I worked as an artist on Genesis games back in the 90s. It was definitely cool how we could create more colors than were in the actual palette by using creative dithering. Working on SNES was fun, too, of course, but I always thought the things we could do on Genesis with pixels were pretty interesting. I'd grown up using so-called "artifacted colors" on my TRS-80 CoCo and the adjacent dithered pixel stuff on Genesis totally reminded me of that. Cool video, thanks!
@@albertnortononymous9020 Snes games use dithering but the composite quality of the Snes was sharper then the Genesis so you don't get near the amount of blending as you would on Genesis. For example play Mickey Mania via composite on both Genesis and Snes (The Genesis dithering blends, the Snes dithering does not)
@@TRS-Eric None of the MK's on Genesis are going to look as good as thier Snes counterparts. MK3/UMK3 on Genesis with the dithering blended (The game uses alot of dithering) looks extremely close to the Snes version. They were done by the same developer. MK1/MK2 on Genesis don't use very much dithering and they look pretty bad compared to the Snes versions.
There are shaders for emulators that can blend dither patterns while otherwise retaining sharp pixels you'd expect from an RGB signal, they aren't perfect but maybe it's one step closer to getting the best of both worlds.
Just another urban legend , sorry but the rca just melt pixels on screen , the rgb corrected this blurring effect, never meant by creators of those games which were built on pc with another clean signal not at all rca
@@stonecoldpes6 as an artist i can tell you all artists make art to look best in the medium of the final product, not in their monitor screen. what's the point if (for example) my t-shirt design looks good in my monitor but looks like ass in actual t-shirt?
The existence of the vertical lined sections in the Earthworm Jim graphic does indicate it deliberately targeted the blurring effect of low bandwidth analog video. That said, I don't agree that that's the only way it can be appreciated. Seeing it dithering and all is also pleasing. Would you all have appreciated the smoothed over version as much if you hadn't seen the lengths the artist went to achieve it in the clear "rgb" view?
It just blow my mind insane how studios took every quirk and even imperfections from the technology of the time and use that as an advantage to make it all look better
But the effect did not work for everyone worldwide. So it wasn't a silver bullet, but a decision with pros and cons. Games that abused dithering looked pretty bad with RGB.
it makes me think how water couldn't possibly fall like that. the waterfall is in the background, but you can see the further background behind it? what's it falling over, a glass cliff? and where's the source of the water??
I picked up a Japanese Mega Drive today with a composite cable and was blown away by how great it looked. This video explains why - thank you! I usually go with s-video cables for my consoles but the Mega Drive doesn’t have that option, however after learning about dithering I’m more than happy to be stuck with composite for the Mega Drive. Great video - thank you!
@@xtremegold2950 That's not correct. The model 1 Mega Drive/Genesis has an RGB out, as does the model 1 Master System. In PAL regions, Sega sold an official RGB Scart cable - I use one on my Mega Drive. The model 1 Mega Drive supports RGB, composite, and RF. Not 100% sure about other models, although I believe the model 2 also has RGB out. In Europe, Scart TVs were not uncommon by the time the Mega Drive was released. However, even in the USA, Sega provided the option to output RGB.
@ not in west . those scart cables were unknown the ntsc televisions has no inputs or support . in the early 90s that could be the reason why sega . made many games with composite bleeding images advantages . giving a ilusion of extra colors on screen by just using a compsite yellow cable .. most games new realeses came before in the west first. in pal terrirory 1 year or 2 year later. the console was desing to be played for western ntsc tv sets using composite
@@xtremegold2950 In the _west_? In western Europe - where I live - Scart TVs were becoming increasingly common by the late 1980s. Hence Sega released an official RGB Scart cable! The western Mega Drive/Genesis was designed to offer 3 video outputs options - RGB, composite, and RF because of the differences in TVs available at the time. No body is talking about S-Video, we're talking about RGB. You do realise these are different things, don't you? You're just wrong on this. The standard output is actually RF - this was the default cable supplied with the MD in both Europe and the USA for the model 1, and as far as I'm aware the model 2 as well. Composite cables had to be purchased separately. The majority of people were probably using RF through the life of the system. The only region with composite as a standard output was Japan, which didn't support RF. But regardless the MD from it's launch supported RGB - as the Master System had in 1985/1986.
Many years ago I first noticed this phenomenon while playing Streets of Rage 2 on an emulator. In the bar, there are yellow lamps shining down with a transparent glow but in the emulator, it was an ugly curtain of yellow pixels. Back then I just chalked that up to maybe just a flaw of the emulator itself
Dude, you're killing it with the subject matter. These are all things that really need to be said concerning the look of retro video. With that in mind, I personally feel the benefits of RBG on a CRT are just too great, and I willfully accept the loss of the extra colors and transparency that composite gives. 10/10 video essay. Keep it up!
Thanks, Mike! This subject - on the Genesis/Mega Drive in particular - has been an interesting point of contention amongst gamers. I love the RGB output from the Genesis and will use it when playing those games, but I'll also sometimes hook it up and play it on an old RF-only TV depending on my mood.
@@DisplacedGamers What about s-video as a compromise? Or is it not that simple. Could you do a video comparing s-video on bvm's? It seems people think if you go bvm or pvm, then you must only use rgb and it would be a waste to use the rest. Do you think that's true?
Thankfully the emulator I have on Retroarch let's me choose composite, s-video and RGB filters and the composite video with scanlines enabled actually works pretty well and looks closer to what I remember on my real sega genesis back in the days. It even blends the colors pretty well when the composite mode is chosen. Great to have a choice.
Well done! This is why I use composite cables when playing my Sega Genesis. The effect is also very effective when seeing the FMVs on the Seg CD. I am glad to see the technique of dithering being more appreciated now. It is a creative trick to help get away from the limitations of the hardware.
I love how you explained what dithering is, and how it was used as a form of visual trickery in the most basic way possible. You Basically said "here is the info....do what you want with it" lol. 5 years on, and this is as relevant as ever with all of the upscalers and growing community of retro gamers. Cool, and informative video!
Two other games worth looking: FIFA International Soccer (released in 1993) had vertical stripes to simulate a transparent gray overlay when displaying scores. That looks nice on a TV, but very ugly on a pixel-perfect emulation. Streets of Rage 2 had checkerboard dithering for the character shadows, and also for the spotlight effect inside the bar (near the end of the first stage). This combination caused the shadows to flicker between fully black and invisible whenever those two checkerboard patterns were overlapping. This happened even on composite.
I'd love to see this actual effect replicated better. Most modern filters just kinda make it blurry but it doesn't really feel the same. Like, seeing some genuine dithering stuff in Sonic Mania would be ace.
@@anonymousperson6228 I assume you are using a 90s crt as well? it seems this effect looks best on crts with highly specific comb types, from a very specific period. for most, it's just a messy signal, with minimal visual improvement.
@@lukefortune8314 I've had reasonably good luck using the Retrotink 2x pro to convert the composite to HDMI. It doesn't look quite as nice as the original did, but there's definite dithering going on. Unfortunately, you get blurriness as part of the deal, so I tend to not use the composite unless I'm playing a game which benefits from dithering.
@D. Even the waterfall thing is pretty questionable to me as most models of the Genesis exhibit a heavy amount of rainbow banding on areas where dithering occurs, thus making it a fucking eyesore to look at. Using a 32X mostly eliminates this problem, but obviously it's not worth buying an obscure add-on just for that.
To hell with that. Even calling it "authentic" bothers me, most of the world didn't use composite for consoles much of the time anyway afaik, tho I live in the US and suffered with composite and dim CRTs forever anyway lol
Not just waterfalls, almost anything that emulates a transparency effect through dithering will look a little better. Edit: ah, someone else explained it better than me anyway.
@@reptilez13 What? By far most consoles of the time had only RF and composite outputs. The whole reason these tricks were employed is because devs knew that most people would be able to enjoy them.
Interesting. I never tought of this when I used to play on CRTs. Sometimes they looked really sharp and sometimes they were blurry. Personally I always preferred the sharp and clear image of the RGB and I saw the checkered pattern as a pleasing aesthetic, that's why I hated when it was blurred. Thankfully this video showed to me that the point of it was to create an illusion of color. In some games it fits perfectly, example, a checkered pink and blue looks awful on RGB but on composite it looks smoother, there are games that use checkered patterns everywhere and they can be headache inducing on RGB. Now I have a new light on these patterned graphics. The earthworm jim example was mindblowing. That's one I would prefer with the composite instead of RGB, it gives a nice 3D effect.
I haven't tried it yet, but maybe using RGB Scart into a standard domestic CRT TV would give the 'best of both worlds'? The natural smoothing of the CRT, with the cleanest image that the MegaDrive/Genesis can provide? I have an old Philips early 2000's widescreen model CRT so maybe I'll give it a look! RGB Scart into my LG LCD TV gives a gorgeously sharp and pristine image from my original Mk 1 MegaDrive, but yeah, that dithering effect is just lost completely and looks like ugly cross-hatch pixels... That being said, neither MegaDrive nor Saturn could do transparency effects (unless programmers on the Saturn knew how to use the two chips properly - many did, but didn't bother, it seems)!
@@bangerbangerbro Well, maybe I don't know how to use the terminology but what I mean is that; Let's suppose there's a checkerboard pattern (white and black) and if you are able to see the edges of every single pixel that's what I mean by "sharp". If, like in the case of the earthworm Jim example, the pixels aren't perfectly defined that's what I'd call "blurry". In this case tho, that "blurriness" is what blends the colors together (kinda like colors on a canvas) and gives some depth to the image. I hope it's clearer like this.
Thank you for revealing this important part of video game history. No wonder the pictures looked so nice back in the day and so clunky on the emulator.
This is a very good video about dithering and colour systems and I will recommend it to people in the future. I also learned some stuff about the rainbow thing too. Thank you.
Dithering was used a lot in PC-98 or Amiga games. Also in PC Engine, Mega Drive, SNES and many arcade games including some on Neo Geo. Dithering can be used to great effect both for graphics and to fake transparency. There are many great uses of dithering (on Mega Drive for example with games like MazinSaga, Earthworm Jim, Fantastic Dizzy, Comix Zone, Ecco the Dolphin...). And recently I realized that, when I look at new 2D games, HD stuff and all, sometimes I miss dithering! It gives a special, vintage look to the games (as long as it's used well). Lastly about connectivity, IMO both composite or RGB are good. It depends of each person's tastes, it also depends of the games... And the Mega Drive has both the composite which blends pixels the best AND the sharpest RGB so it's a win-win situation :D Anyway this was a nicely explained video with great capture quality. I gonna check more of your content.
It was indeed used in quite a few games on a number of systems! I just elected to focus this examination of the Sega Genesis. I feel like the choice to use certain pixel art scalers in new releases of classic games is definitely a questionable decision. It leaves a lot of people wanting the original graphics back, and rightfully so. But what if instead of applying a base scaling algorithm for the entire graphics set, they specifically included filters designed for dithering? Keep some razor sharp pixel art but blend what should be blended - Perhaps producing a "transparent" text box for Secret of Mana for example? You mentioned RGB, composite, and a person's tastes - I really agree with this. Honestly, I live by it. I was just writing a response to Vitor's comment and channeling a similar line of thought - I kinda treat consoles like cars. Sometimes they drive over to the upscaler with the fixed pixel panel, sometimes they go to the PVM, and sometimes... they go to the 80s RF set. It really just depends on my mood. Thanks for watching and for commenting!
You'd be glad to know that dithering is back! Not for additional colours, but for transparency. Alpha blending is computationally intensive and is prone to triangle sorting issues, so many 3D games nowadays use dithered transparency. Games like Monster Hunter World use it extensively, to blend away foreground object to prevent blocking the camera. GTAV used it in an interesting way, where some clever use of filtering actually blurs it back. It would be really cool if Displaced Gamers came out with a video on modern dithering :)
I love the look of dithering on Genesis games. I'm big on pixel art, so the look of the Genny on YPbPr is pure heaven :) Excellent and informative video, as always! The visual aids you created to illustrate the background tech involved is really helpful and well-done.
