The Effect of CRTs on Pixel Art (2024)
TL;DR
Most of the blur people credit to CRTs came from cheap PAL and NTSC TVs fed by RF or composite signals. On a good RGB monitor, pixels stayed plainly visible. Old pixel art looked good because artists used dithering, anti-aliasing and careful palettes. Modern pixel art that skips those techniques looks blockier than the originals ever did.
The article
- Popular side-by-side images that show sprites melting into smooth shapes on a CRT exaggerate the effect. The author uses real CRTs weekly. His photos show jagged pixels plainly, such as the 160x200 C64 version of Maniac Mansion on a Commodore 1084S monitor.
- Quality came from technique. Mayhem in Monsterland (1993) ran on the same C64 hardware as Maniac Mansion (1987). It looks far better because of dithering, anti-aliasing, a disciplined 16-color palette and sprite overlays. On the Amiga 500, Ruff'n'Tumble (1994) gets its smoothness from complementary colors, white highlights and heavy anti-aliasing.
- Signal quality matters more than the CRT itself. RF is worst, then composite, S-Video and RGB SCART. On a good TV, RGB SCART comes close to a real RGB monitor. A CRT blends dithering together. But dithering and anti-aliasing improve an image on any screen. The exception is CGA color blending on IBM PCs, which depends on NTSC composite artifacts and has nothing to do with the CRT.
- Dot pitch is the other factor. VGA monitors from the mid-1990s show 320x200 games like Duke Nukem 3D with clearly visible pixels. Late CRTs make old games look as crisp and blocky as a flatscreen does. The blur people remember came from cheap consumer TVs with a sparse dot pitch.
- CRTs also stretched pixels. VGA's 320x200 mode filled a 4:3 screen with non-square pixels. Showing the art 1:1 on a modern display squashes characters like Monkey Island's Governor Marley.
- The author's complaint about modern pixel art is sloppy technique. Many artists skip dithering and anti-aliasing so the art looks deliberately blocky. Nostalgia credits the CRT with smoothing it never did.
Why it matters
Pixel artists and retro players who want to see the effect for themselves should open the original. It has photos of real CRTs, zoomed Deluxe Paint screens showing dithering and anti-aliasing, and a linked follow-up that goes deeper into signal quality.
The discussion
A friendly, technical thread that mostly agreed with the article's main point and then argued over its edges. The main questions were whether the blur came from the CRT or the cable, and whether sharp pixel art is a style of its own. Others asked what CRTs offer today beyond blur, mainly motion clarity, and whether AI image models will take over cheap indie pixel art.
The cable and the monitor, not the CRT
Many commenters said the blur people remember came from RF and composite signals, which would blur an LCD just as much. RGB, S-Video, SCART and VGA looked sharp, and mrob added that PC CRTs drew low-resolution games sharper than TV CRTs over any connection. cubefox thought the article contradicted itself by repeating the CRT-blur story before taking it apart. Others noted that some console artists may have designed around NTSC composite color shifts, and that few households had the ideal setup CRT fans describe.
The point is there are two factors here: the sharpness of the CRT itself and the sharpness of the connection method.
The reality is most people had far less than ideal setups, yet most will try to hold CRTs to a standard near impossible to most of the era.
Sharp pixel art is a style of its own
The article's line about "misdirected, anachronistic nostalgia" drew pushback. Plenty of readers met pixel art on a Game Boy, GBA or PC monitor, and remembered LCDs and CDs as clear upgrades. spankibalt answered that the original Game Boy screen had its own analog-feeling smear, and mrob disputed that. egypturnash traced the blocky look to the games modern artists miss: early NES and SNES hits, not late C64 and Amiga games.
Historical accuracy means recognising not everyone had the same experience. Yes, many remember pixel art from CRTs, but many also remember it from LCDs.
The number of pixelly games trying to look like a c64 or Amiga is vanishingly small compared to the number trying to look like an NES, SNES, or Genesis.
Motion clarity and flicker
Several commenters said the CRT's real advantage, missing from the article, is motion. A CRT flashes each frame for about a millisecond, so tracked objects stay sharp; LCDs and OLEDs hold each frame and smear it. mrob put shaders at about 90% of a CRT's still image and none of its motion, short of a roughly 1000Hz display. The cost is flicker: bitwize's sister, who has photosensitive epilepsy, could not play games until flat panels arrived.
This doesn't happen on CRTs because they flash each frame only for an extremely short period of time and are relatively dark otherwise.
It gets you about 90% of the image quality and 0% of the motion quality. Simulating CRT motion quality on a sample-and-hold display requires around 1000Hz refresh rate.
Filters, shaders and new CRTs
Opinions on CRT filters ran from "usually too dark" to praise for a few well-tuned games, and WCSTombs noted a filter can only darken pixels. One commenter built a CRT simulator for MacBook Pro XDR screens, and Unai wouldn't take a CRT for free when RetroArch shaders exist. Asked why nobody makes CRTs anymore, commenters gave cost, weight, tiny demand and safety. A claim that leaded glass rules them out drew corrections: the front glass used barium and strontium, and the radiation is X-rays, not gamma rays.
I want to point out though that it's impossible for any CRT filter to have a peak brightness that's not significantly lower than without the filter, since it can darken pixels but not brighten them past what the maximum already is.
I play retro games almost exclusively and I would never get a CRT myself, not even if it was free.
How often artists designed for the blur
ChrisRR doubted that many artists relied on CRT blur, since the same few examples keep coming up. cbolton answered with a video of 30, though shown through filters. ereiamjh pointed to the Atari 2600 Combat tanks, which only look like tanks on a CRT, and wants museums to drop flatscreens for retro games. BearOso said both of the author's articles miss how bright pixels spread on a CRT, which a modified bilinear filter can reproduce without scanlines.
There's a reason it always comes back to the same few examples, peach hanging from a rope, dracula's eyes, sonic behind the waterfall.
It's not that CRTs were "forgiving", it's that designers leaned into what they'd do to pixels.
Consensus
The blur people credit to CRTs mostly came from cheap TVs and RF or composite connections. RGB and VGA CRTs showed pixels clearly, as the article says.
Dissent
Many rejected the claim that modern blocky pixel art is misplaced nostalgia. They said sharp pixels have their own history on Game Boys and PC monitors and are a legitimate style. A few argued that CRTs still beat any filter on motion clarity.