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Off-TV photos of Resident Evil in 240p

fart town usa

Gold Member
Been playing the PSPgo quite a bit lately, mainly FFIX but I remembered that PSX titles on the PSPgo can output 240p via the component cables hooked up to a CRT. I usually have all my stuff hooked up to a primitive capture device with S-Video being the output. In this case I actually plugged the component cables into the TV.

Couple of things to keep in mind:

This is the OG 1996 release, I ripped my own disc and copied it over to the soft-modded PSPgo. This isn't a stealth brag thread, I genuinely want to help show how wonderful the pixel art is in this game. I also want to showcase how moody the game can be, it seems like everyone on YouTube has the brightness cranked to 11 while playing this game. Not all games are the same, get in there fuck around with the brightness, contrast, etc. Resident Evil has a ton of primitive "lighting" going on but you won't notice any of it if you're playing the game with awful video settings.

That being said, these photos are slightly darker than what my TV is displaying. I could adjust it in post but it's not that important. Mostly just wanted to show Jill's pixel art face.

Lastly, someone in the PSX vs N64 thread said that PSX games are ugly, regardless of which monitor that you play it on. SMDH, have we really forgot where we came from!?!?!?!?!?!

I hope some of you get a kick out of this.

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(this one is kinda washed out, raised the brightness to help show the gore)

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So yea, next time you play RE on the PSX or via an emulator, adjust the frigging video settings so it doesn't look like you're playing on the surface of the sun. Resident Evil still holds up flawlessly in terms of atmosphere and graphics. Yea the voice acting is bad but....
Angry Harrison Ford GIF

I'm tired of seeing the OG RE mostly viewed as some kind of joke. Screw that, it's one of the best games in the series and legit one of the greatest games ever made.

Happy gaming GAF!
 

ymoc

Member
Yes I wholesomely agree. Cranking brightness too much just ruins the aesthetics.

Im gonna go a bit off topic, but this thread reminded me of the old LoTR cartoon by Bakshi. I remember watching it on TV as a kid, and years later I ended up buying it on DVD. But it looked so different. Everything was way too bright. It seriously destroyed all the mood. CORRECT SETTINGS MATTER!!!

What it looked like:
tc6DvR3.jpg



What it should've looked like:
7lS89Lu.jpg
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Yes I wholesomely agree. Cranking brightness too much just ruins the aesthetics.

Im gonna go a bit off topic, but this thread reminded me of the old LoTR cartoon by Bakshi. I remember watching it on TV as a kid, and years later I ended up buying it on DVD. But it looked so different. Everything was way too bright. It seriously destroyed all the mood. CORRECT SETTINGS MATTER!!!

What it looked like:
tc6DvR3.jpg



What it should've looked like:
7lS89Lu.jpg
Hell yea, brilliant movie. The live action aspect makes those characters so damn creepy.

Fantastic example.
 

Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
Thanks for the memories! I played it around ‘96. I was just as impressed that I was playing an “interactive movie” as I so eloquently put it as a kid, as I was playing the “interactive cartoon” Mario 64. Both have never been beaten in terms of generational leaps. Going from SNES to N64/PSX was an unbelievable visual leap at the time and so exciting. Everything since then has been polish to that basic skeleton.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Weird how off the “digital” screens do today… looking at the pics in cellphone it looks way worst than actually is.

Playing on CRT is a complete different view that is very bad showed by modern displays.
 
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I'm not gonna lie.... I honestly think I like the shadow mask CRT look way more than scanlines.

Been playing a bunch of emulated games in 240p via Wii on my crummy 21" TV I got for college 20 years ago and I am loving it. NTSC images just look so different than playing emulated RGB on an LCD.

Here is what I mean by shadow mask vs heavy scan lines:

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This picture is just gorgeous, view it full size:

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CRT is still the best way to experience most games IMHO. Retro it goes without saying it is the best. Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3 on the PSX are truly a marvel of their time and still some of my favorite games to this day. I play 2 a lot on a VGA CRT at 640x480. Wish I could do 320x240 but the monitor just won't go that low. I do have a Toshiba 27" CRT TV that runs in 480i and hooking up my PS2 Slim and slapping in my original discs is a real treat. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen this stuff in person spend the few hundred to get the original systems and a basic CRT TV to really appreciate how they actually looked. Emulators on digital displays don't do these games justice.
 