Very good video. I've taken interest in adding an effect similar to the one in composite video to any game using Reshade with color bleeding. Got pretty good results so far. I really love that aesthetic.
The round shield on Sonic 1 looks perfect with composite cable. It is the cable for a proper anti-aliasing combined with the beautiful screen of a nice CRT TV
The Atari ST programmers/artists used dithering a lot too because it had the same 512 color max palette like the Genesis. Great video! Thanks for all your excellent work.
This is one thing retro compilations NEVER get right; a CRT filter that effectively makes the dithering effect work. Instead, we get some ugly scanlines filter that is so dense it makes everything look terrible, and I'm pretty sure looks nothing like any real CRT in existence, and that's about all we get. On that front they really are lazy.
and sega and everyone else uses them cause they figure give the emulation guys poopoo thick lines. dark screen poo. its assumed the norm. they think us fools they think we happily lap it up
While not perfect and isn’t a retro compilation, Sonic Mania has a fairly decent filter compared to many others I’ve seen. The “CRT-Soft” option gives it scanlines and blurs the dithering enough to feel more authentic. It’s not PERFECT mind you, as I can still see the checkerboard patterns on the title screen for instance. But a HELL of a lot better than most offical attempts. It’s probably closer to S-Video, actually. I say PROBABLY, because I never really got to use S-Video.
A good crt filter needs to combine a lot of effects to accurately simulate the artifacts of a beam and interlaced imagery. For starters scanlines need to be composed of two separare pictures with an even and odd field of scanlines changing in rapid succession. The lines that are not translucent should have around 10-20% transparency added to simulate beam Decay and Picture ghosting. Then the edges of the screen should simulate the screen distortion from the rounded glas tube by distorting the lateral geometries (straight lines should not appear completely straight near the corners of the screen). Then a slight bloom effect on top of all filters, to simulate screen glare - as has been done in EmuVR. This last effect works particularly well in virtual reality as the angle of the viewpoint to the screen changes the glare in regards to ambient lighting. Lastly creating a diamond-shaped RGB or CMYK sub-pixel Image overlay to simulate the shadow mask. This was first demonstrated in early versions of MAMEUI as apperture filters.
Now there are great CRT filters such as "CRT Royale" that blends the pixels great and simulate a CRT very well. It even fixes the waterfall issues in games.
A platform that uses dithering a lot is the ZX-Spectrum. Due to this technic, developers could give some "ambar" and "green" colors to black & white games.
Thank you for this video! While I mostly dabble in emulation, I feel that composite and RF feel very nostalgic to me as this is how those games looked like when I grew up. The Sega Mega Drive's video output depended strongly in many of these pseudo effects and it's a shame the public knowledge of some of these has been lost as many don't know about these little details. Very informative and well-made video, thank you!
I've always loved the pixelated, unblurred dithering in retro games, like that Earthworm Jim at the end. It's a very cool art style to me. But I appreciate the aesthetic of blurring it, and am glad for people to have options.
Very nice! I became aware of all this recently while building a home arcade with my son's, emulating and using S-video from the pc GPU at many scaled resolutions, aspect ratios and tv settings yielded different results. None quite as significant as using Mario paint on a real snes connected to a tv through a recording Vcr and watching the playback ruin or enhance the homemade anti-aliasing and dither effect of my hand drawn and coloured scenes. It was fun trying to challenge myself to patiently draw higher definition scenes and when reviewing them having the details lost entirely. The fact that someone created and examined this connection advantage shows I've always been on the right track
I only really knew about these chrome and luma issues from the perspective of VHS and the issues you pointed out with dot crawl, etc. I had no idea this was being used as an intentional strategy in the digital realm. Man alive the creativity of people working with these kind of limitations is always so inspiring and fascinating
Companies used composite to their advantage even before the genesis. You can actually see "added details" in Metroid and Mario Bros 3 compared to an emulator. These devs knew what they were doing.
Living in Europe, SCART RGB was a thing for many years and I always wanted to have an RGB cable for my games consoles. I knew that unlike the SNES, the Genesis couldn't do proper transparencies and the dithering was always visible via RGB. But I thought it was a small price to pay for having a pixel-perfect picture. After playing on RGB for a while, I never wanted to go back to composite or RF!
i wonder if this method of creating "fake transparency" is working as good on PAL systems as it seems to work on NTSC - because the dithered "fake transparency" on the mega drive and sega saturn looks like exactly that - dithered and fake - even tho i am playing on a small crappy CRT with a crappy basic composite cable - it looks nothing like the "smooth" transparency i see in youtube videos like this one
KenjiTech i am using Recalbox with a simple hdmi that scart converter from ebay its 60hz ntsc signal and its super fluid and just checked Sinic 2 and and all the blue colour are blending together on the title screen. If you into retro gaming you must play on a tv whoch support ntsc signal. 80%f CRT's in eu support it!👌😎
Nice. I thought this was just some other faux connaisseur's clickbait, but kept me hooked the full 10minutes. THIS is how you talk about retro stuff/effects, comparison with examples on each little thing.
It's a really good point. A lot of older games actually look better with CRT filter if on a newer tv. This is especially true if you're playing something in 3D.
By the way! Incredible video in quality !! Proper professional looking video with the editing and showing off / explaining the pallette changing, it looks great ! You will have many more than 503 subscribers soon ! This I guarentee !
I have a model 1 and a model 2 sega mega drive, both hooked up to a crt tv. Model 1 is connected with RF cable and model 2 with rgb scart cable. i honestly prefer the RF picture in most games. Got to find me a composite scart some time. Thx for the video.
Growing up in a digital age, I rarely play classic games on original hardware. This has gave me a unique perspective on dithering - I see unblended checkerboard patterns as a part of the style.
Dithering is a lost art and that is why I use a composite connection with my Sega Genesis. I think Disney's The Lion King is another great example of how dithering on the Sega Genesis can produce more colors, especially on the title screen. Thanks for the video. Dithering also helped with full-motion video colors on the Sega CD.
I remember getting Sonic and Sonic 2 for my Genesis and being very impressed with the graphics on both... especially Sonic 2. You could definitely tell you were playing a 16-bit game when playing them. Back then, composite was the high quality connection... most people back then only used an RF connection. Genesis used dithering a lot due to it's low color pallet. 512 colors with about 64 colors on-screen at once was impressive compared to the original NES, but was sorely lacking vs. the SNES and NEO-GEO; and even to a degree the PC Engine/TG16, which also had 9-bit color, but could put about 240 colors in the background and about 240 colors on the sprites.
Nice to see a fellow composite video partisan, despite even having access to RGB with a PVM. The Genesis in particular out of all the vintage game consoles is such a bundle of compromises about audio and video that what's best is highly subjective and largely has to be decided per-game. The strong use of dithering in so many games makes composite video my primary choice on hardware, and I generally don't like the "sharp pixel" look of RGB and emulators. But then most variants of the Genesis have especially blurry composite video and it's kind of too blurry, I think. I wonder if S-video might be a good compromise, but I'm guessing the checkerboards aren't sufficiently blended with it, judging by the S-video examples in your PS1 dithering video. Then there's sound. People tend to think the model 1s sound best, and they definitely really botched the sound circuit on most model 2s making its end result awful, but the upgraded sound chip they used (the YM3438), can sound cleaner and clearer than the original (the YM2612), and some late model 2s fixed the sound circuit so it can shine. We normally would consider clearer, less noisy sound superior, right? But then some music and sounds in some games were made to take advantage of the flaw in the YM2612 that created additional noise, and effects will be missing on the later models! The track "Red Out" from After Burner II is a good example of this: right at the beginning there's a burst of noise with a whistling sound that descends in pitch with a YM2612, but it's barely audible with a YM3438. So that's another thing to take into consideration when choosing the most appropriate individual Genesis console for the best experience with any individual game. Clearly, Kevin Horton was aware of these considerations, because the Analogue Mega Sg has settings for a filter that selectively blends dithering patterns and a customizable level the audio distortion that some games took advantage of, which I think is really cool and makes me think maybe I should get one someday. Anyway, I watched the PS1 dithering video after this and decided to subscribe and was surprised to see the 1.9K on the button turn to 2K after I hit it - turns out I was your 2,000th subscriber!
Yeah, Kevtris' understanding of the hardware is quite exceptional, and the reason why the Analogue consoles are worth buying. I have a Super NT and it's worth every penny, especially since I can just plug it into my main TV and enjoy as I want, while keeping my actual SNES for when I want to play on a CRT. The Mega SG goes the extra mile with the additional graphics and sound options, and the ability to use with Sega CD! I think that's really awesome, and while I hope one day maybe support for the 32X could be added, I'm not going to hold my breath (I think it would be too difficult and/or the FPGA inside wouldn't be powerful enough to emulate it). I'm definitely going to pick up a Mega SG when I have some extra cash. Also, while they're currently sold out, Analogue makes a DAC specifically designed to plug their consoles into analogue displays. DEFINITELY worth checking out and I think makes the Analogue consoles more versatile, and even more of a great solution for retro gaming.
So few games actually use dithering in a meaningful and effective way that it's not even worth losing video quality over it. RGB for life. Plus the composite quality on Sega genesis is probably the worst I've seen out of all consoles of the era.
Great video. It’s great to see someone make a real argument for the “lesser” inputs. I’m an RGB snob now but as a kid I had 3 systems daisy chained via RF cables and didn’t notice any bad color
I know when I went from RF to composite on my NES, it got significantly sharper, with less color bleed, and the colors shifted from, say, a purple-ish pink to a true pink, like on the official artwork. I was blown away by the jump in quality.
Lol my family used to have a TV around that size, and it was a nightmare carrying that thing downstairs from the guest room when we were getting rid of it. I've owned a 17'' SR2000 before (really regret giving it back to the thrift store), and it was easy enough for me to carry on my own for short periods of time. It was from 1987, but the picture quality was all right, and it had those thick dials on the bottom of the TV (those scrolling ones that poked down out of the bottom ridge of the TV, not full sized knobs you had to turn) and one of those was adjustable sharpness. Zero sharpness gave the TV a SUPER 80's look. And I swear it was so much better than using a remote control, so easy to adjust something just by reaching forward and going *click click click* on a scroll knob. Ahh, now I'm reliving the old days...
I come back to this video every so often as this stuff is so fascinating to me still, I’ve adapted my retro setup as a result too. I’ve now got my system set up so RGB goes into SCART 1 and RF is converted to composite and sent into SCART 2 via my VCR, RGB looks great and I love the checkerboard patterns, but it’s a fun experience to switch over to RF and see how the games were intended to be seen. My equipment is all PAL though so even on RF rainbowing is very common and the signal doesn’t fully blend all the colours, even though the edges are a lot fuzzier on my CRT. I’m working on some comparisons for /r/CRTGaming at the moment actually.
That's why it's annoying when you get people who think blocky pixel graphics is retro and how the game looks, when blocky pixel games never existed and is only a result of running the game on screens not intended for the game.
If you lived in Europe or Japan you could plug the console in with a cable that would carry rgb to the screen. Computers also generally had an rgb hook up to a monitor, it was very rare to see one that hooked up with a combined signal (composite) and of course there was no need to convert the signal to a radio frequency (rf) like was the standard with tv systems.
The behind the scenes look at why dithering was used and the effect it has when viewed on composite TV is fascinating. I know Game Hut has done some videos exploring how certain effects were achieved on various old console titles and this fits right in there. Thanks!
