Modern emulation gives you choices the original hardware never could: AI upscaling, smoothing filters, CRT shaders, integer scaling, the lot. The community splits hard on this. Purists want pixels untouched; pragmatists want the games to look their best on modern screens. I think both camps are half right.
The purist position
Leave it alone. The art was drawn for a specific resolution and a specific display, and “improving” it with smoothing or AI upscaling distorts the artist’s intent — turning sharp, deliberate pixel art into a smeary approximation. There’s real merit here. A lot of upscaling genuinely looks worse.
The pragmatist position
Old games on a raw modern panel can look harsh and unflattering in ways the artists never intended either, because they assumed the soft blend of a CRT. A tasteful scanline or CRT shader can get you closer to the original feel than untouched pixels do. Sometimes a filter is more faithful, not less.
The “authentic” image isn’t always the raw one — the original screens did their own processing.
Where AI upscaling fits
Aggressive AI upscaling is the part I’m most wary of. It can look impressive in stills and dreadful in motion, inventing detail the artists never drew. Used with restraint it’s a tool; used with abandon it’s vandalism.
The messy middle I’m advocating
Use shaders that respect the original display conditions. Be deeply skeptical of heavy AI smoothing. And — crucially — accept that other people get to choose differently. The R38S lets everyone pick their own look, and that flexibility is a gift, not a battlefield.
The point
There’s no single correct image. There’s the image that brings you back to the game. Tune it, enjoy it, and let the next person tune theirs.