Kids Make Old Games Look Good On New TVs

THIS JUST IN: Emulators properly upscale old games.

I hope you guys didn't pay those kids for this. Thats like the "Pay us $45 and we'll install the drivers for your graphics card" scam my friend used to run at Best Buy.

THIS JUST IN: Emulators properly upscale old games.

I hope you guys didn't pay those kids for this. Thats like the "Pay us $45 and we'll install the drivers for your graphics card" scam my friend used to run at Best Buy.

@NaruThai:

maybe you should try and comprehend the "1982" part of your comment

@NaruThai:

maybe you should try and comprehend the "1982" part of your comment

@NaruThai: wtf?

Ranged360

@NaruThai: wtf?

Ranged360

@NaruThai: Do you even listen to yourself, or in this case read what you wrote?

@NaruThai: Do you even listen to yourself, or in this case read what you wrote?

@Stephen Oller: yeah, i didn't know children were admitted to georgia tech. the admissions department must be slipping. next, infants will be admitted to harvard.

@Stephen Oller: yeah, i didn't know children were admitted to georgia tech. the admissions department must be slipping. next, infants will be admitted to harvard.

@Mr. Tambourine Man:
Dr Sheldon Cooper.

NEED EDIT BUTTON KOTAKU etc..

@Mr. Tambourine Man:
Dr Sheldon Cooper.

NEED EDIT BUTTON KOTAKU etc..

@Stephen Oller:

Except if one of the is Dr Shelson Cooper.

@Stephen Oller:

Except if one of the is Dr Shelson Cooper.

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either):

Now that's what I call a "badge of honour"

@Stephen Oller: Thats what I thought. I had imagined techy high school kids surprising us, not top class seniors at a respected university.

trunkenmath

Wait. "Kids" at Georgia Tech? If they're at Georgia Tech, they're not really kids anymore. =?

Stephen Oller

lmao and people complain about Wii games looking like crap.
This was the biggest game of 1982 and it looks like someone took a **** on the screen.

There have been NTSC filters and whatnot on many emulators for a long time.

The best option if you're going to emulate is without a doubt to buy an old TV and set her up as a secondary monitor with s-video on your video card. I mean just $30 on craigslist and you've got yourself an ideal emulation display.

5 hours in line and $80 in 1982 dollars to get this game.

Waka Waka Waka

KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either)

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either): Awesome post is awesome.

@Accordion:

Kids were promised an arcade perfect port of Pacman by Atari and this is the mess they got.

Sorry you angry little kids weren't born then to feel the pain of me and others.

@Stephen Oller: is this place really getting like youtube?
Can't you people read a joke without feeling the urge of looking dumb by asking explainations?

Vidunder

@legacy5k: space is an issue in 2009.

Vidunder

@Stephen Oller: Back when I was teaching, I (and other faculty at my college) often referred to our students as kids. People here at work (now non-edu) also refer to college students as kids.

emag

@KingHippo: "Pay us $45 and we'll uninstall the drivers for your graphics card" ???

@PatrickF**kingStar: This just in: read the story.

They haven't upscaled the games, they've DOWNSCALED them to make them look older.

KingHippo

@NaruThai: Word, Naru. This game went a long ways to kill home video gaming for many of us. At least for myself anyways. I remember how heartbreaking it was trying this game for the first time. It was then that I thought there was no way I'd ever get a real pac-man game at home. Or any arcade game for that matter. If they had just been more honest about it, then maybe that might have taken some of the shock factor out of it, but otherwise, it still sucked at the time.

Booji-Boy

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either): Same here. :)

Then we took it home and played it. :(

It was ass, but it was pac-man AT HOME!

Booji-Boy

Interesting. Good stuff, but don't waste too much time on "improving" the lame 2600 port of Pac-Man.

coach_mcguirk

Interesting. Good stuff, but don't waste too much time on "improving" the lame 2600 port of Pac-Man.

coach_mcguirk

Interesting. Good stuff, but don't waste too much time on "improving" the lame 2600 port of Pac-Man.

coach_mcguirk

@trunkenmath:
Techy high school kids? I thought someone got a bunch of first graders to use photoshop and go over every pixel and every sprite with brighter versions of the same colour to make the game look nicer.