This is a factor in all of the systems from that era to some extent, but the 16 bit consoles had it particularly bad because they were the first that reliably supported composite, S-video and RGB. Though, the Saturn notoriously also has extensive problems with dithering being used to fake semi-transparent surfaces. It might surprise you to learn the SNES also resorts to dithering for transparency at times. (Super Mario World does it in places.) - why is this a surprise? Well, because the system can perform additive or subtractive colour blending of graphics layers. (Specifically the functions A+B, (A+B)/2, A-B and (A-B)/2) So if it can do that, why the dithering? Well, the problem is, depending on what kind of graphics mode you're using, there are as many as 5 layers of stuff being combined. And the blending logic is not between these layers, but between something they refer to as 'screens', there's two of them - the Main screen, and the sub-screen; You can choose where all 5 layers of graphics go (4 backgrounds and one sprite layer - they can be in neither, one, or both screens, though things which are in neither are invisible.), but everything in one screen is added or subtracted from everything in the other. (mostly. There's a quirk with sprites that lets you have both transparent and non-transparent sprites at the same time.) Let's say you want to replicate sonic's transparent waterfall effect on a SNES using actual hardware transparency - well, you couldn't just dump the background layer onto the subscreen, and the foreground into the main screen; that would make the entire foreground layer transparent. Luckily the snes has 3 background layers in the most commonly used mode, so you can put the background layer in the subscreen, put most of the foreground in one layer and put it in the subscreen as well, leaving a gap where the waterfall goes, and put the waterfall in it's own layer and put that through the main screen. Great. And if you were trying to recreate sonic mostly as is, that'd work fine. But what if you already have 3 layers of background, and you aren't interested in an entire layer being transparent? Well, now you're stuck - because a layer being transparent or not is an all or nothing affair, so instead, you have to use a dithering trick to pull it off. (There's other issues with hardware transparency on SNES - notably if you use high resolution or pseudo-hires mode, the hardware uses the main and subscreen for that, which means you can't do colour blending with it. I believe in fact that the first intended purpose of having a 'main' and 'sub' screen was to deal with the two fields of an interlaced graphics display, but that they later found more impressive uses for it, and this original purpose fell by the wayside.) The problem of course with this composite stuff, dithering and so on is that the end result depends on the colour system - what produces the intended Effect on NTSC will generally produce a different effect on PAL, and both will produce different results to SECAM. This isn't so much of a problem in relation to Composite blending to produce transparency effects, nor is it likely to produce big issues with what dithered graphics look like, but it DOES completely mess up artifact colours. (CGA composite mode for instance would not work even slightly if it were using a PAL display) A side issue here is intent - I get the feeling with the SNES/SFC in particular, that whether games were designed with Composite or RGB output in mind shifted over time. - especially true of Japanese exclusives, since RGB was increasingly available there into the 90's. For instance, Super Mario world contains dithered transparency, suggesting it was intended for Composite. But the likes of Seiken Densetsu 3 looks really quite ugly using Composite, and yet it's one of the prettiest games on the system in RGB - and since it's a 1995 Japanese exclusive, I feel reasonably confident that this much prettier RGB version is probably what they designed it to look like, rather than the mess that results over composite. Is this true for the Mega Drive/Genesis as well? Most likely. Though the incentive to use composite related tricks would be stronger on that system no doubt. It all depends on who developed these games, when they made them, and what their intended primary market was. Europe has had RGB the longest and most consistently (Scart is fundamentally RGB, and was so widespread in the early 90's already that PAL Nintendo systems sold in europe in the 90's and even the gamecube and wii included a composite to scart adapter. - scart does support composite usually, but it's primarily intended for RGB...), but PAL related development is frequently an afterthought - even from many european developers! Japan had I think less consistent access to RGB than Europe, but it's still fairly widespread and several common standards for use with TV existed even in the 90's. (including one using the same connector as SCART but with different pinout - because that's not at all confusing. XD) But America... Yeah, America had S-video I guess, but they never really had RGB. The first Americans got any moderately reliable access to anything even resembling RGB was when Component cables became widely available as an option. I guess historically you could've tried a VGA monitor, but you would've had to deal with the whole 15 khz to 31 khz conversion thing (which is what is now being solved when using a scan doubler.) In any event, unfortunately it may be that you end up having to say on a game by game basis whether composite or RGB is preferable. At least we can fairly definitively say there is no good reason to use RF or S-Video unless you just don't have anything better.
Well explained,, i first always used composite for my pal snes and i was fine with it, untill i used RGB scart and i was mind blows away, i saw colors wich i never saw before, it was a huge step,,,,but at some points i was also very disappointed because some games did had overbrighted colors or they did shown dithering patterns like shadowns such as in f zero or ninja gaiden triloggy, yoshi’s island do have dithering patterns in the intro screen, wich i never saw with composite. So it’s a mixed bag for me, i do like composite video for covering those ugly dithering patterns but i do like RGB scart for it’s purist clean colors. That’s why i often switch from cables from time to time!!!
At the time of the SNES and Genesis composite was widely available on tvs in America via RCA cables. I remember because we finally didn’t have to use the stupid RF connector for the systems like we did with the NES.
As I worked with graphics from 90 and forward I can tell that the concept of RBG composite from production did not exist. Everybody wanted a sharper and better picture. Blur or smear was bad. Dithering to fake alpha or to fake more color was just what it was. An effort. Of course we noted that some things looked better with composite. And some looked better with RGB but it was never “hey I plan that this effect should look good only on composite” They also at this time. Some was on and liked dither and some loathed it. It was art styles more or less.
@nunya baznus I agree. S-Video is the best affordable option for a lot of those systems. I'm not gonna go to the trouble to import Scart cables, adapters and physically modify to get RGB. Though, I've gone through the trouble to obtain specialized component cables (Retrovision) for the SNES for $30. I also bought some modified Xbox 360 component cables to use for the OG Xbox for around $30. If there's an relatively affordable option for component on old consoles, I'll go with it. Otherwise, S-video or composite for me.
I was first exposed to RGB in arcade games , and noticed the greatly improved clarity as a early teenager. Upon getting an Amiga 500 and common companion Commodore 1084 RGB monitor in 1987 at 13 years old, anything less than RGB was always an awful compromise (of course, earlier Amigas, as well as Atari STs had color RGB since 1985). When switching to 16-bit consoles a few years later, I was thrilled to get an S-video cable for my SNES to a basic 32" Sony Trinitron, which was a great improvement over composite. Sega Genesis colors always looked muddy on TVs, because of its poor video encoder chip (compared to Turbografx-16 and SNES consoles). I'd ALWAYS take RGB over any other output on these 80s era systems, with original complimentary scanlines to mellow and stylize the relatively low pixel resolution.
Found your channel from a tweet by Joe at GameSack. Can't believe I've never come across your channel before. Amazing videos! The dithering on the Genesis is the primary reason I keep my Laseractive connected to my TV at all times and is my primary way of playing Genesis\MegaCD games. While I use RGB when using my other Genesis\Mega Drive consoles, you just can't beat the look of the composite output for this system.
Welcome, goldenretrogames! I have definitely found strong preferences from people when it comes to RGB vs composite on the Genesis. At the end of the day, I hope every viewer here does what they want to do when it comes to Genesis/Mega Drive output - that they make their own decision. Also - I wish that I could form a sentence that contains "my LaserActive" in it, but alas! Not yet!
Retro tink 2x pro has an AMAZING feature that slightly blurs your component signal's luma channel to get the transparency/color blending back. It's better than composite as it's not as blurry and it doesn't have the rainbow artifacting.
"low-res YPbPr" mode is apparently what this is called, interesting. I'll be hooking up my genesis model 2 to my 2x pro multiformat today to look at this. I had no idea this was even a feature lol.
@@immediamalcoccinello483 Yeah I can't see I see too much rainbowing on my UK Mega Drive but I want to say for some reason that I have seen it before, maybe I am confusing with a youtube video?
Yeah I have an NTSC CRT with composite hooked up to real Genesis hardware. The Rainbow bands on the waterfalls are headache inducing. So strange that the PAL versions would not have the rainbow problems. You'd think it'd be optimized for areas with NTSC. Since most areas that had PAL also had Scart or RGB.
@@overnightdelivery It’s not to do with the game, it’s the video signals, PAL is much better at handling colour since it was designed for use in mountainous European regions with lots of hills and bad weather, PAL signals have a system where it averages chroma information to get a more accurate result, and discards off-spec colour, unfortunately this means the colours are “lower resolution” than NTSC with poor quality signals, but it’s much more accurate. Kinda like a 360p video with perfect sharpness vs a 480p video with a blur filter applied.
It looks like a**. I don't know what you people are smoking. I rather take a sharper image than a soupy image just to blend the dots to create few more shades. I have the option to use composite signal on retroarch and I use it for the novelty factor but could never play a game seriously with it on.
@@ajsingh4545 it looks like how it's supposed to look. I don't want the games to look like in an emulator or to lose features like transparencies and the smoother shading or the "simulated extra colors".
This is excellent, i think there should an academic field or something of studying the hidden genius of older tech, and how the techniques were a lot more complex and revealing than we thought they were.
Love this. It's really hard for people nowadays, who grew up without analog/composite video signals, and only know HD, or quickly moved on to upgrade their TV to HD. graphics were made the way they were for dithering reasons, but to most people, it just looks "pixelated". When I first started messing with emulators, my default set up used scanlines to get a more accurate simulated arcade effect. MAME now has a video setting HLSL to simulate everything a CRT monitor can do. It looks a thousand times better, and more accurate. I own about 20 arcade machines and I try to keep original CRT monitors in them.
More re-releases of old games need to keep in mind the use of dithering and include optional filters to emulate the way it's meant to look. It's a trick not exclusive to Genesis/Mega Drive games. The GBA for example with games such as Sonic Advance 1-3 and the Mega Man Zero games also makes use of dithering. It's very noticeable in the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, as places that use dithering stand out, and even appear totally messed up when the smoothing filter is applied (among other fudged up details. I really hate that filter). The upcoming Sonic Origins so far appears to be yet another re-release of an old game that uses dithering but has not taken into account what this should look like on screen. It doesn't seem like devs these days really care about the difference in how screens output visual information compared to back in the day when re-releasing games, and so all to often dithering just looks... Wrong.
Madness I thought I was wrong when I noticed Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong looks better with composite vs rgb even emulated! I ise emus with hdmi composite converter on CRT's.
You're never wrong when you think something looks better, sounds better, etc. Everything in your life is through your perception, so everything you perceive to be true is true.
I saw a great video that went into depth about how Rare took all of the high-quality assets from DKC and Killer Instinct and whittled them down to fit within the limitations of the SNES hardware, it was a really complex undertaking. You have to remember that at the time, they were building all of the models for the characters and backgrounds and everything on high-end Silicon Graphics workstations, which if memory serves me correctly cost around $100k each. So they started with incredibly detailed, high color models and had to greatly reduce them in quality. They did a really great job of it, too. The image quality degradation is definitely more noticeable on higher-end displays than on regular old CRT over composite. Neither game looks bad by any means, but there's a lot more color banding versus a CRT which does a nice job of smoothing everything out. I really miss the days when SNES over composite was the best I had available and I just had fun with the games rather than worrying about which model TV I play it on or what connection I use. It's interesting to explore, no doubt, but at the end of the day the point is to just have fun.
Adam Baldwin awesome comment Adam! Rare is the greatest developers of all time because of the achievements they had in snes times. Hands down genesis and the snes were the best consoles when it comes to platform games. I just started to play Yoshi's Island as I missed it back then. Such a pure masterpiece. I am making home arcade emu stations using a crt. I wonder if programmers could come up with modern games which supports the old school retro technology!?
