20 years ago we were all happily gaming in low resolution TVs were only 480 pixels tall

onQ123 said:
We could have counted every pixel in a game if we wanted to but we didn't
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Season 4 Jasper GIF by The Simpsons


Back then we only counted bits which was the style at the time... wait, that was 30 years ago... or 40...
 
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onQ123 said:
We could have counted every pixel in a game if we wanted to but we didn't we just enjoyed the games until the HD Consoles showed up & all hell broke loose lol.
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It's the upscaling, you could still technically do a lot with a 720p display.
 
Ironman_Bad said:
I was pc gaming then and pc games slaughtered console games those days lol ut 2004 could been an xbox one launch title...different universe than it is now
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No they didn't lol. This was before voodoo. A lot of software renders and before that super crappy 2d games compared to the nes and snes. Though amiga had some good 2d stuff.
 
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Three said:
The SNES came with this plastic bad boy:

s-l1200.webp

Not whatever that hi-tech up-market metal thing is.
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The hi-tech metal thing is an RF adapter. It would take whatever radio frequency the console was outputting and convert it to match your TV channel's frequency (in the US, you could choose channel 3 or 4).

The thing in your picture looks like a switchable RF splitter.
 
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I enjoyed gaming on my 27" CRT TV. It was the best time. But I was also gaming in at least 1024x768 on my PC.
 
digdug2 said:
The hi-tech metal thing is an RF adapter. It would take whatever radio frequency the console was outputting and convert it to match your TV channel's frequency (in the US, you could choose channel 3 or 4).
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So you didn't have to tune tv channels in the US?
I thought that was a button in the middle to switch between aerial and the console.
digdug2 said:
The thing in your picture looks like a switchable RF splitter.
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We had to tune our TVs and switch between aerial or console with this thing.
 
Speak for yourself, I was mostly gaming on PC back then and moaning about how far back consoles were for 3D games, especially late PS2 era.
 
Three said:
So you didn't have to tune tv channels in the US?
I thought that was a button in the middle to switch between aerial and the console.
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We did have to tune channels, but when I was 5 in 1989, we had a TV like this:

282a35c79dea4c8e99d10acc3b8fc551.jpg


and used a NES RF adapter (had a little switch that would allow to use Channel 3/4) similar to this:

61HojhgnOSL._SL1500_.jpg


Three said:
We had to tune our TVs and switch between aerial or console with this thing.
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The NES RF adapter had an antenna input and acted as a bypass when the NES was turned off allowing you to watch TV. When you turned on the NES, it would send an RF signal through the adapter and cut off the antenna feed so you could play your console.

I guess the thing in your photo wasn't an RF splitter, it was an adapter. It appears that you had to manually switch to game mode when you wanted to play your console and back to antenna when you wanted to watch TV.
 
20 years ago? that was the year Halo 2 came out, and I already had a giant HDTV...so no I wasn't.
 
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I still game at 480p on a CRT.
Its clear enough and a very satisfying and pleasing way to play both modern and retro games.

Here is Super Smash Bros Ultimate on Nintendo Switch, on a widescreen CRT at 480p.

Ap4m9PW.jpeg
 
Yea, I never really cared about resolution or frame rate until I got into PC gaming. Years later I would read about how certain games that I played when I was younger had performance issues like assassins creed unity, but I played the game start to finish without caring or realizing the game had crappy frame rate.
 
A large portion of Gaf's current membership probably gamed on NES clones 20 years ago and thought the internet was something you caught fish with. 20 years ago. Pfft!
 
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Man I used to be fine with the low res but now after getting used to 1080P, I can't really go back. 1080 is the sweet spot for me between the 460, 720 and 1440 and 4k.
 
Happily? We already had the PCMR fuckers sucking all joy from gaming and bullshiting people enjoying such games. Some of them are still here, doing exaclty the same.
 
even in these days, I'm still playing NES/SNES/MD games with emulation. especially cool hack or fans translation games.
there are lots of cool games, which is not translated for decades. and they are hidden games.
 
I was console and pc gaming back then. So I was going back and forth between shit and great image quality. Dunno what hell is breaking loose, if anything the first HD consoles used hdmi which made things so much simpler. Still is, plug shit in and it works, what's the problem? I don't care if my PS5 isn't reaching a true 4k or not, I just play my games and enjoy them.

