Rambling: The Simplicity of Retro's

As you all know, Retro's have always had a special place in my heart. But, up until recently, I have always had a problem sticking with playing them. They visually didn't impress me and looked much worst then I remembered them.

A few weeks ago, all of that changed. A Sony Trinitron was posted for sale on a local Facebook yard sale group. I had always heard that the Trinitrons were a superior way to play your favorite retro games, but never put much credence behind it, because I had never seen one in person. Plus the price of $20, I was extremely intrigued.

So after much deliberation with myself, I decided it was worth a shot. 30 minutes later and with the help from a buddy, the 300 pound TV was sitting in my basement. Moment of truth was upon me, had I made my best retro buy to date, or did I just buy a large piece of tube TV junk?

It was beautiful and best of all, there was zero delay between screen a controller. This made those spot on jumps notorious in a lot of retro games, possible.

This wasn't just noticed by myself. My wife also noticed how much better games felt and looked on the new screen. We even accomplished a feat we thought was impossible. We beat Donkey Kong Country! 

So this lead me to one question, has it been the display all along? Had my HD TV really been deceiving me even though I couldn't see it and tell? I believe the answer to this is yes.

These games were built at a time when HD resolutions weren't realized yet or the norm. Our new age TV's have a hard time processing the old signals, usually lotting them into 480i signals and calling it a day. 

This loses a lot of quality and introduces a few issues such as lag delay. It makes the games and experience suck.

Sometimes you just need an old CRT with scan lines to please the eyes and capture that feeling of playing video games as a kid.