Earthworm Jim is a very handsome looking game. It came at that point where the Mega Drive was becoming elderly tech, and programmers by that point knew every possible trick to use in the graphics. That's how a game like that can be run on a system designed in the 80s and on a modern system like the PlayStation (although it won't have taxed the PS' hardware much!). Most game systems have that impressive late period where the best looking material comes out using every ounce of power the processor can muster. I like to think of it as a bit like a victory lap at the end of a life cycle!
Lately, I am having renewed appreciation for composite video signal. I totally agree with you that some games benefit more than others from dithering--fake transparency effects, shadows, gradients, etc. I find it quite interesting the diverse preference of people regarding video signals, monitors/televisions, resolutions and aspect ratios. I think bias is in large part shaped by people's unique and/or peculiar circumstances such as nostalgia, using particular revision of console, television and cable all of which independently and in combination can produce huge differences in quality and thus opinion. That said, I have come to appreciate all video signals (RF to RGB) and like to believe I've seen some of the best (and worst) they can offer. Even RF can produce nice output when finely tuned. That said, most revisions of Mega Drive / Genesis model 1 (and 2) composite signal are notorious and widely regarded has having one of the worst (i.e. blurry) outputs among various consoles. The AV Famicom, PC Engine and even Genesis 3 in contrast produce in my opinion a much nicer, cleaner composite signal where you have a fair compromise between definition and that organic look that takes advantage of dithering.
Hey azmune. Thank you for your comment. It is pretty much right-on with my thoughts on video signals. I found that when chatting with various people prior to making this video that many of them had very strong preferences leaning one direction vs the other (composite vs RGB). Both sides had strong representation. There are some Sega fans (specifically Genesis/Mega Drive) that have also continued to push mods of their systems in order to find a higher quality composite than the native one provided by the system. Nostalgia for many is the key component - not necessarily an objective view, but the view that is important to them. I don't believe a consensus should be reached regarding how people game so much as that they can and have options available. I personally will game using an upscaler and a plasma display... but then want to hook the same system up to an old consumer CRT that was period appropriate and play it as well.
Thank you as well for the upload and excellent explanation. I wish you expanded on the differences/details between notch and combed filtering. Is one superior to the other and it possible for some (high end) television sets to offer both types, or are they mutually exclusive? Also, how does one go about finding out which kind of combed filtering is employed (two line, three line, etc.)? Regarding Genesis/Mega Drive, since hardware already outputs RGB natively and quite nicely there is no need to mod for this signal. In all these years I have only come across one person who discussed improving its composite out. Even then, he or she ultimately ended up with the more common s-video mod. I think the population with affinity to composite out is very small. It refers to that group who use their gaming console with standard definition CRTs as it doesn't work too well paired with processors or modern displays. Lastly, thank you for bringing to our awareness Sega's 16-bit console as one that arguably takes most advantage of dithering. Given the Genesis / Mega Drive weakness of limited color palette, this gives many of its games the illusion of more color and depth. Something that can get lost even with s-video. Yes, you can always soften the image via filters or bring down sharpness but you also lose a bit of its purity.
I love dithering in playstation games mostly but the genesis did a good job using it. I hate that I enjoy both the RBG and Composite look because deciding on which one is hard. Lol
Great video! This made me realize that the heavy dithering actually looked good on the hardware these games were designed for. I think modern 2D games should use semi transparent pixels in most cases instead, because it looks alot better on modern monitors
I've always thought that increasing image quality is moving further away from the "correct" experience. These games weren't made to be seen at such high fidelity that we see them today. They were made for kids at home with cheaper, older TVs. So if you want to argue for the most accurate, and the intended way to view/play a game... Then older TVs with older cables that blend the dithering is the way to go. The way I always like to look at it is that retro gaming always needs a little bit of crust in order to be good. Don't cut off the crust.
I agree to an extent, however, also consider RGB was still included on Sega consoles without modification and the developers were likely using high end hardware, computer monitors, etc. Plus, as mentioned in the video, more expensive TV had different image processing. While it's a nice effect, I don't think you exactly experience the game as intended by the developers all the time.
@@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli I disagree. I believe that game developers created games in anticipation for the majority of people viewing them on cheaper equipment. We are not developers. We were not meant to see the game like developers. This example has aged poorly but... Michael Jackson used to have a philosophy that his music should always sound good on shitty car stereos. So they would play his music back through a shitty stereo in the studio to make sure it still sounded good. This was coined the "sonic quality" coincidentally. I believe my theory to be true, as most of the games of this era have visuals that were clearly intended to be seen at a lower fidelity. They aren't as detailed as they could be. Slightly minimalist. In my opinion, the way to truely appreciate these games the way they were meant to is by viewing them on the equipment of the time that the majority of people were using. Most people were not using high end equipment.
Yep! And same for the audio too, I heard ALL of my video games coming out of shitty monotone speakers that were built into the TV's at the time. I think the Amiga and SNES sound like crap when set to stereo sound, I especially the Amiga since it only had 4 channels with 2 hard panned in each direction if you used stereo. So you'd only have drums coming out of one side, bass coming out of one side and so forth. I never heard it that way before emulators and I thought it was weird. I only just realized this like a year ago. The audio was usually designed with the fact in mind that most people were hearing it on subpar mono TV speakers.
Countless forum and social media claims to the contrary, the Genesis and its games were designed around the "inferior" video output and inputs used by the average consumer. Set up a Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, X'Eye, Wondermega or CDX properly with Composite and the video quality is consistent with no wavy lines, "jail bars", or overly obvious moire effects. Composite can be just fine. I have also found RGB very enjoyable as an alternative, mostly with the HD Retrovision cables or simple RGB to Component cables. As a result, on my 27" RCA SDTV, 32" Sony Trinitron XBR, or 50" Panasonic Plasma screen, I can choose between Composite, S-Video or Component for all of the consoles that support it. I frequently am more than content with Composite, as the Component converted RGB can be too bright or creates artifacts. By contrast, emulation on an LCD or my Plasma screen always disappoints me, jarring me right out of the experience with dull or too bright colors and broken dithered art that should have been better blended. Even with emulation (or compilation) filters I much prefer original hardware with Composite.
Great post man. What do you think causes some of the wavy line distortions and jail bars in genesis composite? You mentioned improper setup, isn't it as simple as getting an official composite cable and a 240p/480i standard definition CRT?
U 4got the most important factor in making it all work: using the shittiest TV possible. If u used an e.g. Sony Trinitron (which I had), it'll look sharp and the effect is negated.
I used a 27" Sony Trinitron myself, which had S-video and composite. Basically, I could choose between the two different settings by going between the inputs. Composite fully showed the right effect while S-video partially seemed to fix it, though not fully.
So basically all emulators have to do is emulate this effect. That is not hard. What is hard is determining where the original game authors used this to their advantage or not. Thats a huge undertaking that would need each game to be played through and notes on various effects to be looked at.
Back in the day before I was ever able to upgrade the video quality of my Genesis, I always noticed dithering. The water was NEVER transparent in Sonic the Hedgehog. I always noticed the lines. It was super blurry, but they were noticeable. I always noticed dithered meshes. Slap a 32X on the machine and use its composite and the dithering becomes even more clear. When people show examples of blending using composite, those are images like I've never seen on any TV when I used composite. Even when I used RF in black and white... dithering. It's just something that's always been there for me. So going RGB on the Genesis in my opinion doesn't lose its intended effect.
RGB on the Genesis really does look amazing. I feel that the gamut that separates composite and RGB - two native signals available with the console - is mind-blowing in its size. In addition to the composite signal having the typical composite quality attributes, it often tends to not be encoded properly - resulting in a large amount of artifacts. Those artifacts probably enhanced the "dithering blur" quite a bit on some consoles, but that aspect certainly wasn't consistent for all hardware (just as you mentioned with the 32X improvement). That particular model 1 I used for a few seconds of footage is definitely an outlier. The display also plays a key role in how composite looks due to how much effort goes (or does not go...) into decoding the signal. It sounds like you have had a pretty good experience with the television/monitors that you have paired with the system in the past if the blur-effect on the dithering did not seem as pronounced as some examples others have provided. I assume this group of variables (system + display used) contributes greatly toward how passionate many people feel on the subject.
Reminds me of the Wii's optical cable, when we connected it suddenly looked so good and colorful! I never thought Genesis needed a cable like this, I wonder what it needs for flat screen TVs too, great video!
I worked as an artist on Genesis games back in the 90s. It was definitely cool how we could create more colors than were in the actual palette by using creative dithering. Working on SNES was fun, too, of course, but I always thought the things we could do on Genesis with pixels were pretty interesting. I'd grown up using so-called "artifacted colors" on my TRS-80 CoCo and the adjacent dithered pixel stuff on Genesis totally reminded me of that. Cool video, thanks!
Was dithering not possible on the SNES?
@@albertnortononymous9020 There are plenty of SNES games that use dithering too.
@@albertnortononymous9020 Snes games use dithering but the composite quality of the Snes was sharper then the Genesis so you don't get near the amount of blending as you would on Genesis.
For example play Mickey Mania via composite on both Genesis and Snes (The Genesis dithering blends, the Snes dithering does not)
@@supersexysega I'll have to test this but this might explain why I remember Mortal Kombat 1-3 having better graphics on the Sega than on the SNES!
@@TRS-Eric None of the MK's on Genesis are going to look as good as thier Snes counterparts.
MK3/UMK3 on Genesis with the dithering blended (The game uses alot of dithering) looks extremely close to the Snes version. They were done by the same developer.
MK1/MK2 on Genesis don't use very much dithering and they look pretty bad compared to the Snes versions.
There are shaders for emulators that can blend dither patterns while otherwise retaining sharp pixels you'd expect from an RGB signal, they aren't perfect but maybe it's one step closer to getting the best of both worlds.
Indeed. Until this is somehow achieved on real hardware, RGB it is.
cool. can you give a few keywords or examples on that. what mode should i pick for that?
I like to use 25% scanline effect on the Fusion emulator.
Kega Fusion has a shader like that, idk where i downloaded it but i know it exists
@@m_tpa mdapt
That Earthworm Jim example is actually beautiful. Truly an artist who understood how to use this technique to its full advantage.
Just another urban legend , sorry but the rca just melt pixels on screen , the rgb corrected this blurring effect, never meant by creators of those games which were built on pc with another clean signal not at all rca
@@stonecoldpes6 as an artist i can tell you all artists make art to look best in the medium of the final product, not in their monitor screen. what's the point if (for example) my t-shirt design looks good in my monitor but looks like ass in actual t-shirt?
@@babixillo exactly , that's what i a m telling , they never thought about shitty rca or rf output. Don't be sad man
The existence of the vertical lined sections in the Earthworm Jim graphic does indicate it deliberately targeted the blurring effect of low bandwidth analog video. That said, I don't agree that that's the only way it can be appreciated. Seeing it dithering and all is also pleasing. Would you all have appreciated the smoothed over version as much if you hadn't seen the lengths the artist went to achieve it in the clear "rgb" view?
@@Autotrope absolutly not
It just blow my mind insane how studios took every quirk and even imperfections from the technology of the time and use that as an advantage to make it all look better
But the effect did not work for everyone worldwide. So it wasn't a silver bullet, but a decision with pros and cons. Games that abused dithering looked pretty bad with RGB.
Staring at the backgrounds for Green Hill Zone makes me think how Sonic was a completely new idea once.
Felix the cat ; - )
Yeah.
Sonic fans are weird people.
it makes me think how water couldn't possibly fall like that. the waterfall is in the background, but you can see the further background behind it? what's it falling over, a glass cliff? and where's the source of the water??
@@doburu4835 REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I picked up a Japanese Mega Drive today with a composite cable and was blown away by how great it looked. This video explains why - thank you!
