The Reason Old CRT TVs Are Making A Big Comeback – SlashGear

The most famous example of a CRT TV-only title, perhaps, is NES classic Duck Hunt. It worked by means of the NES Zapper, a neat yet simple peripheral that Today I Found Out on YouTube explains “primarily just consists of a button, the trigger, and a photodiode.” What this means is that shooting blacked out the screen for the briefest moment, and the photodiode could then determine whether the player scored a hit by determining whether the light changed in that area of the frame after the shooting.

Today’s HD TVs, lacking IR, can’t function in this way, so Duck Hunt isn’t playable without potential hacks or modifications being made. In addition to such issues, CRT TVs were designed to make rather pixelated titles a little easier on the eye through scanlines and the shape of the display itself. The need to bring adaptors and such into the equation can make it rather more difficult to set them up, but for that authentic retro feeling, there’s nothing quite like using the original technology. There’s a reason why many of today’s retro-inspired titles provide options like filters to simulate the CRT experience.

Collectors and hobbyist players alike, then, have been keen to rekindle their passion for CRT TVs.