Retro Gaming

[Richardgr]

Quite an interesting article about CRT TVs and retro gaming. I had not realised that CRT TVs are actually essential for a lot of the classic games.

Inside the desperate fight to keep old TVs alive ...

[agardiner]

Very interesting read. Thanks for posting.

I certainly was aware that retro gamers still love old CRT screens. Broadcast PVM's can fetch over a thousand pounds if they still have a good tube without screenburn!

[Lloyd 1985]

Maybe now is a good time to sell some of those CRT sets I saved from the tip in the early 2000’s!

[SiriusHardware]

One feature in particular which only works on CRT displays is the 'light gun' which relies on being able to 'see' the bright scanning spot as it flies past the point on the screen where the 'gun' is aimed at. These won't work at all on 'static' flat screen displays.

Edit: I see this was one of the issues mentioned in the article.

[John123]

Indeed any bog-standard/ non-flat CRT set that doesn't feature any of the later fancy picture-processing modes (100Hz, etc), are great for light-gun games.

Another common requirement for retro gamers is the inclusion of an RGB-capable SCART socket. In general: the more inputs, the better!

[electronicskip]

I am a huge retro gamer myself having collected systems and games since buying an Atari 2600 system new when they came on sale.
Indeed lots of retrogamers hoard a few CRT Sets as the older systems were never designed to work on digital flatscreens.

There are ways to make most systems work on modern Tvs via boxes etc ,but most retrogamers like the authenticity of a CRT television for the full retro experience , i myself have a decent Sony and also a Ferguson for just this reason as im not a collector of Tvs.

[kevinaston1]

Seeing this, I was reminded of the time we (Makro) started selling a certain TV game beginning with B.

Sales were phenomenal, but the next morning we had a truly massive queue of customers returning faulty units; my morning receptionist was rushed off of her feet writing out credit notes.

I called the other receptionist to see if she could come in early to lend a hand. As the queue died down, one of the girls set up a television in reception to see what was wrong with these games. Nothing wrong with the first one, or the second, or the 99th; until one customer looked alarmed and exclaimed "You plugged the television in!"

Well yes said the receptionist; how else is it going to work?

It turns out, the manufacturers instructions simply tell you to connect the game to the television, the customers presumed the game powered the television.

[Richardgr]

I work for a Swedish mobile network company, and we had a similar story at our recent 30th anniversary celebration. People bought mobiles and complained no one rang them, and then when they were told they had to switch them on first, they said 'but then the battery goes flat?'

[spamfritter]

Originally Posted by Richardgr

I work for a Swedish mobile network company, and we had a similar story at our recent 30th anniversary celebration. People bought mobiles and complained no one rang them, and then when they were told they had to switch them on first, they said 'but then the battery goes flat?'

The latter sounds like my wife. Phone is charged (by me) and then disappears in her handbag. 3 weeks later she goes out and needs to phone me. The rest is easy to work out !

[Hampus]

The display lag is quite noticable on some newer sets - the analogue, low resolution video has to be rescaled and processed to fit the modern TVs native resolution. Some sets do this faster than other, some of them have a 'gaming mode' that cut this processing down to a minimum to speed it up.

My TV does not have any such settings and I failed at playing my old Nintendo games on it, the same games I played countless of times in my younger years.

As an experiment I connected to game to two TV sets at once and recorded them with a video camera - you can clearly see the delay in the upper set. It may not look like much but timing is essential in these games and the delay means that what is shown on the screen is in the past, or, if you will, what is happening in the game is yet to be projected on the screen. So when it looks it is time to jump over a gap it may already be too late. Or when you are about to take out an enemy you may already be dead.

The importance of timing may be most obvious at the scrolling level about the one minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7oylAX5P_Q&t=89s

[Gulliver]

In addition to the light gun issue, some of the earlier games consoles and computers just don't get on well with modern TVs even where an analogue tuner is present. One of the most common question on vintage computer/game forums is "how do I connect X hardware to my 4K TV?".

Additionally, there's certainly nothing else quite like the vivid colours you could get from a decent CRT. And these games were usually designed to be played on smaller screens.

Regarding the story about the Makro shop above, it just shows how little people understood about the technology. The person who wrote the instructions no doubt assumed plugging the TV set into the mains was a no-brainer.

There were also lots of rumours about the early game machines (including those ones beginning with a "B") damaging your TV. I had one friend who's parents aging 1969 Bush colour set was exhibiting a skew-wiff picture by 1982 and they were absoluteny convinced that just such a game machine had damaged it.

I run a number of old Sinclair computers on an early 2000s flat TV and while it works for sure....the experience isn't quite the same.