My hobby’s not the same without my huge, heavy, ugly wingman

I don’t begrudge people playing and loving classic games on modern OLEDs or LCDs. I do it, and some games still look great, just different. But I know that on the right display those pixelated faces and backgrounds can be as vivid as a photo or hand-drawn animation cell. I know the headache-inducing checkerboard patterns of lamp or waterfall effects were intended to be semi-transparent and can look great on the right CRT. And I know that Donkey Kong Country can look like a CGI film from 2014 despite being released in 1994, whereas a digital display can make it look more like a mishmash of thousands of randomly coloured blocks.

I’ve had a number of CRTs, but there’s no ideal model because analogue technology is inherently imprecise, and they all have their own character. Ideally, I’d have a woodgrain cabinet with a hazy RF input for my oldest systems, a small black plastic Sony for the ’90s, and a big broadcast monitor or high-end 2000s consumer set. But without the budget and floor plan of a small museum, I have to make compromises to suit my space. The Hyundai CRT I currently favour is from the early 2000s and would have sat in a graphic design office rather than in a loungeroom, so it lacks a certain authenticity. But with a little tweaking it works great with my classic consoles, and makes those from the mid-90s onwards look phenomenal.

The downside is that aesthetically a CRT office monitor is ridiculous in the present day, without even the kitschy cache of an old-school TV. My family has always embraced each other’s hobbies when it comes to placing our stuff around the house, but my suggestion that the beige box could go to a shared living area last time we moved was immediately vetoed, which is fair. It has pride of place in the office.

One final point in favour of a PC CRT? It runs at around 30kHz, with a whine so high-pitched that it’s inaudible to humans, so the kids can’t immediately tell when I’m playing it.

Tim Biggs is a staff writer covering consumer technology, gadgets and video games.

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