Do you remember the warm, snug feeling you held whilst playing your Mega Drive on a cold
winters night.
Sitting on your bed, with a cup of cocoa (or possibly rum), and that mesmerising, glowing
projection from your 14" CRT television flickering out at you.
A joyful escape into that wonderful world of 8 or 16 bits.
I, for one, certainly do.
and I also know from experience, how hard that feeling is to create in our current era
of gaming, without a CRT screen.
Our wide screen LCD's offer us incredible clarity, without instigating an ounce of eye
strain, but yet, there's something missing.
These screens feel cold.
Lifeless.
Much like an Intercity 125 does to a mighty Mallard steam train.
The Intercity is nice.. great for everyday use.
But there's nothing quite like the thrill of a good steam train, or indeed CRT screen.
So I thought it would absolutely dandy if we could take a look at some more modern gaming,
and see how it translates onto our 50Hz flickering PAL, CRT televisions.
For this task, I have a 10" Alba traveller television, with a whopping 32 channel preset
memory.
This is the kind of unit a typical 14 year old might have had in their bedroom, in the
90s, and it's bloody perfect.
Just look at how well it handles Mega Drive games.
Even playing it now, it just feels right.
It feels so much better than plugging your system into an LCD screen, and feeling that
electrode ray hitting the tiny dots on the shadow mask.
The fact you can see these dots, just makes everything more cosy and tangible.
So, I've got an Xbox 360 here.
Not the newest technology, but then I'm currently transitioning this unit out of the lounge,
and so it makes perfect sense to use it.
This HDMI to AV converter will perform the task of taking the HDMI signal from the Xbox
and converting it to Composite RCA, so the Alba can accept it, and it even squishes it
into a lovely 4:3 format which actually looks, pretty darn nice.
Even navigating around the menus on this Xbox, feels nice on this tiny telly.
The text isn't crystal sharp, as you'd expect, but it's perfectly readable.
So here's Minecraft, for your viewing pleasure, pushed out at 1080i, but then squeezed into
composite like it was born for it.
This isn't a game I really play, it's more something my kids take sheer delight in.
But as it's all the rage on Youtube these days, I thought, why not fire it up, and I
must say, Minecraft isn't really my thing, but on this little screen, it feels like my
thing.
It feels like I could play this for a much longer period of time and quite enjoy it.
The fuzzyness of the text, just adds to that, and so does the fact, I guess, that I'm sitting
at a desk, in a chair, playing this, just like I did with my Master System and Mega
Drive.
This is the whole experience of old, merged with the new, in a very pleasing way.
I can't even really tell that this is a little squished for the 4:3 screen format, but I
guess the fact it's on such a tiny screen helps to mask that.
I'm not going to play Minecraft for the duration of this video, because there are a few other
games I want to play.
The first is SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, like it would be on a Mega Drive, but through the Xbox!
This is a weird feeling, but again, I like it.
For comparison, here's what's its like through the Mega Drive.
This setup makes it feel like any game could be better, and sure enough, Sonic 4, feels
a hell of a lot more like a Sonic game when played like this.
Maybe we were a little tough on it.
Maybe it's because we didn't experience it through a tiny CRT screen that we felt it
wasn't worthy of the Sonic brand.
Streets of Rage 2 is another game which feels perfect in this setup.
Especially after adjusting the screen size to get rid of the overscan borders.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
You can also switch smoothing on, which you can't really notice the difference on this
tiny display.
Again, here's the Mega Drive for comparison.
Mmmmm, this is making me wet...
Because I've spilt a cup of tea over me in the excitement.
I almost forgot though, I hadn't configured the Xbox for this new screen.
You can actually tell the xBox what screen size you're using, and yep, it seems to accept
the 10" figure no problem.
Doesn't really look any different though, so onto another title.
One of my favourites.
Outrun.
I mean, I emplore everyone to try this.
Unplug your console from your television, find a tiny CRT and play away, because it's
really something truly heart warming about it, and it creates a sense of nostalgia you
just wouldn't get with a flat screen.
I mean, sure, you might have problems with tiny text, and I'm sure a 4k game would ruin
your day.
But like this, it's bloody marvelous.
Thanks for watching, click this video, subscribe, support me through Patreon if you really want
to, but otherwise, have a great evening!