Interesting. Good stuff, but don't waste too much time on "improving" the lame 2600 port of Pac-Man.

coach_mcguirk

@trunkenmath:
Techy high school kids? I thought someone got a bunch of first graders to use photoshop and go over every pixel and every sprite with brighter versions of the same colour to make the game look nicer.

@trunkenmath:
Techy high school kids? I thought someone got a bunch of first graders to use photoshop and go over every pixel and every sprite with brighter versions of the same colour to make the game look nicer.

@KingHippo: That is not exactly correct. They seem to still be upscaling as you have really no choice on an LCD. I mean, it is going to be upscaled to the LCD's native resolution somewhere, why not upscale it while you still have control over the process.
More accurately, the students are filtering the output after they upscale it. Think of it as using the extra pixels gained through upscaling to simulate some common CRT effects of the day.
The fact that this filter works is kind of cool. I'm not the biggest fan of the huge leakage from each pixel, but, since it is open source I imagine that will be tweakable somehow. Either way, they are still upscaling properly, they are just filtering afterward to give it an olde-timey feel.

Beld

@KingHippo: That is not exactly correct. They seem to still be upscaling as you have really no choice on an LCD. I mean, it is going to be upscaled to the LCD's native resolution somewhere, why not upscale it while you still have control over the process.
More accurately, the students are filtering the output after they upscale it. Think of it as using the extra pixels gained through upscaling to simulate some common CRT effects of the day.
The fact that this filter works is kind of cool. I'm not the biggest fan of the huge leakage from each pixel, but, since it is open source I imagine that will be tweakable somehow. Either way, they are still upscaling properly, they are just filtering afterward to give it an olde-timey feel.

Beld

@NaruThai:
By atari standards it WAS arcade perfect. If you remember the homevideogaming standards of the time it was mindbogglingly pretty! Yeah, having space invaders and Pac Man made me feel like I owned the world.

@NaruThai:
By atari standards it WAS arcade perfect. If you remember the homevideogaming standards of the time it was mindbogglingly pretty! Yeah, having space invaders and Pac Man made me feel like I owned the world.

"In Enduro, the color bleed effect is evident again. Here you see not only how much more realistic the car sprite would have appeared on a television, but also how the multiple colored lines on the horizon would have blended with one another, creating a more credible sunset."

haha, man, what a quote. a more realistic car on the atari 2600.

xbulletholes

@Booji-Boy: I had Pac-Man and E.T. on mine. Come to think of it, I had most of the games that people considered terrible. From 2-7 years old I could care less if the game was good or not, I just wanted to play new games.

@Vidunder:

Fuck yeah, especially in 2009. And for the most part, it was in 2005 also.

Kazaam_McFresh

Ugh atari pac man makes me want to puke.

AgentCdog

@Stephen Oller: In the US, most people refer to anyone significantly younger than themselves as kids.

@Stephen Oller: In the US, most people refer to anyone significantly younger than themselves as kids.

@Stephen Oller: In the US, most people refer to anyone significantly younger than themselves as kids.

@Stephen Oller: In the US, most people refer to anyone significantly younger than themselves as kids.

@Stephen Oller:

You've honestly never heard anyone refer to college students as kids before? Honestly? Seriously? I call BS on your pretend confusion.

I've been out of school for not quite six years now, and I refer to them as kids. Heck, when I was still in school I referred to them as kids, as did many others I knew. The term "college kids" is tossed about all over the place on a near-daily basis...if you've somehow honestly missed it you need to get out more, my friend. :-)

jcb231

@Stephen Oller:

You've honestly never heard anyone refer to college students as kids before? Honestly? Seriously? I call BS on your pretend confusion.

I've been out of school for not quite six years now, and I refer to them as kids. Heck, when I was still in school I referred to them as kids, as did many others I knew. The term "college kids" is tossed about all over the place on a near-daily basis...if you've somehow honestly missed it you need to get out more, my friend. :-)

jcb231

@Stephen Oller:

You've honestly never heard anyone refer to college students as kids before? Honestly? Seriously? I call BS on your pretend confusion.

