90s games and monitors

[Panos]

As everyone else I have a pretty sizeable 27" 2560x1440 monitor.

Which is terrible to play some of my favourite games from the 90s and early 2000s.
Every game looks crap due to resolution and sharpness, and doesn't capture the atmosphere of the day.

Given that "new" CRTs monitor do not exist, and used ones after 10+ years of use show wear and tear (washing out colours etc) what are my options from your experience?

 

[Panos]

Shame you arent nearer I have one of those old 4:3 dells up in the loft

Yeah unfortunately. Thank you

I wouldn't touch a CRT with a barge pole; I am not old enough to get misty-eyed about the benefits (as I was too young to care when I used CRTs) and instead just think of the drawbacks: noise, flickering and eyestrain, size, weight, reliability...

I would get a 4:3 or 5:4 17" or 19" LCD sreen. I have one of those old and formerly ubiquitous Dell monitors in 17" 1280 *1024 guise on my Windows 98 gaming PC, which is quite nice and can be had for very cheap or free if you look (old PCs coming with one on gumtree etc).

it's small enough to sit next to my main monitor and it might actually have a higher PPI compared to by 1080p 27" screen. The colours and brightness are adequate.

I also use my main monitor quite regularly with my Windows 98 PC. Even a lowly Riva TNT2 can do 1920*1080 (native for me screen) on the desktop and 640*480 - 1280*1024 looks alright as my monitor will run in a 4:3 mode rather than stretch the image.

To CRT, PPI and monitors resolution mean nothing as long as the tube can render the resolution and refresh rate.
Because of how the image is projected, the method is completely different to liquid crystals, hence a game at 800x600 on a 1280x1024 CRT monitor looks exactly the same at on 1024x768 or 800x600 CRT monitor or even a 2560x1440 CRT monitor (didn't existed but hope you take the meaning). There is/was no scalling involved.

On contrary, because of how LCD monitors are working, the above is not true. It will have to scale the image and the monent you do so, you lose it's properties completely. Yes 17" 1280x1024 might sound good, but the images, aka games, will be scalled to that resolution. And we are on the same boat as with the 27" 2560x1440 monitor.

Mods.

Yeah, trying to spend the next 1000 hours of my life with Assembly, trying to make Ravenloft and Ravenlot 2 run at higher res.......
These games didn't supported modding, and are pre-Windows and DX era.