Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

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iNCEPTIONAL

Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Has anyone ever created a list of all the [1700+] SNES games where the art looks proportionally correct when displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus an 8:7 aspect ratio (as possible in the 1:1 PAR or "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and as seen on all modern emulators)?

Even out of just the Top 100 SNES Games or whatever?

I might do this myself [if I can truly be bothered], possibly using the following list (seems as good a list as any):

https://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNE ... ge-10.html

Edit: Here's the list so far:

1. A Link to the Past = 8:7
2. Super Metroid = 8:7
3. Chrono Trigger = 4:3
4. Street Fighter II Turbo = 4:3
5. Super Mario World = 8:7
6. Final Fantasy VI = 8:7
7. Super Mario Kart = 8:7
8. Secret of Mana = 8:7
9. Donkey Kong Country 2 = 8:7
10. Star Fox = 8:7

11. Mega Man X2 = 8:7
12. Final Fantasy IV = 8:7
13. Yoshi's Island = 8:7
14. F-Zero = 8:7
15. Super Mario RPG = 8:7
16. Legend of the Mystical Ninja = 8:7
17. Super Turrican 2 = 8:7
18. Terrinigma = 8:7
19. Turtles in Time = 8:7
20. Earthbound = 8:7

21. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals = 8:7
22. R-Type III = 8:7
23. Super Castlevania IV = 8:7
24. Mortal Kombat 2 = 4:3
25. Actraiser = 8:7
26. Spindizzy Worlds = 4:3
27. Axelay = 8:7
28. Contra III: The Alien Wars = 8:7
29. Populous = 8:7
30. Hagane: The Final Conflict = 8:7

And here's two examples of games I looked at in each aspect ratio (both in that Top 100 list):

Street Fighter II in 4:3: https://youtu.be/eksoGmJxiag
Street Fighter II in 8:7: https://youtu.be/cbUn5ceJqM0

Street Fighter II = [proportionally correct at] 4:3

Super Metroid in 4:3: https://youtu.be/Y9tufNHthJE
Super Metroid in 8:7: https://youtu.be/2mHYOzLh19E

Super Metroid = [proportionally correct at] 8:7

Edit 2: If you're somehow confused about what I mean when I talk about "aspect ratio" and how I'm using it for this thread and task of analysing games running at two different aspect ratios, 4:3 and 8:7, here's a good link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssluTgfkdlg

Edit 3: Aspect ratio, as in the Oxford dictionary definition "1. The ratio of the width to the height of an image or screen." - https://www.google.com/search?q=aspect+ ... e&ie=UTF-8

Edit 4: I am utterly bewildered that so many people in here are somehow confused by some universally understood and used terminology in relation to images and displays, and that they can't seem to comprehend that this is how I'm using it here too (you know, the standard/normal way everyone else also uses it): https://youtu.be/ilcRS5eUpwk
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Mon May 30, 2022 1:39 am, edited 22 times in total.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by tepples »

I am not aware of such a list. However, I can give a few anecdotes that come to mind from licensed games.

On Super NES
The background of single-player Dr. Mario in Tetris & Dr. Mario for Super NES has a magnifying glass in the lower left corner. It is an ellipse 72 pixels wide by 80 pixels tall. The TV applying the pixel aspect ratio stretch makes it nearly a perfect circle.

Cells in the playfield of Zoop for Super NES are 12 pixels wide by 14 pixels tall. This makes them nearly square on the TV.

On NES
Round things in Pinball and Samus's morph ball in Metroid are stretched vertically to appear round on the TV. The magnifying glass in the NES version of Dr. Mario has the same stretched dimensions as the Super NES version.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

The Chrono Trigger moon is another good example for the 4:3 column. There's also the Tri-Force at the start of A Link to the Past.

Now, who's going to mention some of the proportionally correct at 8:7 examples (ideally where it's all or the majority of the game content that looks proportionally correct at this aspect ratio, much like the Zelda example above). . . .
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sat May 28, 2022 2:39 pm, edited 8 times in total.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Well, since no one else seems to have any, here's one example in the 8:7 column: Super Metroid: https://youtu.be/yH8uLHjGbco?t=473
turboxray
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 5:02 am Has anyone ever created a list of all the [1700+] SNES games where the pixel art looks proportionally correct when displayed at 4:3 (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus 8:7 (as possible in "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and emulators)?

Even if out of just the Top 100 SNES Games or whatever?

I might do this myself (if I can truly be bothered), possibly using the following list (seems as good a list as any):

https://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNE ... ge-10.html
I would say no, simply for two reasons; 1700 games and you'll find examples of artists correcting for it and not correcting for it.. in the same game. And I guess 3rd..ly, it's also irrelevant because PAR never changed - you had no control over this. The pixel aspect ratio was always going to be the pixel aspect ratio. Emulators are not the snes system. Etc.