I've been out of school for not quite six years now, and I refer to them as kids. Heck, when I was still in school I referred to them as kids, as did many others I knew. The term "college kids" is tossed about all over the place on a near-daily basis...if you've somehow honestly missed it you need to get out more, my friend. :-)

jcb231

@Stephen Oller:

You've honestly never heard anyone refer to college students as kids before? Honestly? Seriously? I call BS on your pretend confusion.

I've been out of school for not quite six years now, and I refer to them as kids. Heck, when I was still in school I referred to them as kids, as did many others I knew. The term "college kids" is tossed about all over the place on a near-daily basis...if you've somehow honestly missed it you need to get out more, my friend. :-)

jcb231

@Stephen Oller:

You've honestly never heard anyone refer to college students as kids before? Honestly? Seriously? I call BS on your pretend confusion.

I've been out of school for not quite six years now, and I refer to them as kids. Heck, when I was still in school I referred to them as kids, as did many others I knew. The term "college kids" is tossed about all over the place on a near-daily basis...if you've somehow honestly missed it you need to get out more, my friend. :-)

jcb231

@Vidunder: or...people could just refer to college students as adults, or young adults, which they actually are. and what do you mean by "you people"? ;)

@Vidunder: or...people could just refer to college students as adults, or young adults, which they actually are. and what do you mean by "you people"? ;)

@Vidunder: or...people could just refer to college students as adults, or young adults, which they actually are. and what do you mean by "you people"? ;)

@Vidunder: or...people could just refer to college students as adults, or young adults, which they actually are. and what do you mean by "you people"? ;)

@Vidunder: or...people could just refer to college students as adults, or young adults, which they actually are. and what do you mean by "you people"? ;)

As a guy that played a VCS on a wood paneled TV for quite some time, the images are not quite right. I guess I was a lucky kid my parents had a Sony Trinitron circa 1982 on so maybe the picture quality was better than everyone else on a Zenith set.

The noise is too much, it was not that bad.

What they calk texture, also too much and too perfect in the images on the web site.

No ringing, this was the biggest artifact with all the systems that use RF modulators. If you had a low luminance area to the right of a high luminance one, the edges would repeat in decreasing intensity and progressively closer together until not discernible. I had to play a lot with the picture controls on the TV set to make it not so noticeable. I am sure if the RF modulators that came with the systems had been worth more than 25 cents it could have been better, but this effect was there to some degree all the way to the SNES (NES and SNES were better about it, VCS and CollecoVision were the worst).

mzs

As a guy that played a VCS on a wood paneled TV for quite some time, the images are not quite right. I guess I was a lucky kid my parents had a Sony Trinitron circa 1982 on so maybe the picture quality was better than everyone else on a Zenith set.

The noise is too much, it was not that bad.

What they calk texture, also too much and too perfect in the images on the web site.

No ringing, this was the biggest artifact with all the systems that use RF modulators. If you had a low luminance area to the right of a high luminance one, the edges would repeat in decreasing intensity and progressively closer together until not discernible. I had to play a lot with the picture controls on the TV set to make it not so noticeable. I am sure if the RF modulators that came with the systems had been worth more than 25 cents it could have been better, but this effect was there to some degree all the way to the SNES (NES and SNES were better about it, VCS and CollecoVision were the worst).

mzs

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either): My dad used to tell stories about how when he bought Pac Man for the Atari, the guy at the store warned him in no uncertain terms that there would be no refunds. The people selling it knew it was horrible.

0x15e

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either): My dad used to tell stories about how when he bought Pac Man for the Atari, the guy at the store warned him in no uncertain terms that there would be no refunds. The people selling it knew it was horrible.

0x15e

Go Jackets!

tdb

Go Jackets!

tdb

Cool! Can we try that test on FFVII? Looks awesome on a tube TV, crappy on LCD. I hope to see more of this clean filtering done for older games. Awesome!

Cool! Can we try that test on FFVII? Looks awesome on a tube TV, crappy on LCD. I hope to see more of this clean filtering done for older games. Awesome!

I don't get what the big deal is. The unfiltered pixels look cleaner to me. I guess it might just be personal preference though..

Tyler Carruth

I don't get what the big deal is. The unfiltered pixels look cleaner to me. I guess it might just be personal preference though..

Tyler Carruth

I don't get what the big deal is. The unfiltered pixels look cleaner to me. I guess it might just be personal preference though..

