It really is. But when I come across an old machine of a game I loved as a kid, I drop a quarter in and its like a dirt cheap time machine. I’m instantly back in time 25 years.
All those little physical aspects are burnt in my brain. There’s no way to capture that playing an emulated version on a pc or even a modern arcade machine. The modern version is no doubt superior in every way, but its just not right.
It’s not the same without the X-rays.
I think you’ve read into it further than I am likely to. I don’t see the author or the post as the source of fear, doubt, and uncertainty in this case. Difference of opinion, surely that can be tolerated.
For arcade machines they wouldn’t work without major reworking of all the electronics and even then it probably wouldn’t work right. Unlike TVs that take in either composite, RF modulated, Y-C (S-Video), or Y-Pr-Pb (Component) video all using NTSC, PAL, or SECAM encoding, almost all color arcade games use an analog RGB signal, similar to VGA but may use different voltage levels, at widely varying resolutions and sync rates.
Most of the old B&W arcade games used TVs out of convenience and for them this wasn’t a big deal, as you can get a really sharp image out of one of those TVs with very little work. This was also nice because these very early games were built upon TTL logic chips and had no microprocessors, so it could just blast out a bit pattern at the right timings to make the image on the screen. The earliest color games also used TVs, again TTL logic games; but these games like Color Gotcha were also very simple, and TVs produced an acceptable image. When we start going into the realm of microprocessor-based games, we start to see most everything using RGB monitors instead of TVs. The RGB monitors produced a much better image, a more stable image, and much better colors. Early games were around 320x200 in resolution. Now, I stress “around” as there were no standards to what game manufacturers used; every game was different in exactly what resolution and set of refresh rates it used, but these early games were all based around 15kHz monitors. With a high-quality TV you may be able to rework the control circuitry to work with RGB signals instead of NTSC signals, but that’s going to be a job for each different TV you use as they are all different inside.
As tech advanced in the mid 80s resolutions started to go up on arcade games, and 25kHz hsync games started appearing, now called ‘medium resolution’. Then, in the late 80s and early 90s we started seeing high resolution games based around 640x480 (32kHz hsync) and higher. Neither of these would be able to be displayed on a TV tube without entirely new circuitry and new deflection coils-- that is if the electron gun can handle the higher bandwidth and the shadow mask is fine enough to support cleanly showing these resolutions.
With TVs you also get into quality issues. TVs were always built to a price, while arcade monitors were built to a specification. There will be quality issues abound with TVs that you wouldn’t have to deal with in an arcade monitor.
While it’d be neat to use all those old TVs to revive old games, it’s really not a feasible thing to do.
You do need to duplicate the environment to get the correct look and feel of the games, and this usually includes both control and display tech; and some it’s more critical than others. Try playing Marble Madness without a large trackball or Pac-Man with an analog joystick and you’ll find things just aren’t right with the controls. Display is similar, many games took artifacting and the imperfections of old tech to their advantage. Our old games weren’t played with chunky, sharply-defined pixels, but more of softer, blended pixels that were often smoothed out.
This image sums it up: http://kayin.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1391807722376.png
Depending on how much of the ‘look’ is down to it being an analog display device and the assorted tradeoffs of various aperture grills or shadow masks; and how much is down to the historically unavoidable ‘the light is being emitted from behind a curved sheet of fairly thick glass’, the approximation might actually be pretty close indeed.
For the ultimate in authenticity-with-solid-state-convenience, though, you could take an actual CRT display’s front glass and phosphor assembly; remove the electron beam handling stuff and pump the phosphors with UV OLEDs instead.
Markedly thinner, no high vacuum, electron guns, purity issues, etc. but looks a whole lot like the real thing because it’s exactly the same phosphors glowing in exactly the same places behind exactly the same glass. Probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble; but many of the neat things in life can’t really be justified.
The medium is the message.
The physical experience is part of the nostalgia inherent in collecting/repairing/playing these old games. The visceral thrill of being in an Aladdin’s Castle arcade experiencing Donkey Kong, Gorf, or Ms Pac-Man for the first time is something that can’t really be replicated by firing up MAME on your laptop. I’ve been building a retro gaming area in my house complete with pinball and arcade cabinets, and I joke about piping in the smell of mall pizza and cigarettes and making the floor permanently kinda sticky for the full experience.
I am disappointed. You, of all people.
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