I usually go with s-video cables for my consoles but the Mega Drive doesn’t have that option, however after learning about dithering I’m more than happy to be stuck with composite for the Mega Drive. Great video - thank you!
it was meant to be played in composite .mode not rgb
in the early 90s theres was no svideo cables or tvs with that support
@@xtremegold2950 That's not correct. The model 1 Mega Drive/Genesis has an RGB out, as does the model 1 Master System. In PAL regions, Sega sold an official RGB Scart cable - I use one on my Mega Drive.
The model 1 Mega Drive supports RGB, composite, and RF. Not 100% sure about other models, although I believe the model 2 also has RGB out.
In Europe, Scart TVs were not uncommon by the time the Mega Drive was released. However, even in the USA, Sega provided the option to output RGB.
@ not in west . those scart cables were unknown the ntsc televisions has no inputs or support . in the early 90s that could be the reason why sega . made many games with composite bleeding images advantages . giving a ilusion of extra colors on screen by just using a compsite yellow cable .. most games new realeses came before in the west first.
in pal terrirory 1 year or 2 year later.
the console was desing to be played for western ntsc tv sets using composite
@@xtremegold2950 In the _west_? In western Europe - where I live - Scart TVs were becoming increasingly common by the late 1980s. Hence Sega released an official RGB Scart cable!
The western Mega Drive/Genesis was designed to offer 3 video outputs options - RGB, composite, and RF because of the differences in TVs available at the time. No body is talking about S-Video, we're talking about RGB. You do realise these are different things, don't you?
You're just wrong on this. The standard output is actually RF - this was the default cable supplied with the MD in both Europe and the USA for the model 1, and as far as I'm aware the model 2 as well. Composite cables had to be purchased separately. The majority of people were probably using RF through the life of the system.
The only region with composite as a standard output was Japan, which didn't support RF. But regardless the MD from it's launch supported RGB - as the Master System had in 1985/1986.
Many years ago I first noticed this phenomenon while playing Streets of Rage 2 on an emulator. In the bar, there are yellow lamps shining down with a transparent glow but in the emulator, it was an ugly curtain of yellow pixels. Back then I just chalked that up to maybe just a flaw of the emulator itself
Dude, you're killing it with the subject matter. These are all things that really need to be said concerning the look of retro video. With that in mind, I personally feel the benefits of RBG on a CRT are just too great, and I willfully accept the loss of the extra colors and transparency that composite gives.
10/10 video essay. Keep it up!
Thanks, Mike! This subject - on the Genesis/Mega Drive in particular - has been an interesting point of contention amongst gamers. I love the RGB output from the Genesis and will use it when playing those games, but I'll also sometimes hook it up and play it on an old RF-only TV depending on my mood.
@@DisplacedGamers same here. Sometimes i used composite on my crt, and sometimes i used rgb (via hdmi, with a convertor) on my 23 inch lcd.
@@DisplacedGamers What about s-video as a compromise? Or is it not that simple. Could you do a video comparing s-video on bvm's? It seems people think if you go bvm or pvm, then you must only use rgb and it would be a waste to use the rest. Do you think that's true?
Thankfully the emulator I have on Retroarch let's me choose composite, s-video and RGB filters and the composite video with scanlines enabled actually works pretty well and looks closer to what I remember on my real sega genesis back in the days. It even blends the colors pretty well when the composite mode is chosen. Great to have a choice.
maybe depending on a few games it may be preferred
Well done! This is why I use composite cables when playing my Sega Genesis. The effect is also very effective when seeing the FMVs on the Seg CD. I am glad to see the technique of dithering being more appreciated now. It is a creative trick to help get away from the limitations of the hardware.
I love how you explained what dithering is, and how it was used as a form of visual trickery in the most basic way possible. You Basically said "here is the info....do what you want with it" lol. 5 years on, and this is as relevant as ever with all of the upscalers and growing community of retro gamers. Cool, and informative video!
Two other games worth looking:
FIFA International Soccer (released in 1993) had vertical stripes to simulate a transparent gray overlay when displaying scores. That looks nice on a TV, but very ugly on a pixel-perfect emulation.
Streets of Rage 2 had checkerboard dithering for the character shadows, and also for the spotlight effect inside the bar (near the end of the first stage). This combination caused the shadows to flicker between fully black and invisible whenever those two checkerboard patterns were overlapping. This happened even on composite.
Secret of Mana's text boxes.
The alien boss in SoR. That thing was one of the best examples of dithering of all time if my memory serves.
I'd love to see this actual effect replicated better. Most modern filters just kinda make it blurry but it doesn't really feel the same.
Like, seeing some genuine dithering stuff in Sonic Mania would be ace.
I used to hook my laptop up to an old CRT through an HDMI converter when playing retro games. Worked well for achieving the effect I was looking for.
As a person who uses an actual Sega Genesis, I can say that it mostly just looks a little blurry. The games on the emulators aren’t too different.
@@anonymousperson6228 I assume you are using a 90s crt as well? it seems this effect looks best on crts with highly specific comb types, from a very specific period. for most, it's just a messy signal, with minimal visual improvement.
@@lukefortune8314 I've had reasonably good luck using the Retrotink 2x pro to convert the composite to HDMI. It doesn't look quite as nice as the original did, but there's definite dithering going on. Unfortunately, you get blurriness as part of the deal, so I tend to not use the composite unless I'm playing a game which benefits from dithering.
What I learned: If you want the most authentic waterfalls you gotta go with composite.
@D. Even the waterfall thing is pretty questionable to me as most models of the Genesis exhibit a heavy amount of rainbow banding on areas where dithering occurs, thus making it a fucking eyesore to look at. Using a 32X mostly eliminates this problem, but obviously it's not worth buying an obscure add-on just for that.
Don't go chasing waterfalls
To hell with that. Even calling it "authentic" bothers me, most of the world didn't use composite for consoles much of the time anyway afaik, tho I live in the US and suffered with composite and dim CRTs forever anyway lol
Not just waterfalls, almost anything that emulates a transparency effect through dithering will look a little better. Edit: ah, someone else explained it better than me anyway.
@@reptilez13 What? By far most consoles of the time had only RF and composite outputs. The whole reason these tricks were employed is because devs knew that most people would be able to enjoy them.
Interesting. I never tought of this when I used to play on CRTs. Sometimes they looked really sharp and sometimes they were blurry.
Personally I always preferred the sharp and clear image of the RGB and I saw the checkered pattern as a pleasing aesthetic, that's why I hated when it was blurred.
Thankfully this video showed to me that the point of it was to create an illusion of color. In some games it fits perfectly, example, a checkered pink and blue looks awful on RGB but on composite it looks smoother, there are games that use checkered patterns everywhere and they can be headache inducing on RGB.
Now I have a new light on these patterned graphics. The earthworm jim example was mindblowing.
That's one I would prefer with the composite instead of RGB, it gives a nice 3D effect.
Yep, Most games don't even use dithering to a great effect, so I see a no loss.
Oh what like you saw the dithering being visible as an indication that the image was sharp?
composite was always good enough for me.
I haven't tried it yet, but maybe using RGB Scart into a standard domestic CRT TV would give the 'best of both worlds'? The natural smoothing of the CRT, with the cleanest image that the MegaDrive/Genesis can provide?
I have an old Philips early 2000's widescreen model CRT so maybe I'll give it a look!
RGB Scart into my LG LCD TV gives a gorgeously sharp and pristine image from my original Mk 1 MegaDrive, but yeah, that dithering effect is just lost completely and looks like ugly cross-hatch pixels...
That being said, neither MegaDrive nor Saturn could do transparency effects (unless programmers on the Saturn knew how to use the two chips properly - many did, but didn't bother, it seems)!
@@bangerbangerbro Well, maybe I don't know how to use the terminology but what I mean is that; Let's suppose there's a checkerboard pattern (white and black) and if you are able to see the edges of every single pixel that's what I mean by "sharp".
If, like in the case of the earthworm Jim example, the pixels aren't perfectly defined that's what I'd call "blurry".
In this case tho, that "blurriness" is what blends the colors together (kinda like colors on a canvas) and gives some depth to the image.
I hope it's clearer like this.
Thank you for this. It's amazing what developers could accomplish with dithering on composite.
Thank you for revealing this important part of video game history. No wonder the pictures looked so nice back in the day and so clunky on the emulator.
This is a very good video about dithering and colour systems and I will recommend it to people in the future. I also learned some stuff about the rainbow thing too. Thank you.
And now we can detect and blend that dither with upscalers. What a time to be alive
Dithering was used a lot in PC-98 or Amiga games. Also in PC Engine, Mega Drive, SNES and many arcade games including some on Neo Geo.
Dithering can be used to great effect both for graphics and to fake transparency. There are many great uses of dithering (on Mega Drive for example with games like MazinSaga, Earthworm Jim, Fantastic Dizzy, Comix Zone, Ecco the Dolphin...).
And recently I realized that, when I look at new 2D games, HD stuff and all, sometimes I miss dithering! It gives a special, vintage look to the games (as long as it's used well).
Lastly about connectivity, IMO both composite or RGB are good. It depends of each person's tastes, it also depends of the games... And the Mega Drive has both the composite which blends pixels the best AND the sharpest RGB so it's a win-win situation :D
Anyway this was a nicely explained video with great capture quality. I gonna check more of your content.
It was indeed used in quite a few games on a number of systems! I just elected to focus this examination of the Sega Genesis.
I feel like the choice to use certain pixel art scalers in new releases of classic games is definitely a questionable decision. It leaves a lot of people wanting the original graphics back, and rightfully so.
But what if instead of applying a base scaling algorithm for the entire graphics set, they specifically included filters designed for dithering? Keep some razor sharp pixel art but blend what should be blended - Perhaps producing a "transparent" text box for Secret of Mana for example?
You mentioned RGB, composite, and a person's tastes - I really agree with this. Honestly, I live by it. I was just writing a response to Vitor's comment and channeling a similar line of thought - I kinda treat consoles like cars. Sometimes they drive over to the upscaler with the fixed pixel panel, sometimes they go to the PVM, and sometimes... they go to the 80s RF set. It really just depends on my mood.
Thanks for watching and for commenting!
You'd be glad to know that dithering is back! Not for additional colours, but for transparency. Alpha blending is computationally intensive and is prone to triangle sorting issues, so many 3D games nowadays use dithered transparency. Games like Monster Hunter World use it extensively, to blend away foreground object to prevent blocking the camera. GTAV used it in an interesting way, where some clever use of filtering actually blurs it back.
It would be really cool if Displaced Gamers came out with a video on modern dithering :)
@@DisplacedGamers what software do you use to look at code for nes and sega to see palette shuffling etc
I love the look of dithering on Genesis games. I'm big on pixel art, so the look of the Genny on YPbPr is pure heaven :) Excellent and informative video, as always! The visual aids you created to illustrate the background tech involved is really helpful and well-done.
Oh, that's why the pipes in Chemical Plant zone have a rainbow effect
Good eye there buddy.
I can't tell you how much I love your videos, keep up the good work!
Very good video. I've taken interest in adding an effect similar to the one in composite video to any game using Reshade with color bleeding. Got pretty good results so far.
I really love that aesthetic.
The round shield on Sonic 1 looks perfect with composite cable. It is the cable for a proper anti-aliasing combined with the beautiful screen of a nice CRT TV
Dude how do you not have more views? The production quality of your videos is amazing and you have the perfect voice for it. Love it!
Thanks, Silverhold. I really appreciate your comment. If you know any place to share these videos to people that might enjoy them, please feel free!
The Atari ST programmers/artists used dithering a lot too because it had the same 512 color max palette like the Genesis.
Great video! Thanks for all your excellent work.
Fascinating discussion, thanks for putting this set of comparisons together!
This is one thing retro compilations NEVER get right; a CRT filter that effectively makes the dithering effect work. Instead, we get some ugly scanlines filter that is so dense it makes everything look terrible, and I'm pretty sure looks nothing like any real CRT in existence, and that's about all we get. On that front they really are lazy.
