this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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[–] Aeri@lemmy.world 132 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Anyone tell that fool that CRTs were literally the only kind of TV that existed at the time

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 47 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Admittedly, this game doesn't look particularly good on a CRT, either.

The hype about the visuals being "3D" was so weird and misinformed, and you could absolutely tell at the time.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

IMO, that's all a part of the Rare+Nintendo hype at the time. Killer Instinct was in the same campaign for these pre-rendered 3D graphics as the wave of the future. Don't forget, they had to go toe-to-toe with Sony's Playstationat that time, so bringing anything that looked like real 3D on a SNES was kind of a big deal.

[–] Sparrow_1029@programming.dev 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It was pseudo-3D, I remember reading an article about how they made the sprites, but can't find that... wikipedia has

Donkey Kong Country was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered 3D graphics

and they used SGI workstations to create the models and animations before compressing/converting them to 2D sprites

Rare invested their NES profit in Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) Challenge workstations with Alias rendering software to render 3D models. It was a significant risk, as each workstation cost £80,000.

(sharing bc I thought that's a crazy amount of money for 1992)

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

Meanwhile, Nintendo positioned this method to compete with Aladdin, which simply hired Walt Disney animators to do the sprites.

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I mean, other types of displays definitely existed.

[–] cubism_pitta@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

In that era you had CRTs or Rear Projection TVs.

Rear Projection was bigger (55" 4:3) but often times was susceptible to burn-in and had a worse quality picture compared to a CRT

Before LCDs it was plasma which until the the late 2000s had more technical advantages over LCD Refresh rate, contrast. LCDs couldn't really match them until the 2010s (I never had a plasma display though so I don't fully understand plasma)

DLP was a thing and could get up to and over 80" while maintaining quality but DLP could not be wall mounted as they were quite big like rear projection screens

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 18 hours ago

Rear projections are 3 crts in a trench coat.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Before LCDs it was plasma which until the the late 2000s had more technical advantages over LCD Refresh rate, contrast. LCDs couldn't really match them until the 2010s

glances at Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD TV from 2007 currently in living room

still works really well

fucking 80 lbs

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

and don't forget to tell the movers to keep it upright during transport to prevent damage lol

[–] cubism_pitta@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Bad viewing angles, poor contrast ratios, poor refresh rate and poor display speed.

I was not saying that they were non existent or unreliable. The technology was just poor at that time and beaten by Plasma displays in those areas

Plasma displays had 2 problems though (besides cost) They were heavier than LCDs and their backlights would dim over time.

Edit: I was reading on wikipedia... they work like those plasma globes!

Plasma displays were affected by screen burn-in where as LCDs typically are not.

Also it seems like on Contrast ratio plasma still is not beaten by LCD displays

Though there are a lot of LED backlight technologies that help. Such as being able to only run a portion of the backlight for a given area.

For a while there were also Dual Layer LCD panels. They would effectively use one layer of LCD to control color and another to try to control brightness / prevent light bleed through. I think those are obsolete for the most part now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_display

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Plasma displays had 2 problems though (besides cost) They were heavier than LCDs and their backlights would dim over time

Plasmas dont have backlights, they worked similar to oled.

[–] cubism_pitta@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

You are correct. They were susceptible to burn in and dimming over time but did not have a back light.

I never owned a plasma display because they were too expensive. CRT until 08 when we upgraded to a Vizio LCD for me

I should've corrected that after my wikipedia dive

[–] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

Yea but LCDs were shit and had shifting colors across the screen even when you were sitting right in front of them.