“Announcing: CRT streams on Twitch!”
3 min read
“This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.”
–The Song of Achilles
How retro do you like your video games? Retro hardware? Sure. Retro gameplay and graphics? Okay. How about so retro you take a frickin webcam and point it directly at a 37″ tube TV? Get ready for CRT streams, coming to twitch.tv/thewellredmage!
There’s a magic in obsolescence. We get to revisit the tech of yesteryear out of sheer novelty. But when it comes to the legendary CRT, there’s still a ring of truth in myth. Some games just look better with real scanlines, not artificial filters. The soft glow, the hazy light, the blurring of lines… all of these traits and more remind us of what gaming used to look like and therefore used to feel like. Many of our best memories were made on older TV sets. And realistically, games were designed for that tech of yesteryear.
Does that mean, as has been suggested elsewhere numerous times, that retro gaming is better experienced on CRT? That seems hard to quantify, honestly, and I don’t intend to make that claim here. Again, I’m just pointing a camera at a TV… but it’s the closest I can get to inviting you over to my house to sit and play games together in front of this monolithic screen.
So I hope that you can join me for these CRT streams where we can revel in the faded, bleary worlds of a bygone era! I’ll be starting up Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island Friday at 7 pm Central, just in time for an upcoming episode of MAGE CAST podcast on the topic (please send us your comments/questions here to earn a mention on the show). This is one of my favorite games and potentially my favorite Super Mario game, too! I’m very excited to share it with you after doing plenty of tests with the CRT setup.
Streaming has been a bundle of joy but also a mess of technical difficulties. I anticipate CRT streams, adding another layer of complexity to my channel, will bring new challenges, but that too, like the ancient CRT, is just a part of the experience.
Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage or Mage Cast.
