I appreciate the author calling out the point that dithering etc. was definitely visible on better-quality CRT monitors via RGB/VGA signals.
So many people these days mistake the blurring from composite signals as being due to the CRT. A CRT doesn't magically blend pixels together. And there are certainly many tradeoffs to using composite so that many people prefer the sharper pixels of RGB.
Presumably most midi game composers checked that their music didn't sound like trash on the AdLib sound card most users would actually have? Good music that's actually written for AdLib can be extremely good, check out Stephane Picq (who sadly also died recently).
In 1993 I thought the OPL2 version sounded better and still do now.
But my broader point was that comparing this old game music to "real" guitar music kinda takes away from what it actually was for a lot of people listening to it - something different to and unique from mainstream rock/metal. It always made me a bit sad when these guys did interviews and talked about listening to ordinary rock bands, it kinda broke the spell that games were a special little place for people who were into computer-based art for its own sake.
Candid does not mean "secretive and very guarded", though. People misunderstand the meaning of candid camera and assume it means "secret camera" and so use it that way, but that hasn't reached a level of misuse to redefine the meaning of candid.
Even better to provide a source for each statistic.
Japan has about half the plastic waste rate, yes [1].
However, the top recycling search result claims Japan only has a 19% recycling rate compared to the US’s 24% [2], but you might have been referring to a specific recycling type?
You're greatly misunderstanding that second link: that's the breakdown of what happens to collected municipal waste within each country (notice they all add up to 100% for each country). That says nothing about total amounts of plastic waste collected or recycled.
Japan recycles about 24% of its used consumer plastics into new products, while the US recycles about 8%. That's NOT factoring in thermal recycling, which Japan is far better at than the US.
Since very few types of plastic are actually recyclable most of it ends up being burned despite being separately collected, so I don't think you can simply discount the recycled plastic from the plastic waste being produced.
Japan burns about half of its collected plastic via thermal recycling (recovering the energy) and recycles about a third into new products.
The key point is that Japan recycles 85% of its plastic waste, which is excellent compared with a country like the US that recycles about 10%. And, the per capita plastic use in the US is far more than in Japan.
This whole point pops up on the internet so frequently because tourists go to Japan and see lots of individually packaged items in supermarkets and convenience stores. Yes, there is room for improvement there, but overall the situation is not as bad as many countries and probably doesn't deserve the attention it gets.
Don't you know - everyone's an expert because they saw a YouTube video about how modern pixel art isn't authentic...
Seriously, this game is a miracle, and the amount of love Ancient put into it is unlike anything we've ever seen for a modern commercial release on hardware that came out in 1988!
It certainly beats out a good portion of the games originally released on the Mega Drive.
Exceptions mean few people manage to work well with the constraints of the system. This issue is not found on the SNES where a lot of games look nicer.
Are you referring to Earthion specifically or just making some grandiose comment about pixel art in the good old days?
What are "CRT bloom and blending"? Are you referring to artifacts caused by composite video output? That is not due to the CRT but rather the signal distortion. RGB output on a CRT will look pixel perfect and colors will not merge. I'd say most gamers using original hardware on CRTs these days are using RGB, so if anything, it reflects the current user trends if the Earthion designer did not use dithering (which he did, making this comment irrelevant).
I'm not quite sure what they're on about wrt bloom. CRT bloom is when a bright image displays larger than a dark image. Classically, this is pretty noticable on say Super Street Fighter II Turbo if you do a super combo finish.
If it's particularly noticeable, it probably means you need to service your CRT. But I guess, don't put important content close to the edges of the screen on very bright screens. But you've already got to be careful of putting things near the edge, so it's just be even more careful. It's not really all or nothing, you also get vertical expansion on lines that are bright; here's a video example [1]. I think you can get a bit of vertical bleeding on bright pixels too, depending on adjustment, which you might
I will say, even though bloom is a screen defect, it can be kind of a neat effect... Super Combo Finishes might not be as cool if the geometry held steady.
So many people these days mistake the blurring from composite signals as being due to the CRT. A CRT doesn't magically blend pixels together. And there are certainly many tradeoffs to using composite so that many people prefer the sharper pixels of RGB.
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