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The Great Composite Comparison!
You’ve read my post explaining composite video, and now you want to watch some video encoded in it, or play a game. The best option is a CRT television, but those are heavy and you want to use a flat-screen monitor or television instead. So, how best to upscale this video? Let’s take a tough challenge, and see what we can do.
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Composite Video: Why it was good then, and why you might even use it today!
I’ve been talking about video a lot lately; but that was all arcade or some other RGB upscaling. But let’s face it: if you grew up in North America, your arcade may have used RGB monitors, but you almost certainly didn’t have that at home. If you were like me, your video games came over a single yellow wire. (plus audio) But today, you probably want more wires. Why? And what was going down that wire?
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Review! The GBS Control Firmware
The GBS-8200 series of upscalers is, to put it bluntly, mediocre at best. Their main advantage has been their low price, and ability to accept a wide range of signals. This has given them some respect among arcade operators, but their picture quality won’t impress enthusiasts. But never count out the enthusiast community: because with a cheap microcontroller, this has been given new life.
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Interlacing, Deinterlacing, and Everything in Between
So in some of my recent posts, I complained about interlaced graphics. But interlacing is actually a pretty interesting topic, and solved a good problem! Why did people in the analog era put up with this? Why doesn’t it look as good on modern screens? This started out as an aside in an upcoming post, but quickly got out of control– so let’s dig in!
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The Solid State Saturn: Sega ST-V!
I recently did a review of the Satiator, a device that lets you use an SD card to run games on the Sega Saturn. It’s pretty great. However, it had one flaw: the Saturn is built around the disc drive. You can’t really eliminate loading times like you could if the system was built around solid state medium from the beginning. But to do that, well, you’d have to be Sega, wouldn’t you?
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The failed heir: The Hyper Neo Geo 64!
In 1982, Commodore International introduced the technology world to the concept of 64. But it was a very intimidating; following Commodore’s 1994 collapse, 64 remained elusive until Nintendo made it Ultra in 1996. But what if someone could take 64 and make it Hyper? Obviously, something that much bigger, badder, and better could only come from SNK– and in 1997, it did. So what was the Hyper Neo Geo 64? And why didn’t it stick? The year of the arcade continues!
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How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games
Game consoles, especially older ones, are defined more than anything by their graphics capability. The unique graphical limitations of a system can often make it possible to identify a game console just by a screenshot; for example, the average SNES game has more colors but a lower resolution than the average Genesis game. The NES has a distinctive palette that’s unique to it. But these limitations also mean that you can’t just shove a BMP into VRAM and call it a day. Here’s my process for how I do things.
