I’ve heard that older games don’t play well on an HDTV. You have to deal with stuff like input lag.
Is that true?
I think remade versions of games try to take this into account.
I do know that you can’t use the old Nintendo light gun because of the way HDTV images are displayed - I think the game depends on the signal being 480 lines interlaced.
Also, pretty much any Atari 2600 game that used the paddle controller is unplayable with any modern controller - Activision’s “Kaboom!” comes to mind.
There are two issues here:
[ul]
[li]Input Lag – This one is actually a problem for ALL games on most HDTVs; Or at least, it was when I was buying a TV, which admittedly has been a while, but my suspicion is that while PC monitors have mostly taken steps to reduce/eliminate this, the priorities when manufacturing a TV are different, and it’s still possible to get an extremely laggy TV. However, this doesn’t have much to do with “retro” games vs newer games, except that more retro games rely on precise timing, whereas with most modern games, to be honest you’re only likely to really notice this in fighting games or rhythm games. (Well, apparently upscaling the resolution on old games can add extra lag) This site does its best to keep track of which TVs are good.[/li][li]Graphics looking like garbage – If you hook up an older console to a new TV, you’ll discover that the graphics look even worse than you remember. It’s not just rose colored glasses here. There are lots of factors in play here. You can read more about some of them here or here[/li][/ul]