Ebidramon

Banned
Wish I could do 320x240 but the monitor just won't go that low.
I have a CRT VGA monitor, and I lower the resolution with Custom Resolution Utility, BUT, it is sometimes necessary to up the refresh rate, usually up to 120Hz.

That being said, I myself never had any problem, but, in general, in today's era, I would rather recommend some good shaders for emulators.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I could bet some money that a good part of the “old games look like ass” parade would be genuinely impressed by the original RE trilogy running on a CRT. Those prerendered backgrounds were just jaw-dropping when not blown up to several times their original size.

The very nature of analogue displays also gave those images a very different glow from modern screens. You don’t need the astronomical contrast of OLED to get a good picture. If you were there to see it, you know this. CRT screens never looked like the real thing in pictures and videos. You have to see them IRL to understand.

I still think RGB isn’t the correct way of displaying games prior to Gen 6, however. Yeah, the image is sharper and cleaner, but composite blur helped fill in the gaps. Games like RE showed this very well. Have your character far away from the foreground and you’ll see their legs taper down like a blocky stairway of pixels - composite video softened that to give a much more believable image. S-video is as far as I’d go on a PS1, RGB also gives somewhat cartoonish colors to the image.
 

Kuranghi

Member
Looks great man, make sure your wife/friends know you'd love a high-end CRT TV as a gift so they can keep an eye out for one. You can get those <15" professional CRTs displays for nothing when companies are throwing them out.

I always hated that the some of the better NTSC CRT filters for PS1 games raise the black level up, I think they do it to make it look good on non local dimming/OLED display that were the only ones when the filters were made and I have to go in and lower the floor of some aspects of the signal to get those beautiful deep dark shadows and blacks.

Should really just get a wee CRT like you have but don't really have the space.
 
I still think RGB isn’t the correct way of displaying games prior to Gen 6, however. Yeah, the image is sharper and cleaner, but composite blur helped fill in the gaps. Games like RE showed this very well. Have your character far away from the foreground and you’ll see their legs taper down like a blocky stairway of pixels - composite video softened that to give a much more believable image. S-video is as far as I’d go on a PS1, RGB also gives somewhat cartoonish colors to the image.
Agree 1000%. I don't think people realize or remember how much "warmth," for lack of a better word, that using composite cables brings to an old console output. I was comparing my actual NES to the Wii output and was actually a little annoyed that the Wii output was too clean. Even straight lines weren't really straight back then. I was checking out Mega Man 3 and the lines that made up the boss portraits were slightly wobbly from the NES, but nearly perfect coming out of the Wii. You might say the Wii version is what it is "supposed" to look like, but nobody played NES games with that good of a picture when it was released, and the developers designed the games with that in mind (hell, there are numerous games with effects that can only be produced by an NTSC signal). Remember, the vast majority of people played an NES via RF on channel 3 (even worse than composite).
 

Kacho

Gold Member
btw can you still buy OLD TVs? my one broke some years ago
Yeah you find used ones at garage sales and thrift stores. They're out there if you look hard enough.

I found a new-in-box 26 color TV in my dads basement the other day. Took that with a quickness.
 
PSPgo was awesome, had the component cable for mine too and used to play a lot of the rhythm games & JRPG's on the big screen. Shame I never got the dock for it as you could drop the PSP into that and connect a PS3 controller via Bluetooth to get a kinda early Switch experience.

Luckily I still got my SEGA Saturn & RE for a rainy day when I get nostalgic for the classics, adding a CRT to the mix with an RGB scart input would be perfection.
 
fart town usa fart town usa , you should be ashamed. Pictures of OG RE1, not of the superior Director's Cut. 0/10, would not read again.

I'm clearly trolling and agree with your OP on pretty much every point. Well... Maybe except the voice acting. Yeah it's "bad" but it's charming as hell. I actually think the voice acting in Remake, being "better" and less campy, lost a lot of its original charm as a result. Everybody in the OG game has amazing lines. Richard and Rebecca in particular should go into the fucking voice acting hall of fame 😂😂 Barry is of course a legend and practically untouchable.

