Use Retroarch, CRT easy mode, and you literally have all you need.

[Khronikos]

https://imgur.com/a/reADt

It's a little sharper without the imgur compression too, and you can see the filter better.

You can now use Reshade CRT Easy Mode with the Steam version for anybody that cares. I haven't updated settings for my 4K TV, but they should not be too far off.

[Doktor Mandrake]

Pfft CRT easy mode

Royale ftw :p

[Khronikos]

I prefer Easy Mode for almost all my games to be honest. You can mimic a Sony Trinitron aperture grill almost perfectly, tune it to your liking, and be done in 10 minutes.

Royale on the other hand looks all screwed up to me, and takes hours to tune right.

To be honest Royale looks grainy as all hell on default settings and not right in the slightest bit.

Just going back to back there, Royale makes Chrono a weird shimmering mess that looks like tiny iridescent grains are all over the screen.

I know you can tune it, but it takes a lot of time.

[Hornet]

But everyone knows the DS version is the definitive version.

[Khronikos]

Even though imgur compresses and messes up the filter a bit, CRT Easy mode is about as close to my old Sony as I can get:

https://imgur.com/a/reADt

IDK on default settings Royale is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hideous IMHO. And it has a lot of settings to tune. Too many for me to bother.

Those Easy Mode settings are tuned more for Metroid than anything else, but they still look good.

I do kinda like the sharpness of Royale, so maybe sometime I will give it a try. As it is though it loses all its color and charm. I am sure you can tweak some things to make it look good.

Imgur takes a bit of the sharpness out of the Easy Mode pic with compression. It looks better in game.

[Doktor Mandrake]

Hmm after loading the game up and switching back and forth, I think you might be right!

Dunno I'm so indecisive about this sort of stuff, but it looks like royale might basically have way too many filters like bloom (which I hate) and such, and generally looks over-satured compared to easy mode, but easy mode just looks a little too subtle for my liking

Think I'll be trying easymode from now on though for my games

[Khronikos]

Oh and you can certainly tune Easy Mode to be sharper. This was for a previous TV, I now have a 4K C1 OLED, so some of these values might need a small tweak. But usually it isn't much. I almost feel 1080p is about perfect for some of these masks and games though. 4K sometimes is a little too much.

My settings are meant to be subtle and ever so slightly soft. But you have to realize imgur compresses those too. To me it looks lovely.

I use:

.40
.4
.18
1
1
0
1
.95
2.5
2.5
.30
.60
400
2.2
1.8
1.10

The first setting is overall sharpness horizontally. I use .4 for that setting. That will make the pixels really look like pixels when turned up. If you want bolder scanlines just tune the mask strength. I only use .18 for Super SNES. I don't like a big ass mask usually. Scanline strength is on .95 though.

Fun fact if you put scanline cutoff down from 400 to something like 200 you can kinda see how this port looks! Like crap!

And yeah Royale has way too many confusing settings for me. I don't even wanna try it. I'm happy with what I got.

I only have to make a few small changes to mask to make PS1 and other systems look great too.

[Zug Zug]

Originally posted by Khronikos:

You know one other thing, I am ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick of these companies releasing these games like this. It's just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ absurd man. This game would have sold well, and now most people are getting refunds. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy to tweak a decent CRT filter. Even the SNES Mini has a decent one.

I just don't get it. They even left in the phone messages lol. Like how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up is that man? How can you treat such a classic game like this on a wide release on the biggest gamer platform?

Thats a good question. I bought it and got sucked into playing a lot today. This version should have graphics options and filters. Snes9x and Znes have more options then this and those programs are over a decade old. I hope Squeenix tries to improve this version at least but they probably won't because I own most of their classic titles and they barely worked on them.

[Sustain]

Originally posted by Hornet:

But everyone knows the DS version is the definitive version.

Rettroarch has a DS core you can do the same with it, it also includes a PS1 core so you can pick the version you want: SNES,PS1 or DS and use any filter you want on it crt or whatever even LCD filters to make it look like a real DS screen.

[Khronikos]

I been retuning Easy Mode to look even better. Put the sharpness the same on both axis. Brightened the scanlines ever so slightly. Tweaked a couple settings after staring at my screen for about 15 minutes lol. Changes are so subtle when tweaking CRT filters.

And that is the amazing part. Why play some crappy port on Steam when you can go and tune it however you like?

It's weird because now we got people changing the color temp trying to make the game into something it was never before. The game always had a slightly reddish/yellow cast to it. And without a CRT filter the game looks straight up like trash. It weas never meant to have bilinear or some crappy Hq filter lol.

Honestly, save your money and go play this on Retroarch people. There are even achievements. I even have settings for you on CRT Easy Mode. Super simple. Get rom and play.

[Vinny Pulsar]

Originally posted by Khronikos:

Oh and you can certainly tune Easy Mode to be sharper.

My settings are meant to be subtle and ever so slightly soft. But you have to realize imgur compresses those too. To me it looks lovely.

I use:

.40
.4
.18
1
1
0
1
.95
2.5
2.5
.30
.60
400
2.2
1.8
1.10

The first setting is overall sharpness horizontally. I use .4 for that setting. That will make the pixels really look like pixels when turned up. If you want bolder scanlines just tune the mask strength. I only use .18 for Super SNES. I don't like a big ass mask usually. Scanline strength is on .95 though.

Fun fact if you put scanline cutoff down from 400 to something like 200 you can kinda see how this port looks! Like crap!

And yeah Royale has way too many confusing settings for me. I don't even wanna try it. I'm happy with what I got.

I only have to make a few small changes to mask to make PS1 and other systems look great too.

I know it's been a while, but I just want you to know that I use these settings all the time! Thank you!

[Khronikos]

Originally posted by ⌞pizzaguy⌝:

Originally posted by Khronikos:

Oh and you can certainly tune Easy Mode to be sharper.

My settings are meant to be subtle and ever so slightly soft. But you have to realize imgur compresses those too. To me it looks lovely.

I use:

.40
.4
.18
1
1
0
1
.95
2.5
2.5
.30
.60
400
2.2
1.8
1.10

The first setting is overall sharpness horizontally. I use .4 for that setting. That will make the pixels really look like pixels when turned up. If you want bolder scanlines just tune the mask strength. I only use .18 for Super SNES. I don't like a big ass mask usually. Scanline strength is on .95 though.

Fun fact if you put scanline cutoff down from 400 to something like 200 you can kinda see how this port looks! Like crap!

And yeah Royale has way too many confusing settings for me. I don't even wanna try it. I'm happy with what I got.

I only have to make a few small changes to mask to make PS1 and other systems look great too.

I now it's been a while, but I just want you to know that I use these settings all the time! Thank you!

Oh no problem. At this point in time, if anybody wants to play the Steam version they can, and Retroarch shaders along with CRT Easy Mode are available within Reshade. I have a LG C1 4K TV now, but settings seem to only change a little bit in most games I play. Sometimes you might want to turn sharpness up depending on your TV. Definitely don't be afraid to tweak these values on your setup.

TMNT actually just added a really nice CRT shader to their game! It looks great and better than anything I could get with Reshade. So at least some devs are listening!

I will say for some games, I think I preferred my older 1080p set for masks and pixel art. At times 4K blows up a little too much of the low-res graphics, but it still looks pretty great and mostly the same.