This is probably the saddest post in this whole thread.
It starts off with butthurt pseudo-psychology and then mixes in the douchiness of telling people that somehow games aren't the "same" if they're emulated and to "prove" his nonexistent point, uses a 1,000x magnification of the eyes of a game sprite. Get the FO with that nonsense. Emulation today perfectly allows people to enjoy games as intended in 99.9% of use cases and that's why collecting is optional and becoming a case of stealth bragging more than anything.
I don't see why his argument about how games look should be dismissed so easily. Not caring about the collecting side of things at all here.
These games don't look, sound and play the same when played on original hardware, with an original controller and a CRT. You can emulate stuff, play seated in front of your PC with an Xbox 360 controller, super clean pixels, and whatever sound you get. This can be satisfactory conditions for you, and for many. But it is no way the same experience as the original hardware, accessories and CRT.
I know this perfectly well. I have my CRT and my HDTV standing right next to each other. I have a Wii U with Retroarch, which is one of the most convenient and cheap ways to access a ton of emulators. And of course, I have original consoles plugged in RGB SCART in my TV (Saturn, MegaDrive/MegaCD/32X).
You are never going to replicate the visuals and the smoothness of the picture you get on CRT on any modern display. Integer scaling isn't even that old, which means people have been playing emulators with shimmering, or awful filters, all this time... Sound is now okay, but for many many years, it was pretty shit in MegaDrive emulators. And I don't know if you play with an original MegaDrive controller on your PC, I doubt it. Closest I have are Saturn SLS USB controllers, which I believe are very difficult to come by now.
His point about composite is true as well. Many games were created with the fact that pixels would be merged if displayed with composite. You see this everywhere in 16 and 32 bits consoles. It was a way to achieve more colors on screen, and simulate transparency. CRT also have a natural ability to define much clearly things displayed (there is a recent DF video that shows this, with higher resolution games, it is pretty impressive), and his example works well (dracula picture) because it is actually true for absolutely everything. CRT slightly merges things together, which leads to pixels not being so visible. In the end, you get a picture that is much softer to the eye, and combined with the super smooth scrolling of the CRT (which not a single modern display duplicates), you get a much better experience. Even if you can replicate the composite effect with filters (that would probably still look different than the real thing), you are not going to make your LCD/OLED screen smooth during scrolling.
So unless you are using a CRT to display your emulated stuff (which I suppose is possible in some way, but probably pretty complicated), you are not getting the same experience. As I said earlier in this thread, it is still possible to find a working CRT, you can buy a cheap MegaDrive with controller and an Everdrive. Add a SCART RGB or S-Video cable to it, and you get a much better experience than on HD TVs. Definitely not the same as on an HD TV, that's for sure.
You are correct in your point, however a lot (and I mean probably 90% of times) the difference is completely irrelevant from a gameplay perspective.
Having a perfectly smooth scrolling in 2D is relevant 100% of the time. Unless you plug your emulator on a CRT, you are not getting this experience.
