Updated version of Skullsaber CRT Reshade running on Jnes with 3 examples of gameplay (Ninja Gaiden II, Castlevania III, and Tetris)
"A combination of Reshade shaders meant to emulate the quirks of a standard American household TV in the mid 80s to early 90s, which was not necessarily a TV that was well maintained, or even from the same decade. Most people did not tune the sharpness or know how to get the cleanest signal possible. Game creators catered graphics to this idea of the smeared image that most people had connected to the original NES as a number of middle to lower class to poor Americans did not have the top model of that year, or even that decade. They did not know or care about things like resolution, or more advanced ways to gain signal strength, and a LOT did not EVEN have component cables. This does not go to the most extreme, but it hovers around a nice middle ground of best case scenario for a lower middle class American in what type of clarity they would have in a possible set up of the time periods I mentioned before . TVs used to last decades even under sometimes extreme conditions, all with vastly varying difference in quality mixed into the popular refurbished markets of the time. When you see that period piece picture always paired with Retro gaming of a Kid in the basement with a TV on the ground, remember no one did that with brand new TVs, and that was usually what you did with the TV you just replaced. Nintendo knew this early on, as did most game makers of that era, and they absolutely accounted for it. in reality most kids ( or adults like my parents) did not even register Pixel blocks outside the parameters of the TV pixels themselves, it was blurry and slightly smeared in a way that blended everything together in a definitive esthetic that gets lost when you take way the quirks and imperfections of that flawed unclean and refurbished at best setting. This is optimized around 1920x1080 standards, with borders added to deal with bleed-over of one of the shaders hitting the screen cut off"
This is also optimized for PC, and I would not try running this off the same systems you might throw Retroarch on, as the combination of shaders and the resolution requires a bit more GPU beef than a standard machine you would throw a NES emulator on ( it was made on a system that has an RTX 4070, but i'm sure it does not need remotely that to run effectively). a standalone version of JNES was what i used for this emulation, and i personally use only standalone emultion in a PC enviroment. Your mileage for quality may vary on other emulators you drop this Reshade into that is not JNES....( I AM working on one optimized for Dukstation in the Background though)........
After my last post, I understand this is not for everyone, and that's okay. If you get it you get it, and if you don't you don't, I guess. People had different upbringings and different experiences with life during the CRT era, and the great thing about these sort of visual mods is there is enough variety put out there for everyone to be satisfied with their perfect vision for how a retro-game should look. Everyone is happy. and we can pick what we like and ignore what we do not.
Get the Reshade Preset HERE: Skullsaber CRT
Get Jnes HERE: JNES