Tyler Carruth

@NaruThai: Not enough shooting form my fly-ship for my taste in that game.

captainapplesauce

@NaruThai: Not enough shooting form my fly-ship for my taste in that game.

captainapplesauce

@NaruThai: Not enough shooting form my fly-ship for my taste in that game.

captainapplesauce

Are these kids aware that several emulation projects, including MAME, have been doing this for several years?

Are these kids aware that several emulation projects, including MAME, have been doing this for several years?

Cool to see more of this, but like I said in the last story, NEStopia has an NTSC mode with scanlines, color bleed, NTSC artifacts, etc to make it look like a TV. You can even set the curvature of your virtual screen to make it stretch like an old curved CRT.

It's open source too, so the makers of Stella could just look at its source code instead of recruiting a team of CS majors :p

Cool to see more of this, but like I said in the last story, NEStopia has an NTSC mode with scanlines, color bleed, NTSC artifacts, etc to make it look like a TV. You can even set the curvature of your virtual screen to make it stretch like an old curved CRT.

It's open source too, so the makers of Stella could just look at its source code instead of recruiting a team of CS majors :p

@emag: College students are kids. Except for the creepy 35 year-olds who hang out at the Friday-night parties.

Cloral

@emag: College students are kids. Except for the creepy 35 year-olds who hang out at the Friday-night parties.

Cloral

@Jimbotron:

Truth.

@Jimbotron:

Truth.

@Stephen Oller: If'n they're youngern' me, they're kids...and they're on my lawn...^_^

@Stephen Oller: If'n they're youngern' me, they're kids...and they're on my lawn...^_^

@LokeSTL: Get over that game already. It wasn't THAT great.

Jimbotron

@LokeSTL: Get over that game already. It wasn't THAT great.

Jimbotron

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either): Horrible or not, my mom was hooked. I remember leaving for school one morning, and she was in front of the TV playing. When I got home, she was still there. Hadn't even changed clothes.

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either): Horrible or not, my mom was hooked. I remember leaving for school one morning, and she was in front of the TV playing. When I got home, she was still there. Hadn't even changed clothes.

@NecrosTerminus: But seeing clear pixels is not how the games were designed to look. You aren't really playing Pitfall as it was designed to be played when seeing every pixel with perfect clarity.

Dreamwriter

@NecrosTerminus: But seeing clear pixels is not how the games were designed to look. You aren't really playing Pitfall as it was designed to be played when seeing every pixel with perfect clarity.

Dreamwriter

I'm sorry, but adding back in these imperfections, to my eyes, makes the game look much worse than it originally was. I know you may loose a few intentional things, such as flickering ghosts and the blend of a sunset (see original article), but the clarity of the pixels makes up for the overall feeling of vaseline being smeared across your monitor. I didn't think the praise for Mega Man 9 offering the option to turn on sprite flickering and other imperfections was a sane idea either. Imagine if emulated N64 games tried to replicate the original hardware's upscaled 240i resolution - we'd think the emulator's creator had gone mad, since the games look much better in 480i (or higher).

Instead of trying to blur the graphics so I don't realize how primitive they are, I'd much rather enjoy the dated art for what it is. Seeing clear pixels isn't scary.

NecrosTerminus

I'm sorry, but adding back in these imperfections, to my eyes, makes the game look much worse than it originally was. I know you may loose a few intentional things, such as flickering ghosts and the blend of a sunset (see original article), but the clarity of the pixels makes up for the overall feeling of vaseline being smeared across your monitor. I didn't think the praise for Mega Man 9 offering the option to turn on sprite flickering and other imperfections was a sane idea either. Imagine if emulated N64 games tried to replicate the original hardware's upscaled 240i resolution - we'd think the emulator's creator had gone mad, since the games look much better in 480i (or higher).

Instead of trying to blur the graphics so I don't realize how primitive they are, I'd much rather enjoy the dated art for what it is. Seeing clear pixels isn't scary.

NecrosTerminus

@NaruThai: It seems you have never seen shit smeared all over something, please let me refer you to Two Girls, One Cup.

THEN say it looks like someone took a shit on a screen.

@NaruThai: It seems you have never seen shit smeared all over something, please let me refer you to Two Girls, One Cup.

