Yeah I'm with you on the "clean can be worse" thing.
Ref retro stuff, and in danger of going off topic, the whole clean pixels vs crt blur debate is really clear to me; old graphics were made on crts, for crts, and therfore clean pixels (the term given for old pixelart displayed on modern displays without a crt filter or retro scaler) is garbage.
Generally speaking, for me, I'd rather a game look it's best, so I will always use any method offered to make a game look better, especially with emulation - I think these retro snobs need to calm down with their scan lines, blurring and pixelation. It's quite sad really. I strongly believe it's some snobby thing they all say to fit in with each other, and it's like some unwritten rule to be excepted as a retro enthusiast, and look cool being all purist
It'd be like saying with modern games that they look too realistic, or that fixing UE5 stutters would ruin the purity of the game
and the stutters were period correct/'part of the experience'
There's no way that we would have chosen for a game to look worse if we had a choice/better technology at the time. Otherwise we would have shunned 3D games, and things like the PS1/N64 and so forth.
CRT's are amazing, and still look it, which is fine, but there's no way you can say that a modern TV doesn't look good, whatever you're running, and if I can use it to run a 40 year old game and make said game look better with various methods, I'm all for it, as it'll look as good as I thought it did with rose tinted glasses back then?