When Remake came out, a lot of people thought it made the original game obsolete. I'll go to my freaking grave as an old man continuing to say that Remake does NOT make the original game obsolete. As much as I love Remake (and as close to perfect a Resident Evil game we'll ever get), I actually play the original game more.

Long live OG Resident Evil!
 

SpiceRacz

Member
I don't know about "one of the best games in the series", but I agree many people unfairly skip the PS1 version now. Thats a mistake. Its still a stone cold classic that is fun to play. Same goes for RE2 and RE3. They are all like 6 hours long anyways; people honestly have no excuse.

RE1 > 2, 3, CV, 0, 5, 6, Revelations

That would make it one of the best in the series.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
fart town usa fart town usa , you should be ashamed. Pictures of OG RE1, not of the superior Director's Cut. 0/10, would not read again.

I'm clearly trolling and agree with your OP on pretty much every point. Well... Maybe except the voice acting. Yeah it's "bad" but it's charming as hell. I actually think the voice acting in Remake, being "better" and less campy, lost a lot of its original charm as a result. Everybody in the OG game has amazing lines. Richard and Rebecca in particular should go into the fucking voice acting hall of fame 😂😂 Barry is of course a legend and practically untouchable.

When Remake came out, a lot of people thought it made the original game obsolete. I'll go to my freaking grave as an old man continuing to say that Remake does NOT make the original game obsolete. As much as I love Remake (and as close to perfect a Resident Evil game we'll ever get), I actually play the original game more.

Long live OG Resident Evil!
Oh for sure. I love the voice acting in the OG game, it's incredibly charming. Mostly just pointed it out cause that's always a sticking point for people who have seen meme clips of the game but haven't actually played it.

I agree too with REmake vs RE 1996. I actually think the dialogue is worse in REmake, at least for Jill's campaign, and I really dislike what they did with Barry, he comes off as a total bastard in REmake and it's hard for me to sympathize with his character. Chris' campaign in REmake is drastic improvement over the original for me, mostly due to Rebecca's portrayal.

I should take some off-Tv photos of the Saturn version. Jill is a total beefcake and her face looks like sloth from the goonies, lol. It's a great version but the character models are a bit of a mess, the enemies look cool though.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
PSPgo was awesome, had the component cable for mine too and used to play a lot of the rhythm games & JRPG's on the big screen. Shame I never got the dock for it as you could drop the PSP into that and connect a PS3 controller via Bluetooth to get a kinda early Switch experience.

Luckily I still got my SEGA Saturn & RE for a rainy day when I get nostalgic for the classics, adding a CRT to the mix with an RGB scart input would be perfection.
Nice.

Yea, I don't have the dock, I wish I did but they're like $200+ on eBay, just can't justify the cost. You can still sync a PS3 controller to it though without the dock. It even allows for bluetooth headphones & a PS3 controller at the same time. Pretty impressive for some old tech.
 
Nice.

Yea, I don't have the dock, I wish I did but they're like $200+ on eBay, just can't justify the cost. You can still sync a PS3 controller to it though without the dock. It even allows for bluetooth headphones & a PS3 controller at the same time. Pretty impressive for some old tech.
This is really interesting, can you really play any PSX game on a TV via this method? I've been trying to figure out the best way to play translated PSX games on an actual TV, and the current "best" solution I can figure out would be to mod my console like it's 1995 (which I don't wanna do) and actually burn CDRs. But if I could just buy a PSP and output in 240p..... This is very tempting.

Time to do some research! Funny, I've been going crazy trying to figure out the best way to play translated PSX games on a CRT and it never once even entered my mind that a PSP could even be an option.


edit: damnit, I guess the tradeoff here is get a PSP Go and not be able to charge and output to TV at the same time (unless I spend $$$$$$$ on a dock), or get a PSP-2000 and not be able to use a controller. ugh
 
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Ivan

Member
One of my all time favorites and a true classic. You really had to be there. It was such a big deal, everyone talked about it and it was that magical moment when something like that goes mainstream.

