Bobscreen

Anamorphic widescreen

Something I hadn't considered until the other day - what's our policy for games with anamorphic widescreen? Or more specifically, Wii games?

I wasn't really paying attention, but screenshots of Wii games on Sonic Retro are often being taken from the Dolphin emulator, which can render games in all sorts of crazy resolutions. The unofficial policy (because I don't think we've been policing these things) is 853x480, i.e. "widescreen" 480p. The emulator rendering 853 columns of pixels because it can.

However, on a real machine the Wii renders content internally at 640x480, which is then stretched to 16:9 if widescreen is enabled. That would mean that to be accurate, all Wii screenshots should be taken at 640x480 - the native resolution.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that by 2007, Widescreen televisions were the main target, and so could be considered the "correct" way to play the game. I would expect there to be 4:3 alternatives (because it's Nintendo), but what's the better choice? Do we go for pixel-perfect 4:3 screenshots or slightly blurry anamorphic widescreen versions? That is, assuming one option doesn't look like arse. I guess there's nothing stopping us doing both, or is having the Sonic Retro-style "choose your title screen" a bit clunky?

This is less of a concern for me with the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube because even if the games are optimised for widescreen displays, the consoles weren't really designed with the feature in mind - it was more of an afterthought (even if the PlayStation 2 BIOS says otherwise).

This template can't currently stretch a 4:3 image to a 16:9 one, but I think we need that feature regardless. Probably need to stop it stretching Game Boy (Advance) games too. Not sure it's treating Master System games right either. -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:24, 2 July 2018 (CDT)