SNES is not the only system where developers sometimes cared/corrected and sometimes didn't care/correct for PAR. PCE has examples for its mid res mode (344x240) for Arcade ports (Capcom, Irem, etc).

The problem with this, is that people are just going to use it for some type of justification for their opinion.. to be forced on others. The original system and its PAR doesn't give a damn about peoples opinions. It existed and that's what you got. And the only real reason why it's even a thing nowadays, verses always forcing it to the correct PAR.. is because people want "sharpest pixel" output without shimmering.. on a lower res fixed pixel display (less than 4k). Adjusting for PAR doesn't give you that nice integer scale, which is needed for a fixed pixel display if you don't want to interpolate.

That said, from an optimization for sprites standpoint- the snes PAR gives it an advantage over square pixels. You basically get extra free horizontal coverage per sprint. I mean, all pixels are 1.143% wider than square (for NTSC), so that means all sprites are now 1.143% more horizontal coverage as well. And if you compare it to 320px mode of the Genesis, they are 25% larger than the same sprite on the Genesis. If you take Andre from the SNES and SegaCD ports of Final Fight, adjust for PAR, you'll see the SNES character is actually wider than the Genesis one. I.e. he's bigger (just not vertically).
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Dwedit
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Dwedit »

Some IBM PC games even failed to correct for the 320x200 pixel aspect ratio, with graphics intended for square pixels.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Nikku4211 »

Dwedit wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 8:51 am Some IBM PC games even failed to correct for the 320x200 pixel aspect ratio, with graphics intended for square pixels.
I've heard CRT computer monitors are more likely to have ways to easily manually change the proportions of the screen without opening up the CRT than CRT TVs are. Is this true?

My CRT TV does not have knobs for changing the screen proportions that are accessible without disassembling the whole TV. I've heard that some CRT TVs have a hidden service menu that supports changing the screen proportions, but I've never been able to get the hidden service menu on my current CRT TV, and I have never found out how to get the hidden service menu on the CRT TV I bought for my old home either.
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Dwedit
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Dwedit »

Yes, old CRT computer monitors had knobs for adjusting picture height and width, along with knobs for adjusting the image position, and a knob that makes the image less bulgy. But you weren't using them for making pixels square, you were using them to make the image fill the display.
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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

turboxray wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 8:12 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 5:02 am Has anyone ever created a list of all the [1700+] SNES games where the pixel art looks proportionally correct when displayed at 4:3 (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus 8:7 (as possible in "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and emulators)?

Even if out of just the Top 100 SNES Games or whatever?

I might do this myself (if I can truly be bothered), possibly using the following list (seems as good a list as any):

https://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNE ... ge-10.html
1700 games and you'll find examples of artists correcting for it and not correcting for it.
Indeed. And I'd certainly be interested in seeing that list of SNES games where the pixel art looks proportionally correct when displayed at 4:3 (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus 8:7 (as possible in "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and emulators).
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Nikku4211
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Nikku4211 »

Dwedit wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:10 am Yes, old CRT computer monitors had knobs for adjusting picture height and width, along with knobs for adjusting the image position, and a knob that makes the image less bulgy. But you weren't using them for making pixels square, you were using them to make the image fill the display.
Yes, the consumers typically were, but that means artists could be using them to make pixels square just to make circles (in art programs that don't use PAR correction) look like circles.

When you're an artist, you will likely have more of an eye for these things and notice them more often than the standard player.

Of course, you could also just draw for whatever proportion and not care about what the circles look like in the interest of time.

A lot of games have circles that look wrong but have most everything else look right under the PAR the game runs in. Doom is one such example, where projectiles look like ovals but sprites based on photos match their photos' proportions under the 5:6 PAR of VGA BIOS mode 13h, which was still used in its Mode Y variation that Doom runs in.
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93143
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by 93143 »

The thing is, it's just not a very interesting question.

This isn't a question where argumentum ad populum makes any sense. It's absolutely clear in a technical sense that the correct target screen aspect ratio for a SNES game is what the output signal produces on a TV conforming to the NTSC (or PAL) standard, and that the 8:7 SAR is an artifact of emulators incorrectly using square pixels.

It's also clear that a lot of game artists didn't design all of their art strictly for the target aspect ratio, either because it didn't matter that much (not everything has an obvious 'natural' aspect ratio like the moon does), or because of technical reasons (Super Mario World's design is built around the tile grid; 14x16 blocks would be a massive pain and force compromises that would make the game worse), or because they just didn't care. Super Metroid is a weird example because Metroid on the NES had a 12x13 morph ball, which is not quite right but getting any closer at that size would have caused it to be higher than it was wide onscreen. Perhaps gravity squashing the morph ball a bit could explain it, or maybe it ended up clashing with BG graphics that were limited by the tile grid. Super Metroid's morph ball is as big as it can be in a 16x16 sprite, so maybe they just didn't want to either make it smaller or spend an extra sprite to fix it and potentially have it look too big for a 16-pixel-high opening.

