I would like to think that after the obvious goal of perfect emulation, and the less obvious goal of highly detailed cabinet representation, the project of accurately documenting (and reproducing) video games of the past will ultimately turn to genuine display representation, which, for the time being at least, is a facet that is currently in the "any superficial effort is good enough" phase. Subtle differences nonetheless dictate similar differences in any idealized shader. They're the same sorts of tubes you find in consumer TVs, as those were cheap and plentiful, with RGB-based control boards and (sometimes) broken-out adjustment pots. Have to wonder about its origin, and particularly why nothing like that seems to be available in the not inconsiderable allotment of filters that RetroArch is packaged with. The Snes9x example is interesting though. Shadow mask of a typical home TV absolutely can be meaningfully realized with a 4K display, especially in cases like mine, where I sit two feet away from a 55 inch display and probably won't achieve "retina" detail even when 8K becomes the norm. Real talk, though, those details just get crushed by the subpixel structure of your monitor if you just try to draw them big and then ensmallen them later But I'm hoping to move things even further along that scale. Without question, emulating these systems with at least scanlines and some CRT-like barrel stretching brings things closer to real than the straight up digital squares or bilinear filtering that emulators traditionally default to. Something that does more than simulate the matrix of a CRT, but actually takes a stab at reproducing the kind of imperfect output you tended to get from these old consoles (Atari 2600, Odyssey2, etc.) Mild ghosting, maybe some temporal effects like what you see with that NES example I linked. Shrug.īut yeah, I'm looking for something that is as exacting as that. Even if you're using it on an emulated NES. For example, there are NES filters that succeed in providing that weird diagonal artifacting that was typical of NES output, but also for whatever reason change the colors, effectively ruining the entire endeavor. Survive a few rounds of gameplay, and be treated to humorous intermissions starring Pac-Man and the ghosts.I've taken a gander at the state of filters in RetroArch (well, presumably anything that uses GLSL etc.) Results are impressive nowadays. This only lasts for a limited amount of time as the ghosts' eyes float back to their center box and regenerate to chase after Pac-Man again. During this time, the ghosts turn blue, and Pac-Man can eat them for bonus points. Pac-Man can turn the tables on his pursuers by eating one of the four Power-Pills located around the maze. One touch from any of these ghosts means loss of a life for Pac-Man. Pac-Man's goal is continually challenged by four ghosts: The shy blue ghost Bashful ("Inky"), the trailing red ghost Shadow ("Blinky"), the fast pink ghost Speedy ("Pinky"), and the forgetful orange ghost Pokey ("Clyde"). One of the most popular and influential games of the 1980's, Pac-Man stars a little, yellow dot-muncher who works his way around to clear a maze of the various dots and fruit which inhabit the board. Android, Apple II, Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, BlackBerry, Commodore 64, FM-7, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear, Intellivision, iPhone, MSX, Neo Geo Pocket Color, NES, Nintendo 3DS, Palm OS, PC-6001, PC-88, PC-98, PlayStation 4, Sharp MZ-80K/700/800/1500, Sharp MZ-80B/2000/2500, Sharp X1, Sharp Zaurus, TI-99/4A, VIC-20, Wii, Wii U, Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox 360, Xbox One, ZX Spectrum