[amyjess]

For video games, there's another factor: much of the artwork in old-school games was specifically designed to be altered by both CRT scanlines and NTSC composite effects. So many sprites in 2D games and textures in 3D games rely on NTSC effects to antialias the graphics and turn dithering into real gradients and you're missing out on so much with a modern screen.

The closest you can get to that experience now is to use an emulator and apply some heavy shaders (some emulators have built-in shaders, but if one doesn't I'd recommend installing reshade and setting up CRT-Royale and GTUv050).

[goosedragons]

Modern upscalers/HDMI conversion devices with retro consoles in mind like the retrotink offer the ability to add scanlines as well. So it is possible on real hardware for those that care enough.

[amyjess]

So I basically have two concerns with that:

1. A much bigger issue is NTSC composite. Making it look like a CRT is a much smaller part of the picture than what NTSC composite effects do. For example, If you were to hook up the RGB headers on an SNES (yes, the SNES has RGB headers on the board) to an actual CRT it would look awful because SNES games were designed with NTSC blending effects in mind.

2. There are scanlines and there are good scanlines. Most artificial scanlines look like garbage and not at all like an actual CRT's scanlines. There are some good filters out there, but you really have to do your research. If you see the words "slot mask" used to describe the filter, it's probably good. This is one of the reasons I'm a fan of the CRT-Royale reshade filter, because it does an excellent job at emulating the look of a slot mask.

[goosedragons]

RGB output is commonly desired in the retro gaming community. And RGB mods on the SNES and other consoles are commonly done. I've personally used HD Retrovisions component SNES (so RGB out) cables on a CRT and IMO the results look fantastic. Hell Nintendo themselves sold RGB cables for the Super Famicom and SNES in Europe. NTSC composite effects were a much bigger part of older 8 bit machines. Much less so on later consoles especially as expectations of the game heading to PAL regions rose.

Just watch My Life in Gaming's YouTube videos about getting the best output from a console.

The Retrotink and the OSSC are very highly praised and designed by retro game enthusiasts. While I have not personally used one I'm sure they're probably pretty good.