Composite filter. CRT does basically nothing for dithering, as evidenced in this very video, when CRT is used with an RGB connection.
and sega and everyone else uses them cause they figure give the emulation guys poopoo thick lines. dark screen poo. its assumed the norm. they think us fools they think we happily lap it up
While not perfect and isn’t a retro compilation, Sonic Mania has a fairly decent filter compared to many others I’ve seen. The “CRT-Soft” option gives it scanlines and blurs the dithering enough to feel more authentic.
It’s not PERFECT mind you, as I can still see the checkerboard patterns on the title screen for instance. But a HELL of a lot better than most offical attempts. It’s probably closer to S-Video, actually. I say PROBABLY, because I never really got to use S-Video.
A good crt filter needs to combine a lot of effects to accurately simulate the artifacts of a beam and interlaced imagery. For starters scanlines need to be composed of two separare pictures with an even and odd field of scanlines changing in rapid succession. The lines that are not translucent should have around 10-20% transparency added to simulate beam Decay and Picture ghosting. Then the edges of the screen should simulate the screen distortion from the rounded glas tube by distorting the lateral geometries (straight lines should not appear completely straight near the corners of the screen). Then a slight bloom effect on top of all filters, to simulate screen glare - as has been done in EmuVR. This last effect works particularly well in virtual reality as the angle of the viewpoint to the screen changes the glare in regards to ambient lighting. Lastly creating a diamond-shaped RGB or CMYK sub-pixel Image overlay to simulate the shadow mask. This was first demonstrated in early versions of MAMEUI as apperture filters.
@@TheRogueMaverickthat's just what PAL composite looks like on the Mega Drive I think
Now there are great CRT filters such as "CRT Royale" that blends the pixels great and simulate a CRT very well. It even fixes the waterfall issues in games.
A platform that uses dithering a lot is the ZX-Spectrum. Due to this technic, developers could give some "ambar" and "green" colors to black & white games.
Excellent explanation and very well done video. This is making plug in my Genesis via composite again.
Thank you for this video! While I mostly dabble in emulation, I feel that composite and RF feel very nostalgic to me as this is how those games looked like when I grew up. The Sega Mega Drive's video output depended strongly in many of these pseudo effects and it's a shame the public knowledge of some of these has been lost as many don't know about these little details. Very informative and well-made video, thank you!
Wow, I never knew composite made such a big difference in retro games.
That was really interesting.
Great explanation of dithering and why it's important to get the full Genesis experience!
I've always loved the pixelated, unblurred dithering in retro games, like that Earthworm Jim at the end. It's a very cool art style to me. But I appreciate the aesthetic of blurring it, and am glad for people to have options.
Very nice! I became aware of all this recently while building a home arcade with my son's, emulating and using S-video from the pc GPU at many scaled resolutions, aspect ratios and tv settings yielded different results. None quite as significant as using Mario paint on a real snes connected to a tv through a recording Vcr and watching the playback ruin or enhance the homemade anti-aliasing and dither effect of my hand drawn and coloured scenes. It was fun trying to challenge myself to patiently draw higher definition scenes and when reviewing them having the details lost entirely. The fact that someone created and examined this connection advantage shows I've always been on the right track
Just found you via the shout out on My Life in Gaming! Instant sub! Great video.
I only really knew about these chrome and luma issues from the perspective of VHS and the issues you pointed out with dot crawl, etc. I had no idea this was being used as an intentional strategy in the digital realm. Man alive the creativity of people working with these kind of limitations is always so inspiring and fascinating
Companies used composite to their advantage even before the genesis. You can actually see "added details" in Metroid and Mario Bros 3 compared to an emulator. These devs knew what they were doing.
This channel is an absolute goldmine. My favourite find of the year. Like + subbed + offering my first born etc
Living in Europe, SCART RGB was a thing for many years and I always wanted to have an RGB cable for my games consoles. I knew that unlike the SNES, the Genesis couldn't do proper transparencies and the dithering was always visible via RGB. But I thought it was a small price to pay for having a pixel-perfect picture. After playing on RGB for a while, I never wanted to go back to composite or RF!
i wonder if this method of creating "fake transparency" is working as good on PAL systems as it seems to work on NTSC - because the dithered "fake transparency" on the mega drive and sega saturn looks like exactly that - dithered and fake - even tho i am playing on a small crappy CRT with a crappy basic composite cable - it looks nothing like the "smooth" transparency i see in youtube videos like this one
KenjiTech i am using Recalbox with a simple hdmi that scart converter from ebay its 60hz ntsc signal and its super fluid and just checked Sinic 2 and and all the blue colour are blending together on the title screen.
If you into retro gaming you must play on a tv whoch support ntsc signal. 80%f CRT's in eu support it!👌😎
KenjiTech it does but I don’t see any rainbow on my PAL TV and model 1 MD.
Nice. I thought this was just some other faux connaisseur's clickbait, but kept me hooked the full 10minutes. THIS is how you talk about retro stuff/effects, comparison with examples on each little thing.
The Sonic 3 title screen used so much dithering. Same with the intro of Sonic 3D Blast.
It's a really good point. A lot of older games actually look better with CRT filter if on a newer tv. This is especially true if you're playing something in 3D.
Hi I'm new your channel. This got in my Recommended section. And I got know so much in the video. Keep up the good work.
By the way! Incredible video in quality !!
Proper professional looking video with the editing and showing off / explaining the pallette changing, it looks great !
You will have many more than 503 subscribers soon ! This I guarentee !
I have a model 1 and a model 2 sega mega drive, both hooked up to a crt tv. Model 1 is connected with RF cable and model 2 with rgb scart cable.
i honestly prefer the RF picture in most games.
Got to find me a composite scart some time.
Thx for the video.
Dithering was awesome, thanks for this. I loved those waterfalls growing up.
Growing up in a digital age, I rarely play classic games on original hardware. This has gave me a unique perspective on dithering - I see unblended checkerboard patterns as a part of the style.
This is a really skillful explanation of technical concepts.
Dithering is a lost art and that is why I use a composite connection with my Sega Genesis. I think Disney's The Lion King is another great example of how dithering on the Sega Genesis can produce more colors, especially on the title screen. Thanks for the video. Dithering also helped with full-motion video colors on the Sega CD.
I remember getting Sonic and Sonic 2 for my Genesis and being very impressed with the graphics on both... especially Sonic 2. You could definitely tell you were playing a 16-bit game when playing them. Back then, composite was the high quality connection... most people back then only used an RF connection. Genesis used dithering a lot due to it's low color pallet. 512 colors with about 64 colors on-screen at once was impressive compared to the original NES, but was sorely lacking vs. the SNES and NEO-GEO; and even to a degree the PC Engine/TG16, which also had 9-bit color, but could put about 240 colors in the background and about 240 colors on the sprites.
Nice to see a fellow composite video partisan, despite even having access to RGB with a PVM. The Genesis in particular out of all the vintage game consoles is such a bundle of compromises about audio and video that what's best is highly subjective and largely has to be decided per-game.
The strong use of dithering in so many games makes composite video my primary choice on hardware, and I generally don't like the "sharp pixel" look of RGB and emulators. But then most variants of the Genesis have especially blurry composite video and it's kind of too blurry, I think. I wonder if S-video might be a good compromise, but I'm guessing the checkerboards aren't sufficiently blended with it, judging by the S-video examples in your PS1 dithering video.
Then there's sound. People tend to think the model 1s sound best, and they definitely really botched the sound circuit on most model 2s making its end result awful, but the upgraded sound chip they used (the YM3438), can sound cleaner and clearer than the original (the YM2612), and some late model 2s fixed the sound circuit so it can shine. We normally would consider clearer, less noisy sound superior, right? But then some music and sounds in some games were made to take advantage of the flaw in the YM2612 that created additional noise, and effects will be missing on the later models! The track "Red Out" from After Burner II is a good example of this: right at the beginning there's a burst of noise with a whistling sound that descends in pitch with a YM2612, but it's barely audible with a YM3438. So that's another thing to take into consideration when choosing the most appropriate individual Genesis console for the best experience with any individual game.
Clearly, Kevin Horton was aware of these considerations, because the Analogue Mega Sg has settings for a filter that selectively blends dithering patterns and a customizable level the audio distortion that some games took advantage of, which I think is really cool and makes me think maybe I should get one someday.
Anyway, I watched the PS1 dithering video after this and decided to subscribe and was surprised to see the 1.9K on the button turn to 2K after I hit it - turns out I was your 2,000th subscriber!
Yeah, Kevtris' understanding of the hardware is quite exceptional, and the reason why the Analogue consoles are worth buying. I have a Super NT and it's worth every penny, especially since I can just plug it into my main TV and enjoy as I want, while keeping my actual SNES for when I want to play on a CRT. The Mega SG goes the extra mile with the additional graphics and sound options, and the ability to use with Sega CD! I think that's really awesome, and while I hope one day maybe support for the 32X could be added, I'm not going to hold my breath (I think it would be too difficult and/or the FPGA inside wouldn't be powerful enough to emulate it).
I'm definitely going to pick up a Mega SG when I have some extra cash. Also, while they're currently sold out, Analogue makes a DAC specifically designed to plug their consoles into analogue displays. DEFINITELY worth checking out and I think makes the Analogue consoles more versatile, and even more of a great solution for retro gaming.
So few games actually use dithering in a meaningful and effective way that it's not even worth losing video quality over it. RGB for life. Plus the composite quality on Sega genesis is probably the worst I've seen out of all consoles of the era.
Great video. It’s great to see someone make a real argument for the “lesser” inputs. I’m an RGB snob now but as a kid I had 3 systems daisy chained via RF cables and didn’t notice any bad color
I know when I went from RF to composite on my NES, it got significantly sharper, with less color bleed, and the colors shifted from, say, a purple-ish pink to a true pink, like on the official artwork. I was blown away by the jump in quality.
@@Schwarzorn it is mind blowing
Awesome video! It helps justify my want of a 36" CRT for retro gaming. Preferably a Trinitron.
That's gonna weigh like 300 pounds. Have fun with that! (So worth it, though!)
Lol my family used to have a TV around that size, and it was a nightmare carrying that thing downstairs from the guest room when we were getting rid of it. I've owned a 17'' SR2000 before (really regret giving it back to the thrift store), and it was easy enough for me to carry on my own for short periods of time. It was from 1987, but the picture quality was all right, and it had those thick dials on the bottom of the TV (those scrolling ones that poked down out of the bottom ridge of the TV, not full sized knobs you had to turn) and one of those was adjustable sharpness. Zero sharpness gave the TV a SUPER 80's look. And I swear it was so much better than using a remote control, so easy to adjust something just by reaching forward and going *click click click* on a scroll knob. Ahh, now I'm reliving the old days...
I come back to this video every so often as this stuff is so fascinating to me still, I’ve adapted my retro setup as a result too. I’ve now got my system set up so RGB goes into SCART 1 and RF is converted to composite and sent into SCART 2 via my VCR, RGB looks great and I love the checkerboard patterns, but it’s a fun experience to switch over to RF and see how the games were intended to be seen. My equipment is all PAL though so even on RF rainbowing is very common and the signal doesn’t fully blend all the colours, even though the edges are a lot fuzzier on my CRT. I’m working on some comparisons for /r/CRTGaming at the moment actually.
Turns out nostalgia goggles are just CRT and dithering.
Excellent video
That's why it's annoying when you get people who think blocky pixel graphics is retro and how the game looks, when blocky pixel games never existed and is only a result of running the game on screens not intended for the game.
If you lived in Europe or Japan you could plug the console in with a cable that would carry rgb to the screen. Computers also generally had an rgb hook up to a monitor, it was very rare to see one that hooked up with a combined signal (composite) and of course there was no need to convert the signal to a radio frequency (rf) like was the standard with tv systems.