THEN say it looks like someone took a shit on a screen.

@kingmob4313:

PSX is a different thing altogether since the effort has been to try and upscale with 3D instead of blur-scale to fit tube TV's. I'm sure someone can take one of these NTSC filters and apply to it, but I think the goals have been vastly different.

@kingmob4313:

PSX is a different thing altogether since the effort has been to try and upscale with 3D instead of blur-scale to fit tube TV's. I'm sure someone can take one of these NTSC filters and apply to it, but I think the goals have been vastly different.

Am I the only one that wants to see a video of this in action? Why not upload a short clip to youtube?

Jonny_eh

Am I the only one that wants to see a video of this in action? Why not upload a short clip to youtube?

Jonny_eh

@kingmob4313:

PSX is a different thing altogether since the effort has been to try and upscale with 3D instead of blur-scale to fit tube TV's. I'm sure someone can take one of these NTSC filters and apply to it, but I think the goals have been vastly different.

@Jimbotron: Yeah...keep telling yourself that....

i was just thinking about how someone should make something like that last night. i would buy this product immediately (price permitting).

robotco

Obviously not everyone does this if Stella never got into it, and as anyone will say, there's multiple different ways that have been tried to accomplish this. Adding one more to the mix through what they might feel is a different algorithm is certainly not a bad thing.

The one that always felt the best to me was NESTopia's NTSC filter. Makes Tecmo Bowl feel exactly like it did in the 80's.

Reminds me of the lengths CAPCOM did to make Mega Man 9 look like it was running on an NES

Shin-san

Reminds me of the lengths CAPCOM did to make Mega Man 9 look like it was running on an NES

Shin-san

Reminds me of the lengths CAPCOM did to make Mega Man 9 look like it was running on an NES

Shin-san

Reminds me of the lengths CAPCOM did to make Mega Man 9 look like it was running on an NES

Shin-san

Sorry, I don't see these filters and an improvement, or even that good at reproducing the original look.

On top of that why showcase the Atari PAC-MAN port? It is possibly the WORST version of PAC-MAN ever released.

The Wii and the Atari both seem to be popular systems known for their shovel ware.

BagOBones

@Vidunder: What makes space more of an issue now?

Valnen

@LokeSTL: Get a PS3, turn on smoothing, keep it off full screen mode.

Valnen

@Booji-Boy: Yep...and it didn't stop me from going out and getting Ms. Pac Man either. (Sorry Mom...I now realize how much money all this shit really cost!)

+ Watch video

KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either)

@Booji-Boy: Yep...and it didn't stop me from going out and getting Ms. Pac Man either. (Sorry Mom...I now realize how much money all this shit really cost!)

+ Watch video

KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either)

@Valnen: The future.

Altima NEO

@Valnen: The future.

Altima NEO

@Shin-san: Nah, that was adding slowdowns and making the audio channels choke. The Pixels were still perfect representaions of the rendered image. Personally, I like to enjoy the pixel-art goodness in it's full glory. After all, the games were usually designed on PCs which didn't have all the shitty artifacts.

Kotakufan777

[slack.net]

@Altima NEO: Marty, hurry! We've got to get back...to the future!

@tinky XIII: Amen to that. I was just a bit too young for the Atari 2600 in its day, but that's how I played my NES games.

Ah, the good times I had with Back to the Future II&III and Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout.

I actually LIKE pixel-perfect perfection. Blurry screens on a modern LCD television are for chumps.

ManekiNeko

So there are no power pellets in HD mode?

@Altima NEO:
Good One Neo

@NaruThai:

i was 14 at the time pacman on the 2600 was released and i was disappointed as much as everyone else, but i don't remember them (devs) promising an arcade perfect port on the 2600 when they couldn't even get an arcade perfect port on the atari 400/800.

@KsprayDad (Not playing with his Wii much either):

heh, i remember those days. i used to ride my bike looking for aluminum cans to try and get enough money for the latest 2600 title, one of my most wanted was donkey kong on the 2600, boy was the 50,000 cans i picked up for that game wasted....

@Cloral: What makes them creepy?

@relic1980: Why are you happy about them being on your lawn?

Are you... going to... rape them?

an skyline