My aim was never to emulate but to play. Blur filters are something that I won’t be using.
Real. Ever since I spent some time setting up good CRT shaders, playing retro games feels a lot cooler. They just give the best feeling and look pretty nice with them on. Sometimes for fun, I leave the shader on for regular Windows usage.
You’ll never catch me using filters like these voluntarily. Inject those crisp pixels straight into my vein.
I was a crisp pixel diehard for like 20 years even despite growing up with CRT, because I remember in the 80s-00s trying hard to get the clearest picture (RF->SRGB->S-video->Composite) and it felt like, “what’s clearer than exact pixels?”
And then I tried a good CRT filter that emulates not just scanlines and noise, but subpixel effects, and it really changed my mind. The graphics really were designed to be displayed with those analog “imperfections,” and if you lived in that era, you kind of took for granted the things that worked well with the natural CRT blur while pursuing image clarity. Bringing back the CRT effects was a revelation.
Like, even handheld emulation filters that mimic how those particular LCD screens functioned often give a better experience since game designers took that into account.
I don’t know if someone growing up with only emulated square LCD memories would feel the same, and I’ll always take pixely LCD over bad CRT emulation, but I’d suggest to give it a try with good filters.
No and no. Clickbait bullshit.
Clickbait would not include in the title that the secret is CRT shaders.
Honestly, I hate the CRT aesthetic. I grew up with CRTs. Leaving them behind for LCDs was one of the greatest transitions of growing up. By all means, enjoy them if you do, but I don’t.
It’s not just the look of it, but the art and games were designed with the limitations of CRT in mind. Not all games off course. An example is the transparency effect on Genesis / Mega Drive:
Shaders are not only useful for CRT emulation, but also to get the look of handhelds:
Ah jeez, this picture triggered the earworm! Now that song is in my head!
Add that China theme to the mix.
You’re welcome.
Does this shader also replicate the horrific motion blur that the display of the original GameBoy suffered from?
There are two variants, one with motion-blur and one without. Besides that, often shaders have additional settings. One can change settings and save it as a new Shader Preset and use that instead. I have described it here: https://thingsiplay.game.blog/2024/10/19/showcase-for-retroarch-shaders-2024/8/#learn-and-explore
Thanks. I shall avoid the motion blur variant as best as I can, because that’s one of several aspects of this device I do not remember fondly.
I borrowed a friend’s Game Boy for an afternoon when I was a kid and I was so disappointed by it (primarily the screen, but also poor ergonomics and the limited nature of its games) that I lost nearly all interest in gaming for a year.
If there was a good crt shader I’d love to use it. Haven’t seen any good ones yet.
Now I’m curious what your criteria are. Do none of the shaders shown in the video appeal to you? To me at least, they look remarkably close to several types of old CRT TVs that I remember.
I only know of filters in emulators I’ve used for nes, super nes, Genesis, gb advance, dolphan, duckstation, and whatever other emulators over the years.
None of them have had a crt shader that’s good.
I’m currently toying around with ares (the only fully cycle-accurate SNES emulator) and it has a lovely selection of CRT shaders (that are also available for other emulators). Try out crt-maximus-royale (or the half-res-mode variant). At least to me, the latter looks perfect, with just the right amount of blur, distortion, bloom and scanlines - and it comes with lovely details, like the bezel reflecting the image in real time and speaker grills filling the rest of the screen.
Someone uploaded a gallery with various games to reddit that shows just how versatile this shader is:
https://old.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/1ag834e/while_mega_bezels_is_great_and_all_i_think_the/
Will do, thank you for the suggestion!
