MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Skull & Crossbones

> Ah, so the 'very tall, skinny pixels' would mean that it wouldn't appear distorted as
> it does at 4:3 aspect ratio on a computer monitor?

The classic well-known example is Street Fighter II, where the game's screen aspect is narrower than the game display (384x224 is squashed to a 4:3 resolution on a CRT). If the game is displayed as square pixels, the characters will all look short and fat; the opposite happens on the SNES version, since its 256x224 display is less than 4:3, so the character sprites are drawn skinny instead to compensate. Both games will of course look correct on a standard arcade monitor or TV.

XX Mission is a vertical example of very narrow pixels - 192 across with 512 down.

An interesting mention also goes to the Sega Master System. The game display only uses a 256x192 resolution, which would normally be 4:3 square pixels if this was the full screen, however the console has a solid letterbox style background around it, jumping the resolution to 256x224 or 256x256 (or so, can't remember), and of course, the TV will compensate for those extra pixels, squashing the overall picture into the 4:3 screen. In fact, most SMS games actually look vertically stretched in emulators, due to some programs leaving out this border (MESS is correct, whereas classic emulators like Meka leave the borders out).