Did au have SCART?
The behind the scenes look at why dithering was used and the effect it has when viewed on composite TV is fascinating. I know Game Hut has done some videos exploring how certain effects were achieved on various old console titles and this fits right in there.
Thanks!
This is a factor in all of the systems from that era to some extent, but the 16 bit consoles had it particularly bad because they were the first that reliably supported composite, S-video and RGB.
Though, the Saturn notoriously also has extensive problems with dithering being used to fake semi-transparent surfaces.
It might surprise you to learn the SNES also resorts to dithering for transparency at times. (Super Mario World does it in places.) - why is this a surprise? Well, because the system can perform additive or subtractive colour blending of graphics layers. (Specifically the functions A+B, (A+B)/2, A-B and (A-B)/2)
So if it can do that, why the dithering? Well, the problem is, depending on what kind of graphics mode you're using, there are as many as 5 layers of stuff being combined.
And the blending logic is not between these layers, but between something they refer to as 'screens', there's two of them - the Main screen, and the sub-screen; You can choose where all 5 layers of graphics go (4 backgrounds and one sprite layer - they can be in neither, one, or both screens, though things which are in neither are invisible.), but everything in one screen is added or subtracted from everything in the other. (mostly. There's a quirk with sprites that lets you have both transparent and non-transparent sprites at the same time.)
Let's say you want to replicate sonic's transparent waterfall effect on a SNES using actual hardware transparency - well, you couldn't just dump the background layer onto the subscreen, and the foreground into the main screen; that would make the entire foreground layer transparent.
Luckily the snes has 3 background layers in the most commonly used mode, so you can put the background layer in the subscreen, put most of the foreground in one layer and put it in the subscreen as well, leaving a gap where the waterfall goes, and put the waterfall in it's own layer and put that through the main screen.
Great. And if you were trying to recreate sonic mostly as is, that'd work fine.
But what if you already have 3 layers of background, and you aren't interested in an entire layer being transparent?
Well, now you're stuck - because a layer being transparent or not is an all or nothing affair, so instead, you have to use a dithering trick to pull it off.
(There's other issues with hardware transparency on SNES - notably if you use high resolution or pseudo-hires mode, the hardware uses the main and subscreen for that, which means you can't do colour blending with it. I believe in fact that the first intended purpose of having a 'main' and 'sub' screen was to deal with the two fields of an interlaced graphics display, but that they later found more impressive uses for it, and this original purpose fell by the wayside.)
The problem of course with this composite stuff, dithering and so on is that the end result depends on the colour system - what produces the intended Effect on NTSC will generally produce a different effect on PAL, and both will produce different results to SECAM.
This isn't so much of a problem in relation to Composite blending to produce transparency effects, nor is it likely to produce big issues with what dithered graphics look like, but it DOES completely mess up artifact colours. (CGA composite mode for instance would not work even slightly if it were using a PAL display)
A side issue here is intent - I get the feeling with the SNES/SFC in particular, that whether games were designed with Composite or RGB output in mind shifted over time. - especially true of Japanese exclusives, since RGB was increasingly available there into the 90's.
For instance, Super Mario world contains dithered transparency, suggesting it was intended for Composite.
But the likes of Seiken Densetsu 3 looks really quite ugly using Composite, and yet it's one of the prettiest games on the system in RGB - and since it's a 1995 Japanese exclusive, I feel reasonably confident that this much prettier RGB version is probably what they designed it to look like, rather than the mess that results over composite.
Is this true for the Mega Drive/Genesis as well? Most likely. Though the incentive to use composite related tricks would be stronger on that system no doubt.
It all depends on who developed these games, when they made them, and what their intended primary market was.
Europe has had RGB the longest and most consistently (Scart is fundamentally RGB, and was so widespread in the early 90's already that PAL Nintendo systems sold in europe in the 90's and even the gamecube and wii included a composite to scart adapter. - scart does support composite usually, but it's primarily intended for RGB...), but PAL related development is frequently an afterthought - even from many european developers!
Japan had I think less consistent access to RGB than Europe, but it's still fairly widespread and several common standards for use with TV existed even in the 90's. (including one using the same connector as SCART but with different pinout - because that's not at all confusing. XD)
But America... Yeah, America had S-video I guess, but they never really had RGB.
The first Americans got any moderately reliable access to anything even resembling RGB was when Component cables became widely available as an option.
I guess historically you could've tried a VGA monitor, but you would've had to deal with the whole 15 khz to 31 khz conversion thing (which is what is now being solved when using a scan doubler.)
In any event, unfortunately it may be that you end up having to say on a game by game basis whether composite or RGB is preferable.
At least we can fairly definitively say there is no good reason to use RF or S-Video unless you just don't have anything better.
Well explained,, i first always used composite for my pal snes and i was fine with it, untill i used RGB scart and i was mind blows away, i saw colors wich i never saw before, it was a huge step,,,,but at some points i was also very disappointed because some games did had overbrighted colors or they did shown dithering patterns like shadowns such as in f zero or ninja gaiden triloggy, yoshi’s island do have dithering patterns in the intro screen, wich i never saw with composite.
So it’s a mixed bag for me, i do like composite video for covering those ugly dithering patterns but i do like RGB scart for it’s purist clean colors.
That’s why i often switch from cables from time to time!!!
At the time of the SNES and Genesis composite was widely available on tvs in America via RCA cables. I remember because we finally didn’t have to use the stupid RF connector for the systems like we did with the NES.
As I worked with graphics from 90 and forward I can tell that the concept of RBG composite from production did not exist. Everybody wanted a sharper and better picture. Blur or smear was bad.
Dithering to fake alpha or to fake more color was just what it was. An effort. Of course we noted that some things looked better with composite. And some looked better with RGB but it was never “hey I plan that this effect should look good only on composite”
They also at this time. Some was on and liked dither and some loathed it. It was art styles more or less.
@nunya baznus I agree. S-Video is the best affordable option for a lot of those systems. I'm not gonna go to the trouble to import Scart cables, adapters and physically modify to get RGB. Though, I've gone through the trouble to obtain specialized component cables (Retrovision) for the SNES for $30. I also bought some modified Xbox 360 component cables to use for the OG Xbox for around $30. If there's an relatively affordable option for component on old consoles, I'll go with it. Otherwise, S-video or composite for me.
I was first exposed to RGB in arcade games , and noticed the greatly improved clarity as a early teenager. Upon getting an Amiga 500 and common companion Commodore 1084 RGB monitor in 1987 at 13 years old, anything less than RGB was always an awful compromise (of course, earlier Amigas, as well as Atari STs had color RGB since 1985).
When switching to 16-bit consoles a few years later, I was thrilled to get an S-video cable for my SNES to a basic 32" Sony Trinitron, which was a great improvement over composite. Sega Genesis colors always looked muddy on TVs, because of its poor video encoder chip (compared to Turbografx-16 and SNES consoles).
I'd ALWAYS take RGB over any other output on these 80s era systems, with original complimentary scanlines to mellow and stylize the relatively low pixel resolution.
Found your channel from a tweet by Joe at GameSack. Can't believe I've never come across your channel before. Amazing videos!
The dithering on the Genesis is the primary reason I keep my Laseractive connected to my TV at all times and is my primary way of playing Genesis\MegaCD games. While I use RGB when using my other Genesis\Mega Drive consoles, you just can't beat the look of the composite output for this system.
Welcome, goldenretrogames! I have definitely found strong preferences from people when it comes to RGB vs composite on the Genesis. At the end of the day, I hope every viewer here does what they want to do when it comes to Genesis/Mega Drive output - that they make their own decision. Also - I wish that I could form a sentence that contains "my LaserActive" in it, but alas! Not yet!
@@DisplacedGamers I wanted a Laseractive for so long and justified buying one as a 40th bday gift to myself last year :-)
Retro tink 2x pro has an AMAZING feature that slightly blurs your component signal's luma channel to get the transparency/color blending back.
It's better than composite as it's not as blurry and it doesn't have the rainbow artifacting.
"low-res YPbPr" mode is apparently what this is called, interesting. I'll be hooking up my genesis model 2 to my 2x pro multiformat today to look at this. I had no idea this was even a feature lol.
I just discovered this channel and man, top quality stuff. I love it!!
Subscribed.
Thanks! Glad you are here!
Wow Shinobi 3 looks amazing for a Genesis game (when output via Composite)
Also, I really really enjoyed some of your videos, especially this one!
Thanks for the great in depth technical gaming content!
Holy crap, that Sonic 1 composite waterfall does look really good! Normally it’s impossible to see at all over the extreme rainbowing.
@Nicht von dieser Welt Europe = PAL
PAL + composite = no rainbow
NTSC + composite = rainbow
immediamal coccinello Oh that’s cool. I should get some composite cables for my Mega Drive and see how good it looks.
@@immediamalcoccinello483 Yeah I can't see I see too much rainbowing on my UK Mega Drive but I want to say for some reason that I have seen it before, maybe I am confusing with a youtube video?
Yeah I have an NTSC CRT with composite hooked up to real Genesis hardware. The Rainbow bands on the waterfalls are headache inducing. So strange that the PAL versions would not have the rainbow problems. You'd think it'd be optimized for areas with NTSC. Since most areas that had PAL also had Scart or RGB.
@@overnightdelivery It’s not to do with the game, it’s the video signals, PAL is much better at handling colour since it was designed for use in mountainous European regions with lots of hills and bad weather, PAL signals have a system where it averages chroma information to get a more accurate result, and discards off-spec colour, unfortunately this means the colours are “lower resolution” than NTSC with poor quality signals, but it’s much more accurate. Kinda like a 360p video with perfect sharpness vs a 480p video with a blur filter applied.
Great video. Makes you appreciate how technology (or the lack thereof) lead to creative techniques like these.
finally!. I've been saying for years "composite on a crt looks better" and nobody believed it!.
Hell yeah man
It looks like a**. I don't know what you people are smoking. I rather take a sharper image than a soupy image just to blend the dots to create few more shades. I have the option to use composite signal on retroarch and I use it for the novelty factor but could never play a game seriously with it on.
@@ajsingh4545 To me, I really don't like game that are pixelated. And I played my genesis on my CRT
@@ToadBradley24 fair enough
@@ajsingh4545 it looks like how it's supposed to look. I don't want the games to look like in an emulator or to lose features like transparencies and the smoother shading or the "simulated extra colors".
Thank you for educating a new generation on this.
The sales men / UA-camrs won't like this video , as the sales of the over priced cables and upscalers will go down .
This is excellent, i think there should an academic field or something of studying the hidden genius of older tech, and how the techniques were a lot more complex and revealing than we thought they were.
Honestly I love the look of clear dithering
Love this. It's really hard for people nowadays, who grew up without analog/composite video signals, and only know HD, or quickly moved on to upgrade their TV to HD. graphics were made the way they were for dithering reasons, but to most people, it just looks "pixelated". When I first started messing with emulators, my default set up used scanlines to get a more accurate simulated arcade effect. MAME now has a video setting HLSL to simulate everything a CRT monitor can do. It looks a thousand times better, and more accurate. I own about 20 arcade machines and I try to keep original CRT monitors in them.
More re-releases of old games need to keep in mind the use of dithering and include optional filters to emulate the way it's meant to look. It's a trick not exclusive to Genesis/Mega Drive games. The GBA for example with games such as Sonic Advance 1-3 and the Mega Man Zero games also makes use of dithering. It's very noticeable in the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, as places that use dithering stand out, and even appear totally messed up when the smoothing filter is applied (among other fudged up details. I really hate that filter). The upcoming Sonic Origins so far appears to be yet another re-release of an old game that uses dithering but has not taken into account what this should look like on screen.
