and wait'll it comes to retail.

I find it pleasurable and oftentimes necessary to extend my ignorance to ALL areas of videogames just to have fun like the old days! All this talk of "politics" surrounding how and why things are done they way they are done, mixed in with the bickering of how this method vs that method is better or worse, is draining.