CRT Gaming 📺 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1)

*WATCH ON 4K DISPLAY FOR BEST EXPERIENCE*

0:00 - Logos/opening animation
1:51 - Bloodlines
4:55 - Opening text crawl
6:47 - Castle entrance
10:37 - Alchemy Laboratory
25:47 - Marble Gallery
32:23 - Outer Wall
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Symphony of the Night has been one of the most famous examples of CRT gaming thanks to this tweet by CRT Pixels:
https://x.com/CRTpixels/status/140845...

Many people seem to take this tweet as word of gospel, but is it true? Do the portraits in SOTN really look that much better on an old television than a modern one? Do they miraculously gain details that didn't exist on the raw pixels?

Well, as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Not only did the PS1 have atrociously blurry composite connection, but CRT Pixel's photo was clearly taken out-of-focus. I opted to instead record this game in the highest quality picture my TV currently supports. The end result is...quite fascinating to say the least. While the lack of blur does mean pixels are laid threadbare, somehow...Dracula's eyes still glow red even without the composite color artifacts?

Perhaps it is because of how CRT TVs react to bright reds contrasted with gray adjacent pixels, but this was truly a shock to me. I'm sure the same thing could not be said for PVMs or PC CRTs. The rest of the game looks great in S-Video. SOTN doesn't really use dither shading as far as I can tell, so it doesn't really get any benefits from composite video.
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Recording setup:
Wii console
S-Video output
Sony Trinitron KV-27S42 television
Audio recorded line-out into Rode AI-Micro interface with Stereo Input 1 and with Behringer UCA202 as passthrough.

iPhone 16
Blackmagic Camera app
4K resolution
High bitrate
Lens: 26mm 1x
FPS: 59.94
ISO: 33
Shutter speed: 1/59
Exposure: 0.0
Tint: 15
WB: 5600

Credits:

Logo is copyrighted by Konami. Use of this logo falls under fair use laws.

#crtgaming #retrogaming #castlevania #konami #castlevaniasymphonyofthenight #playstation #ps1 #psx #nostalgia