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What made the NES so interesting?

nicole.express

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Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#61

Post by bennysomething »

stormbrew wrote: post #16

> The NES is in some sense a composite-only system. While there is an RGB mod, it's quite invasive[...] This is something that a lot of even very plugged into retrogaming people don't really get about the NES and RGB mods. I think it's very counterintuitive for people now that there is no part of the system that operates in actual 'color' information. The NES' video output is composite from start to finish[1], with p…

I've got a RGB modded NTSC nes too. I bought it so o could use with an ossc (open source scan converter, bit of hardware that does lagless line doubling to output to hdmi 720 or 1080 etc, though I'm sure you know this others might not). The results are way past what I expected and I'm really happy with it. However the RGB mod I got for my N64 to use with ossc has been really disappointing. I'm sure it would look good on a CRT but on an ossc it's a blurry mess, I've gone back to emulation for the N64 instead.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#62

Post by bennysomething »

scoot wrote: post #55
dlsa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

laughs in PAL Weren't NTSC somewhat also grainier with more pronounced horizontal gaps between each scanline? Certainly seemed so.

Yes, but at a higher refresh rate - 525 horizontal scan lines @ 60hz vs 625 @50hz. Refresh rate is linked to mains frequency.

And pal snes conversion of street fighter 2 was really slow! As were lots of games. All my retro hardware is NTSC now (I live UK which was pal territory).

Though UK developers new what they were doing an optimised properly for pal. Goldeneye looks better on pal for example.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#63

Post by bennysomething »

hyakosm wrote: post #26
stormbrew wrote: post #16

> The NES is in some sense a composite-only system. While there is an RGB mod, it's quite invasive[...] This is something that a lot of even very plugged into retrogaming people don't really get about the NES and RGB mods. I think it's very counterintuitive for people now that there is no part of the system that operates in actual 'color' information. The NES' video output is composite from start to finish[1], with p…

In France we had a different color system (SÉCAM), while the other european countries were in PAL, but French TV were required to have a Péritel/SCART entry by law, offering RGB input. So the french NES was basically the european PAL version with an extra PAL to RGB converter.

Wait what!? There was a French pal RGB nes?

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#64

Post by woliveirajr »

dylan604 wrote: post #39
hyakosm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France we had a different color system (SÉCAM), while the other european countries were in PAL, but French TV were required to have a Péritel/SCART entry by law, offering RGB input. So the french NES was basically the european PAL version with an extra PAL to RGB converter.

Don't forget MESECAM and PAL-M and the other crazy things we had to deal with in the bad old days. There was one standard (PAL-M I think) that was not NTSC but the difference from NTSC was so slight that you could slap an PAL-M sticker* on an NTSC recording, and the PAL-M tape machine would play it back just fine. * The power of that sticker was amazing! ;P

Brazil used PAL-M. NTSC on a PAL+M would give you B&W video and it was possible to convert the equipment (the VCR) by changing the frequency offset of the color carrier.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#65

Post by RetroSpark »

bennysomething wrote: post #63
hyakosm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France we had a different color system (SÉCAM), while the other european countries were in PAL, but French TV were required to have a Péritel/SCART entry by law, offering RGB input. So the french NES was basically the european PAL version with an extra PAL to RGB converter.

Wait what!? There was a French pal RGB nes?

AFAIK the French NES is just a PAL console with an added composite-to-RGB converter. Although it outputs RGB signals, the quality is no better than composite.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#66

Post by scoot »

mrob wrote: post #57
scoot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but at a higher refresh rate - 525 horizontal scan lines @ 60hz vs 625 @50hz. Refresh rate is linked to mains frequency.

>Refresh rate is linked to mains frequency. It doesn't have to be. Japan has a split power grid with 50Hz in the east and 60Hz in the west, but television frequency is 60Hz on both sides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan#/m...

It was possible of course, but there are good reasons they were intrinsically linked:

The AC power line frequency was used for the vertical refresh rate for two reasons. The first reason was that the television's vacuum tube was susceptible to interference from the unit's power supply, including residual ripple. This could cause drifting horizontal bars (hum bars). Using the same frequency reduced this, and made interference static on the screen and therefore less obtrusive. The second reason was that television studios would use AC lamps, filming at a different frequency would cause strobing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refresh_rate#Televisions

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#67

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

dylan604 wrote: post #39
hyakosm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France we had a different color system (SÉCAM), while the other european countries were in PAL, but French TV were required to have a Péritel/SCART entry by law, offering RGB input. So the french NES was basically the european PAL version with an extra PAL to RGB converter.

Don't forget MESECAM and PAL-M and the other crazy things we had to deal with in the bad old days. There was one standard (PAL-M I think) that was not NTSC but the difference from NTSC was so slight that you could slap an PAL-M sticker* on an NTSC recording, and the PAL-M tape machine would play it back just fine. * The power of that sticker was amazing! ;P

An NTSC tape would play in black and white on a pure PAL-M system. PAL-M was the Brazilian system, created to conform to the 60Hz mains but having the improved colour encoding of PAL.

Before colour TVs, Brazil used the American 60Hz System M (B&W predecessor of NTSC), so when it came time to adopt colour they couldn't choose the European PAL because it would not be compatible with current B&W TV sets, and they didn't want to adopt NTSC* because by then it was clear it was an inferior colour encoding, so they slapped a PAL colour encoding on top of a SystemM B&W signal, resulting in a 525 lines 60Hz without NTSC colour distortions (kinda best of both worlds).

* Also they didn't want to adopt NTSC because they wanted to prop the national electronics industry, so a home made standard meant local TV makers didn't have to compete with imported TV sets.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#68

Post by bluescrn »

IMSAI8080 wrote: post #53
dylan604 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and especially because NTSC had trouble with stable color This is why we joked NTSC meant Never The Same Color. The last thing you wanted to see in NTSC was bright red because you'd continue to see it smear for at least 1/4 of the screen to the right. NTSC "Safe" red wasn't really red. Run a broadcast safe filter on 255,0,0 and see how far off it goes. Should be somewhere around 180,0,0 IIRC. The days of looking at…

> This is why we joked NTSC meant Never The Same Color. SECAM = System Essentially Contrary to the American Method PAL = Perfection At Last

I thought PAL was 'Picture Always Lousy'

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#69

Post by hnlmorg »

jqcoffey wrote: post #4

Principally the thing it did right, having lived through the era, is bring a real video game home with Super Mario Bros. At the time I had a C64 and an Atari 2600, but would spend every quarter I could dig up at the arcade at the bowling alley next door playing pretty much anything, but especially Super Mario Bros. The Nintendo was the first console to bring the arcade home and it was absolutely revolutionary.

NES wasn’t the first home console to bring the arcade home. It wasn’t even the first console in its generation.

What it was, was the most successful console in America in that era but that was largely due to the crash in the console market over there (something that didn’t affect the rest of the world).

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#70

Post by flatiron »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #29

What made the NES great was what others have already mentioned: by 1985 chip technology was at a point where you could do hardware tiling and RAM was cheap enough that you could do nice color lookup tables. Also the NES came out during a video game crash, so competitors were holding back on making new consoles (their latest consoles were a few years earlier). Also the ability to do simple stored audio wave patterns a…

And then proceeded to come out with the wii and forced motion games.
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