Edit: I actually cared more about resolution back then, when I was on on PC. Considering the pace of pc hardware and software 20+ years ago.
 
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My PS3 was hooked up to a CRT until 2009 when I bought a 32" Samsung 1080p TV for $700 from my first job after college. Didn't even care that I was still sleeping on a futon. Gotta have priorities.
 
Bojji said:
When I first saw HD game (1024x768) at my friends house on his CRT monitor I was blown away
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It was actually the opposite for me.
I found CRT to be pretty clean if you used a RGB cable instead of the default component. Then I upgraded to a HD TV at some point with my ps3 and... I was very disappointed lol
Nothing was 1080p, so everything felt kind of almost blurrier than before somehow? Less clean. And this is when I started being very aware of aliasing and hated it. It wasn't noticeable like this on CRT, but on 720p games on a 1080p tv, aliasing suddenly became a thing ruining the visuals of every games for me.

simpatico said:
I let my GPU get really old due to the scalping during covid. Now it's turned into stubbornness because I hate the new pricing.
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Same here, can't accept the fact that I would need to pay something like 1200€ for a RTX 4080 when I bought my 1080 for 500 in 2017 :messenger_loudly_crying: And I'm still using that 1080 :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
Larxia said:
It was actually the opposite for me.
I found CRT to be pretty clean if you used a RGB cable instead of the default component. Then I upgraded to a HD TV at some point with my ps3 and... I was very disappointed lol
Nothing was 1080p, so everything felt kind of almost blurrier than before somehow? Less clean. And this is when I started being very aware of aliasing and hated it. It wasn't noticeable like this on CRT, but on 720p games on a 1080p tv, aliasing suddenly became a thing ruining the visuals of every games for me.


Same here, can't accept the fact that I would need to pay something like 1200€ for a RTX 4080 when I bought my 1080 for 500 in 2017 :messenger_loudly_crying: And I'm still using that 1080 :messenger_grinning_sweat:
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The 1990s - early/mid 2000s were tough when it came to adopting new equipment. You could buy a whole new set up, but if you used a wrong cable or connector (not to say that you or your friend did that), everything would look terrible. I had gotten a Wii when it came out, and when I hooked it to my 720P HDTV, it looked like absolute dogshit because I had originally used the composite. I moved over to component cables, and it looked a little bit better but still 🤮
 
I still do it. Retro stuff via RCA or component on Panasonic Tau 21". HD/Nowadays stuff on PC (LG Ultragear 32GN650-B 1440P) and 55" 4K OLED LG B4.
 
S0ULZB0URNE said:
97-2007 were PC's golden years IMO
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Absolutely. I loved 1992-1996 too because of all of the point-and-click graphic adventures, but...

I nearly shit the first time that I booted up Epic Tournament in 1999. I couldn't believe how advanced the graphics were. The moon halo was awesome and I never thought we'd see anything like that in a game.
 
digdug2 said:
Absolutely. I loved 1992-1996 too because of all of the point-and-click graphic adventures, but...

I nearly shit the first time that I booted up Epic Tournament in 1999. I couldn't believe how advanced the graphics were. The moon halo was awesome and I never thought we'd see anything like that in a game.
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I remember after months convincing my dad to get me the first GeForce 256 and my goodness the between worlds map I still remember staring at the planet in pure awe
 
Ironman_Bad said:
I remember after months convincing my dad to get me the first GeForce 256 and my goodness the between worlds map I still remember staring at the planet in pure awe
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Dude, that's awesome and I'm stoked your dad finally went for it. I can only imagine how good UT looked on a GeForce 256! I was playing on a 3dfx VooDoo 2 card, which was quite a bit less powerful, and I was still utterly blown away.

Edit: After doing a quick comparison- wow, Voodoo2 was an absolute joke compared to the GeForce 256.
 
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digdug2 said:
Dude, that's awesome and I'm stoked your dad finally went for it. I can only imagine how good UT looked on a GeForce 256! I was playing on a 3dfx VooDoo 2 card, which was quite a bit less powerful, and I was still utterly blown away.

Edit: After doing a quick comparison- wow, Voodoo2 was an absolute joke compared to the GeForce 256
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Pretty much put 3dfx outta business or absorbed them from my memory GeForce was the beginning of the future of gaming but 3dfx are the Godfathers of high end 3d graphics
 
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