Sega Genesis / MegaDrive - Composite video or not?

I only use actual CRT + consoles for one generation; the sixth (PS2/GC/Xbox). With that setup, I use s-video over high quality cabling. I'm not sure if sixth gen devs used dithering blurs to their advantage like fourth gen devs did. Probably not, as sixth gen hardware could do native transparencies or hardware alpha blending.

However when I emulate fourth gen systems on LCD monitors, I do tend to use a softening effect. Sometimes I'll go with a ratty composite CRT filter, or sometimes just a basic edge softener. When I was younger I wanted as sharp as possible pixels, but these days I like some round edges on sprites and smoothing of fonts and such. Easier on my older eyes.

But anyway Ziggy, if I were using a real Genesis with an a real CRT, I personally would use composite. That's how developers intended the games to be seen back then. And it's how I played those games as a kid. It would feel authentic.

I use RBG personally. While certain effects like the ones shown, and color dithering tricks might be revealed, I find that most of the screen, most of the time, just looks so much nicer in RGB.

I do think there is some merit to Composite being the intended method of play, clearly some devs considered this or these effects wouldn't be so prevalent. That said, the Mega Drive in Japan outputs RGB natively via the JP-21 connector, and does so in PAL regions with SCART as well, and in my research, it seems these games were developed primarily in RGB as well, though then likely tested via Composite. So, while I think some devs may have made use of Composite, and it may have been assumed that that would be the output most commonly used, I don't think it was looked at as the only usable output.

But yeah, those screens are enough for me to feel comfortable sticking to RGB. The Vaseline smear look is just too much for me, and it tends to look worse than these image captures on an actual CRT in my experience. I've ran my Genesis via Composite on multiple decent consumer TVs, and a PVM, and it looks pretty dang bad to me.

Having just played Snatcher in RGB, I don't think I could be convinced that Konami didn't want me to see that shit in all its glorious detail. To me, at least, that was me seeing what was actually visualized in the creator's minds, even if they thought the average consumer might not be able to experience it at the time, and thus used some tricks based on that assumption. 

To be fair, though, I am a bit of a junky with this stuff. I'd hook the PPU straight into my eyeballs if I could. But, I think the Genesis is really bad when it comes to Composite, even taking that into account. The Saturn, for comparison, actually outputs pretty nice Composite, and I could play on that and be pretty happy. 

I wonder if the Genesis dev kits also had really bad composite? I know the various models are a little different, but it'd be interesting to find out if they were doing some tests on a (better) composite signal to check these effects, since they knew it'd be the primary output used. If not, I can only imagine that they worked with what they had, but I can't see the Koshiro siblings really wanting Streets of Rage 3 to look like it does via Composite over RGB. Just doesn't sit with me, I dunno. 

So I originally posted this about a year ago. At that time, I had been gaming primarily on an HDTV via a Framemeister for a few years since I didn't have access to my CRTs during that time. I finally got sick of it and purchased a lovely little 13" Sony Trinitron. This little TV looks fantastic, but the catch is that it only inputs RF and composite (and only mono audio at that). For the longest while when I was young, I only had a 13" TV (not nearly as nice as a Trinitron) and used RF for everything, so I figured I'd make due. I was planning on making a stereo-to-mono RCA adapter to solve that problem, but until I had a chance to make it I decided to just use consoles that output mono audio. So I was playing a lot of NES and my Genesis 3. At that point, it had been many years since I used composite for the Genesis. I was using RGB with the Framemeister on an HDTV for a few years, and I was using S-Video on a CRT for a few years before that.


Not to sound too dramatic, but I was kinda blown away how awesome these composhit effects looked. I hadn't seen them in many years, I forgot how awesome they look. I was use to looking at these jarring hash and checkerboard patterns. So I binged played my favorite Genesis games and marveled at how much better I thought it was. At this point, I thought I would simply stick with composite for the Genesis from then out. Sure, it's a blurry rainbow mess. But I thought I'd rather deal with that than the broken transparencies. 

But since I originally posted this I decided to pick up a 13" Sony PVM and a SCART switcher. The seller of the switcher threw in a bunch of cheap RGB SCART cables. I only had an RGB cable for my model 1 Genesis up to this point, but now I had a model 2/3 RGB cable. So naturally I decided to test it out. I was using composite for a few months with the Genesis 3, so that's what I was use to seeing. I hooked up the RGB cable with the Genesis 3 and WOW I forgot how amazing blurry the Genesis composite really is. It really is like smearing Vaseline all over the screen. RGB is so crisp, so clean. But now the transparencies are broken. 

And that is why I posted this. I just cannot make up my mind. It's a I want my cake and eat it too kind of situation. It doesn't help that all of my favorite games for the Genesis use this trick in one way or another. Another good example is my favorite game on the console, Castlevania Bloodlines.







Yep, that's a great resource. I've been using the Genesis 3 for composite, which I believe is the best composite you can get from a stock Genesis.



This is how I felt for so long. Really, the benefits of RGB outweigh the composite effects. I mean, it's like 99% versus 1% of what you're seeing. But I let that 1% bother me!

Oh, wait a sec. I'm remembering now that the transparency bit is a feature in the Mega Sg. It tries to detect the dithering pattern and does a sort of blending to the image. Sometimes it works great, but sometimes it also picks up other graphical features and messes them up. Check out the MLiG video starting at around the 10:30 mark.