It's part of the reason why older systems usually look like garbage when attached to a modern television. This type of technology is much worse when it comes to re-sizing lower-resolution signals. That flat panels that have become the norm are all fixed-resolution displays. And because of the nature of the technology, they were able to handle this re-sizing quite capably. No matter what resolution signal you fed into them, they would display it full-screen. CRTs were multiple-resolution technology. A big part of this whole discussion is the shift from CRT to fixed resolution displays as the primary means of displaying games. That's why it is useful when emulating that style to have a specific resolution to target that can be scaled effectively. But for games that rely on a specific resolution for their environmental structure, such flexibility is not possible. For some games, altering the resolution or aspect ratio is a minor consideration, and relative spacing for GUI and HUD elements can easily compensate. And the structure and layout of the rooms was a huge part of the content. (since levels and rooms often took up the entire screen) If you changed the resolution on a game like The Legend of Zelda, you would have to change the structure of the rooms to compensate. And that is far more important to screen resolution. But quite a few games relied on that 16x16 standard for level construction. And yes, some characters were made up of collections of multiple sprites. It is true that there were often some sprites that were 8x8, and even some that were 8x16, or 16x32. That grid-based focus for constructing levels and environment was a crucial part of the "style" from that era. 3? How many sprites wide is the playfield in Bomberman? Bubble Bobble? Gyromite? While quite a few classic games feature extensive scrolling, there are quite a few that rely on grids for their general structure. How many sprites wide is the screen in The Legend of Zelda? How many sprites wide is the standard map screen in Super Mario Bros. What does resizing matter as long as the dimensions of everything on screen stay proportional? Sounds stupid as heck. 16 x 16 was the standard sprite size for most retro games from that era. The basic rule is that your dimensions need to divide evenly into 16. For the 8 and 16 bit "styles" it's important to take sprite dimensions into account. This recommendation assumes a widescreen aspect ratio. This new recommendation allows for x3 and x5 scaling to both fit on those displays with minimal waste. The scaled versions wouldn't both fit on screen for a 720p display and a 1080p display. 384 x 208 (for fullscreen) 288 x 208 (for fullscreen stretched) My previous recommendation allowed for some overlap and cropping on the rendering. Speaking of sprite dimensions, I did a few more calculations and have a different recommendation. This is especially true of lower-resolution pixel games, which are often based on exact sprite dimensions. Some types of games don't lend themselves well to re-sizing. Also, giving greater control to the player over how the game is displayed can effect the design of the game. This isn't always feasible with the engine being used. It feels incredibly lazy when a game doesn't. There's really no excuse to not include some video options for how and if to stretch the image.
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