The Joy of CRT Gaming
As an avid music enjoyer, I’ve always been disappointed that I couldn’t tell the difference between vinyl audio quality and digital audio quality. During my obligatory “young-20’s vinyl phase”, I would often buy two or three albums and rush home to listen to them on my record player. And much to my chagrin, I wouldn’t hear any difference than if I just played it on my iPhone.
I think there’s a direct comparison in the gaming world- CRT televisions. The late 2000’s were an interesting time for TV’s. I remember hooking up my Xbox 360 to my small cheap CRT and playing Halo 3 like that for a while. But after a year or two, I finally brought my 360 over to the living room and hooked it up via HDMI to our big flatscreen. It was a fuzzy transitional time; I could imagine somebody playing Bioshock on a CRT back then just as easily as I could imagine it on a flatscreen. Even the Wii U has the option to be connected to a CRT, and it released in 2013!
I can’t help but take pictures of games running on my CRT!
Especially when it’s my favorite game of all time.
Late in 2023, my grandfather was kind enough to give me one of his old CRTs that was doing nothing but collecting dust. While it wasn’t the coveted Sony Triniton, I happily took it home with me.
Over the last year, I’ve finally pulled the trigger on getting a SNES and an Everdrive. Long story short, I genuinely cannot believe how good so many games look on a CRT. Games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, A Link to the Past, and even the chunky polygonal stuff like Final Fantasy VII look so stunning on a CRT monitor. The blue menus of a 90’s Squaresoft RPG just have this specific glow and hum to them. The joyful music of Super Mario World sounds more authentic coming from the aged speakers of this hefty beast than it does from a modern television.
This TV sings of a different era. An era where you would often have to change discs in the middle of a game.
Of course, there is an actual science here to explain the effect I’m describing. Feel free to look it up more for yourself, but I’ll explain in the most layman terms possible. The fuzziness of a CRT monitor allows for the individual blocks of pixel graphics to come together and form a shape that appears more detailed to our eye. When viewed through a modern monitor, the blocks appear separate and “cleaner”. There’s just so many little touches to these older games I don’t think I’d notice on a modern TV. As I was exploring the Black Omen in Chrono Trigger, I noticed that the treasure chests in that location had a very faint red light emanating from them. Those little touches make replaying my favorite classics on an old TV worth it.
And as I mentioned before, even chunky PS1 games look good on it. Games like Legend of Legaia or Vagrant Story look fantastic!
While all of this is great, I can’t deny the nostalgia being equally as powerful as the technology. When I turn on my CRT and hear that weird static hum, it takes me back to a simpler time. When I play a game like EarthBound while sipping hot cocoa, it reminds me of waking up to school being cancelled because of snowfall.
We have found ourselves in an objectively more convenient era. Back in the day, when you wanted to play a game at midnight, you would have to drive to a GameStop and wait in line for it. You would talk to strangers about your excitement for the game. Nowadays, you can preload it and play it at exactly midnight without ever leaving your house. It’s certainly more convenient, but I would argue that there is a bit of spirit lost in the convenience. Part of the reason I struggle to rank a modern console like PS5 over my beloved SNES or PS1, is because of the nonstop ads I see on the home page. I miss the era where a game console felt more like a video game machine and less like a multimedia behemoth.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be the grumpy guy who says “games were better back in my day!”. I think people around my age have a slightly peculiar and unique view on technology. I am 27, turning 28 in six months. I grew up on a Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, DS, PlayStation and PlayStation 2. I’m quite familiar with CRTs and shitty internet. But everything changed so rapidly. Around the time I was 10 years old, everyone began entering a new world of technology. You would see CRTs on the street corners amid piles of garbage. People were happily buying flatscreens and iPhones.
Playing games on my CRT just takes me back to those earliest of years.