It doesn't seem like devs these days really care about the difference in how screens output visual information compared to back in the day when re-releasing games, and so all to often dithering just looks... Wrong.
love composite. looks musch more alive. artifacts etc
The Sonic example is best. The rainbow effect that was made on the waterfalls in Green Hill Zone was a gorgeous feature.
Great video! Just picked up myself a 32" Sony Trinitron today just for my Genesis. Looks way better than playing on an emulator to me.
Madness I thought I was wrong when I noticed Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong looks better with composite vs rgb even emulated! I ise emus with hdmi composite converter on CRT's.
You're never wrong when you think something looks better, sounds better, etc. Everything in your life is through your perception, so everything you perceive to be true is true.
I saw a great video that went into depth about how Rare took all of the high-quality assets from DKC and Killer Instinct and whittled them down to fit within the limitations of the SNES hardware, it was a really complex undertaking. You have to remember that at the time, they were building all of the models for the characters and backgrounds and everything on high-end Silicon Graphics workstations, which if memory serves me correctly cost around $100k each. So they started with incredibly detailed, high color models and had to greatly reduce them in quality. They did a really great job of it, too. The image quality degradation is definitely more noticeable on higher-end displays than on regular old CRT over composite. Neither game looks bad by any means, but there's a lot more color banding versus a CRT which does a nice job of smoothing everything out.
I really miss the days when SNES over composite was the best I had available and I just had fun with the games rather than worrying about which model TV I play it on or what connection I use. It's interesting to explore, no doubt, but at the end of the day the point is to just have fun.
Adam Baldwin awesome comment Adam! Rare is the greatest developers of all time because of the achievements they had in snes times. Hands down genesis and the snes were the best consoles when it comes to platform games. I just started to play Yoshi's Island as I missed it back then. Such a pure masterpiece. I am making home arcade emu stations using a crt. I wonder if programmers could come up with modern games which supports the old school retro technology!?
great video. The Glow of a CRT is the real deal
If no one told me it was running on a Genesis, I would've thought that Earthworm Jim was a Playstation game.
Earthworm Jim is a very handsome looking game. It came at that point where the Mega Drive was becoming elderly tech, and programmers by that point knew every possible trick to use in the graphics. That's how a game like that can be run on a system designed in the 80s and on a modern system like the PlayStation (although it won't have taxed the PS' hardware much!).
Most game systems have that impressive late period where the best looking material comes out using every ounce of power the processor can muster. I like to think of it as a bit like a victory lap at the end of a life cycle!
I still think it looks better on the SNES, but they did a great job with the Genesis port.
Oh my gosh. You just explained to me why the waterfalls in Sonic 3 lool weird to me now when I never had this issue as a kid!
I wonder if ther reason Green Hill Zone's background is so chunky is an attempt to make it look the same behind the 'semi transparent' waterfalls?
probably because of memory restraints
I see you everywhere
I never knew that the water falls look that cool using composite because I never played on a og Genesis or mega drive.
Lately, I am having renewed appreciation for composite video signal. I totally agree with you that some games benefit more than others from dithering--fake transparency effects, shadows, gradients, etc. I find it quite interesting the diverse preference of people regarding video signals, monitors/televisions, resolutions and aspect ratios.
I think bias is in large part shaped by people's unique and/or peculiar circumstances such as nostalgia, using particular revision of console, television and cable all of which independently and in combination can produce huge differences in quality and thus opinion. That said, I have come to appreciate all video signals (RF to RGB) and like to believe I've seen some of the best (and worst) they can offer. Even RF can produce nice output when finely tuned.
That said, most revisions of Mega Drive / Genesis model 1 (and 2) composite signal are notorious and widely regarded has having one of the worst (i.e. blurry) outputs among various consoles. The AV Famicom, PC Engine and even Genesis 3 in contrast produce in my opinion a much nicer, cleaner composite signal where you have a fair compromise between definition and that organic look that takes advantage of dithering.
Hey azmune. Thank you for your comment. It is pretty much right-on with my thoughts on video signals.
I found that when chatting with various people prior to making this video that many of them had very strong preferences leaning one direction vs the other (composite vs RGB). Both sides had strong representation. There are some Sega fans (specifically Genesis/Mega Drive) that have also continued to push mods of their systems in order to find a higher quality composite than the native one provided by the system.
Nostalgia for many is the key component - not necessarily an objective view, but the view that is important to them. I don't believe a consensus should be reached regarding how people game so much as that they can and have options available.
I personally will game using an upscaler and a plasma display... but then want to hook the same system up to an old consumer CRT that was period appropriate and play it as well.
Thank you as well for the upload and excellent explanation. I wish you expanded on the differences/details between notch and combed filtering. Is one superior to the other and it possible for some (high end) television sets to offer both types, or are they mutually exclusive? Also, how does one go about finding out which kind of combed filtering is employed (two line, three line, etc.)?
Regarding Genesis/Mega Drive, since hardware already outputs RGB natively and quite nicely there is no need to mod for this signal. In all these years I have only come across one person who discussed improving its composite out. Even then, he or she ultimately ended up with the more common s-video mod. I think the population with affinity to composite out is very small. It refers to that group who use their gaming console with standard definition CRTs as it doesn't work too well paired with processors or modern displays.
Lastly, thank you for bringing to our awareness Sega's 16-bit console as one that arguably takes most advantage of dithering. Given the Genesis / Mega Drive weakness of limited color palette, this gives many of its games the illusion of more color and depth. Something that can get lost even with s-video. Yes, you can always soften the image via filters or bring down sharpness but you also lose a bit of its purity.
That is SUCH cool subject, thank you! Id love to see all my fav games analysised like that
I love dithering in playstation games mostly but the genesis did a good job using it. I hate that I enjoy both the RBG and Composite look because deciding on which one is hard. Lol
Great video! This made me realize that the heavy dithering actually looked good on the hardware these games were designed for. I think modern 2D games should use semi transparent pixels in most cases instead, because it looks alot better on modern monitors
I've always thought that increasing image quality is moving further away from the "correct" experience. These games weren't made to be seen at such high fidelity that we see them today. They were made for kids at home with cheaper, older TVs.
So if you want to argue for the most accurate, and the intended way to view/play a game... Then older TVs with older cables that blend the dithering is the way to go.
The way I always like to look at it is that retro gaming always needs a little bit of crust in order to be good. Don't cut off the crust.
I agree. I dunno, I kind of like the pixelated detail as opposed to all the blending.
I agree to an extent, however, also consider RGB was still included on Sega consoles without modification and the developers were likely using high end hardware, computer monitors, etc. Plus, as mentioned in the video, more expensive TV had different image processing. While it's a nice effect, I don't think you exactly experience the game as intended by the developers all the time.
@@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli I disagree. I believe that game developers created games in anticipation for the majority of people viewing them on cheaper equipment.
We are not developers. We were not meant to see the game like developers.
This example has aged poorly but... Michael Jackson used to have a philosophy that his music should always sound good on shitty car stereos. So they would play his music back through a shitty stereo in the studio to make sure it still sounded good. This was coined the "sonic quality" coincidentally.
I believe my theory to be true, as most of the games of this era have visuals that were clearly intended to be seen at a lower fidelity. They aren't as detailed as they could be. Slightly minimalist.
In my opinion, the way to truely appreciate these games the way they were meant to is by viewing them on the equipment of the time that the majority of people were using. Most people were not using high end equipment.
Yep! And same for the audio too, I heard ALL of my video games coming out of shitty monotone speakers that were built into the TV's at the time. I think the Amiga and SNES sound like crap when set to stereo sound, I especially the Amiga since it only had 4 channels with 2 hard panned in each direction if you used stereo. So you'd only have drums coming out of one side, bass coming out of one side and so forth. I never heard it that way before emulators and I thought it was weird. I only just realized this like a year ago. The audio was usually designed with the fact in mind that most people were hearing it on subpar mono TV speakers.
You made me appreciate the graphic filters in 3ds genesis re-releases more. Thank you.
Countless forum and social media claims to the contrary, the Genesis and its games were designed around the "inferior" video output and inputs used by the average consumer. Set up a Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, X'Eye, Wondermega or CDX properly with Composite and the video quality is consistent with no wavy lines, "jail bars", or overly obvious moire effects. Composite can be just fine. I have also found RGB very enjoyable as an alternative, mostly with the HD Retrovision cables or simple RGB to Component cables. As a result, on my 27" RCA SDTV, 32" Sony Trinitron XBR, or 50" Panasonic Plasma screen, I can choose between Composite, S-Video or Component for all of the consoles that support it. I frequently am more than content with Composite, as the Component converted RGB can be too bright or creates artifacts.
By contrast, emulation on an LCD or my Plasma screen always disappoints me, jarring me right out of the experience with dull or too bright colors and broken dithered art that should have been better blended. Even with emulation (or compilation) filters I much prefer original hardware with Composite.
Great post man. What do you think causes some of the wavy line distortions and jail bars in genesis composite? You mentioned improper setup, isn't it as simple as getting an official composite cable and a 240p/480i standard definition CRT?
Why contrary? Did you see the video? That's what he's saying.
freaking awesome
U 4got the most important factor in making it all work: using the shittiest TV possible. If u used an e.g. Sony Trinitron (which I had), it'll look sharp and the effect is negated.
TVs make a huge difference when it comes to how the game looks. It definitely isn't limited to just the console's output quality and cable used.
I used a 27" Sony Trinitron myself, which had S-video and composite. Basically, I could choose between the two different settings by going between the inputs. Composite fully showed the right effect while S-video partially seemed to fix it, though not fully.
A lot of trinitrons also have additional processing of signals, it can be hard to differentiate between svideo and composite with those tvs
Turn down the TV's sharpness setting all the way to zero. Sometimes it really helps.
@@DisplacedGamers yeah why didn't you use a 19 inch or 24 inch crt
wow, the Earthworm Jim loading screen looks so much better in composite, holy shit
So basically all emulators have to do is emulate this effect. That is not hard. What is hard is determining where the original game authors used this to their advantage or not. Thats a huge undertaking that would need each game to be played through and notes on various effects to be looked at.
Most games don't go too crazy with dithering. But a game like Virtua Racing feels like 90 percent dithering. 😄
I love videos like this, hope to see more :) subbed
Edit: The quality of this video is excellent and I am surprised there aren't more views
Basically, Composite video gives you *the illusion of* more colors and transparency
Very informative and well executed video. Good narration and excellent choice of music.
Back in the day before I was ever able to upgrade the video quality of my Genesis, I always noticed dithering. The water was NEVER transparent in Sonic the Hedgehog. I always noticed the lines. It was super blurry, but they were noticeable. I always noticed dithered meshes. Slap a 32X on the machine and use its composite and the dithering becomes even more clear. When people show examples of blending using composite, those are images like I've never seen on any TV when I used composite. Even when I used RF in black and white... dithering. It's just something that's always been there for me. So going RGB on the Genesis in my opinion doesn't lose its intended effect.
RGB on the Genesis really does look amazing. I feel that the gamut that separates composite and RGB - two native signals available with the console - is mind-blowing in its size. In addition to the composite signal having the typical composite quality attributes, it often tends to not be encoded properly - resulting in a large amount of artifacts. Those artifacts probably enhanced the "dithering blur" quite a bit on some consoles, but that aspect certainly wasn't consistent for all hardware (just as you mentioned with the 32X improvement). That particular model 1 I used for a few seconds of footage is definitely an outlier.
The display also plays a key role in how composite looks due to how much effort goes (or does not go...) into decoding the signal. It sounds like you have had a pretty good experience with the television/monitors that you have paired with the system in the past if the blur-effect on the dithering did not seem as pronounced as some examples others have provided.
I assume this group of variables (system + display used) contributes greatly toward how passionate many people feel on the subject.
Reminds me of the Wii's optical cable, when we connected it suddenly looked so good and colorful! I never thought Genesis needed a cable like this, I wonder what it needs for flat screen TVs too, great video!