Now I'm wondering why do we like things that cheesy, why do we like THAT voice acting? :D

Everybody here are fully aware of it, so it must be true love. Any explaination? 😂
 
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Also a legendary soundtrack.

It has one of my absolute favorite tracks in the original resident evil trilogy, which is saying a lot because those games are chock full of awesome music.

This one is called "Joy of Life" and plays when you successfully solve the "cradle to grave" puzzle in the crow room to get the Star Crest.

 

fart town usa

Gold Member
This is really interesting, can you really play any PSX game on a TV via this method? I've been trying to figure out the best way to play translated PSX games on an actual TV, and the current "best" solution I can figure out would be to mod my console like it's 1995 (which I don't wanna do) and actually burn CDRs. But if I could just buy a PSP and output in 240p..... This is very tempting.

Time to do some research! Funny, I've been going crazy trying to figure out the best way to play translated PSX games on a CRT and it never once even entered my mind that a PSP could even be an option.


edit: damnit, I guess the tradeoff here is get a PSP Go and not be able to charge and output to TV at the same time (unless I spend $$$$$$$ on a dock), or get a PSP-2000 and not be able to use a controller. ugh
Yea, the lack of charging while outputting video is a bummer but don't let it be a total deal breaker if you can afford a PSPgo and the component cables. Soft modding it is easy as can be and isn't permanent.

I do know that not all games work. For instance, I wanted to play Dragon Quest 7 the other week but it doesn't display correctly on the PSPgo. Not entirely sure why, but I'm guessing it has to do with the soft-modding/emulation aspect. I'm assuming the PSP is emulating PSX games so purists might scoff at it but it works for me and is the only way that I'm aware of to get 240p without an actual PSX. Even with a PSX console, you'd need the RGB/Scart cable and that stuff didn't really exist in NA as far as I know.

PSPgo is a good option if you're not an absolute wizard with retro stuff. I certainly am not, I'm just lucky enough to own a bunch of retro gear. The Trinitron I have I found about 9 years ago for $10 at a goodwill. Couldn't believe it. It's a 24" WEGA model. There was like a 40+ inch model there also but it was just too damn big, glad I got the smaller one.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
One of my all time favorites and a true classic. You really had to be there. It was such a big deal, everyone talked about it and it was that magical moment when something like that goes mainstream.

Now I'm wondering why do we like things that cheesy, why do we like THAT voice acting? :D

Everybody here are fully aware of it, so it must be true love. Any explaination? 😂
For Chris' campaign, it just comes off as cheesy to me and Rebecca is just flat out annoying. For Jill's campaign though, it has a certain charm to it. Especially Barry, he comes off as such a bumbling oaf but he's so endearing. You just can't help but smile whenever he opens his mouth. One thing that a lot of people miss out on is the broken shogun route. People love the "Jill Sandwich" line but if you go the broken shotgun route and encounter Barry with Forest on the balcony, you'll be treated to some absolute gems and IMO the true canonical route for Jill's game. The Jill Sandwich route is the "easy" route.
 
Yea, the lack of charging while outputting video is a bummer but don't let it be a total deal breaker if you can afford a PSPgo and the component cables. Soft modding it is easy as can be and isn't permanent.

I do know that not all games work. For instance, I wanted to play Dragon Quest 7 the other week but it doesn't display correctly on the PSPgo. Not entirely sure why, but I'm guessing it has to do with the soft-modding/emulation aspect. I'm assuming the PSP is emulating PSX games so purists might scoff at it but it works for me and is the only way that I'm aware of to get 240p without an actual PSX. Even with a PSX console, you'd need the RGB/Scart cable and that stuff didn't really exist in NA as far as I know.

PSPgo is a good option if you're not an absolute wizard with retro stuff. I certainly am not, I'm just lucky enough to own a bunch of retro gear. The Trinitron I have I found about 9 years ago for $10 at a goodwill. Couldn't believe it. It's a 24" WEGA model. There was like a 40+ inch model there also but it was just too damn big, glad I got the smaller one.
Ah, okay thanks for the info! I think I might just end up getting my PS2 Slim modded at this point, I don't wanna mess with my PSX but I'm fine with my Slim being violated.
 
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