Ran into some weird video trouble that suddenly manifested with my Retrotink 5X that had me doing some testing on one of my monitors to troubleshoot the potential causes, which I took to be a good opportunity to throw on my recently obtained physical copy of Fire Woman Matoi-gumi that definitely cost me Some Money, but I do really like it that much. Anyway, throwing on some scanlines was a good reminder of just how good the Retrotink does them that it actually got me to enjoy playing 240p games with them unlike the more simplistic solutions of older emulators that did nothing for me. (Doesn't hurt that this game had outstanding art in its native PC-FX version, either, though.)
My cheap phone camera doesn't really do the effect justice and you'll have to click/tap on the photos to really see the full effect, but as I've said before, if you own a Retrotink and are similarly ambivalent about scanlines, I really suggest tooling around with them and seeing if you find a setting that works for me. For me, having a shadow mask that mimics the sort of CRT I grew up on did wonders for selling the effect on me. I still turn them off for 480i/p games since I find they generally add little benefit to games of that fidelity, but otherwise I've come to enjoy indulging in this sort of aesthetic I was never quite sure I'd ever get to again since I haven't had a CRT of my own since high school.
Anyway, it's a money sink for sure, but there really never has been a better time to play games on their native hardware if you have the means and inclination. I recommend it, even if emulators still absolutely have their place in my gaming rotation. π