Do what you want, but don't try to pretend that square pixels are correct in any way, or that the console wasn't explicitly designed for a TV standard that inevitably gives you non-square pixels if you insist on a 256-pixel-wide active scanline (the line width and pitch are what they are, and how many "dots" are encoded in the line is up to the signal source; the TV doesn't know or care). You should at least check the output to make sure you're okay with how your art looks on a ~4:3 screen.

...

SNES Doom corrects the aspect ratio (possibly in software; I thought I saw something about that in the code, but I can't find it now). Unfortunately I think it does it wrong. The PC version's art assets (some of them, at least) are pre-corrected for the 5:6 PAR of a VGA graphics card in mode 13h, but the SNES version ends up looking about right with square pixels despite the fact that the original raw textures don't. Perhaps this is the result of an attempt to correct for the SNES PAR under the assumption that the texels are square...

cacodemon_aspect.png
cacodemon_aspect.png (27.95 KiB) Viewed 9107 times
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

So, a list of all the [1700+] SNES games where the pixel art looks proportionally correct when displayed at 4:3 (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus 8:7 (as possible in "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and emulators).

Well, let's start making [at least some of] the list and see how it plays out. And I think using that Top 100 list I mentioned earlier is a decent start and inference point (since I'm never actually gonna do all 1700+ games): https://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNE ... ge-10.html

1. A Link to the Past = 8:7
2. Super Metroid = 8:7
3. Chrono Trigger = 4:3
4. Street Fighter II Turbo = 4:3
5. Super Mario World = 8:7
6. Final Fantasy VI = 8:7
7. Super Mario Kart = 8:7
8. Secret of Mana = 8:7
9. Donkey Kong Country 2 = 8:7
10. Star Fox = 8:7

Anyone care to continue. . . .
turboxray
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 3:56 pm So, a list of all the [1700+] SNES games where the pixel art looks proportionally correct when displayed at 4:3 (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus 8:7 (as possible in "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and emulators).

Well, let's start making [at least some of] the list and see how it plays out. And I think using that Top 100 list I mentioned earlier is a decent start and inference point (since I'm never actually gonna do all 1700+ games): https://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNE ... ge-10.html

1. A Link to the Past = 8:7
2. Super Metroid = 8:7
3. Chrono Trigger = 4:3
4. Street Fighter II Turbo = 4:3
5. Super Mario World = 8:7
6. Final Fantasy VI = 8:7
7. Super Mario Kart = 8:7
8. Secret of Mana = 8:7
9. Donkey Kong Country 2 = 8:7
10. Star Fox = 8:7

Anyone care to continue. . . .
So what is your criteria exactly? Or is this just a gut feeling while playing?
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

turboxray wrote: Fri May 27, 2022 8:30 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 3:56 pm So, a list of all the [1700+] SNES games where the pixel art looks proportionally correct when displayed at 4:3 (as seen when stretched on a typical SD CRT TV for example) versus 8:7 (as possible in "Pixel Perfect" mode [as it's officially named] on all modern Nintendo consoles and emulators).

Well, let's start making [at least some of] the list and see how it plays out. And I think using that Top 100 list I mentioned earlier is a decent start and inference point (since I'm never actually gonna do all 1700+ games): https://retro-sanctuary.com/Top-100-SNE ... ge-10.html

1. A Link to the Past = 8:7
2. Super Metroid = 8:7
3. Chrono Trigger = 4:3
4. Street Fighter II Turbo = 4:3
5. Super Mario World = 8:7
6. Final Fantasy VI = 8:7
7. Super Mario Kart = 8:7
8. Secret of Mana = 8:7
9. Donkey Kong Country 2 = 8:7
10. Star Fox = 8:7

Anyone care to continue. . . .
So what is your criteria exactly? Or is this just a gut feeling while playing?
Looking at the game running in both 4:3 aspect ratio (as on an old CRT or modern emulator when set to 4:3 for example) and 8:7 (as on the SNES Mini pixel perfect mode or modern emulator when set to 8:7 for example) and then, having observed whether all or the vast majority of the elements of the art are proportionally correct in one ratio or the other, putting it in the 4:3 column (such as with Street Fighter II for example) or the 8:7 column (such as with Super Metroid for example).
turboxray
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Fri May 27, 2022 10:23 am having observed whether all or the vast majority of the elements of the art are proportionally correct
That's what I'm asking you: how are you judging what is proportionally correct. Perfect Circles?
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