N64 terrible graphics? Help

[ShayOh]

So I got a CRT and I hooked up all my retro consoles to it (Sega Genesis, Hyperkin retron 1 hd, Wii, PS2, Atari 2600, Sega dreamcast and Nintendo 64)

To my surprise the Nintendo 64 had worse graphics, the picture, especially in game, not as terrible in menus, is so bad it's unplayable, it's hard to explain, and it might be hard to show it in a picture but it's just way too blurry, everything looks like a undefined mash of colors on the screen, I haven't tried all my Nintendo 64 games but in both majora's mask and ocarina of time, it looks terrible.

 

i remember connecting the Nintendo 64 before, to a newer flat screen, that the rest of the HDMI capable consoles plugged to, and it didn't look bad at all and was very much playable..

 

Any thoughts?

 

TIA

[emosun]

did you want to tell us how you connected the 64 to the tv or is that a secret for us to figure out

[flibberdipper]

14 minutes ago, emosun said:

did you want to tell us how you connected the 64 to the tv or is that a secret for us to figure out

Just like taxes we have to guess and get sentenced to death if we get it wrong.

[OhYou_]

very likely that it is damaged.
you could try another av cable
but its an analog console into an analog tv, the tv is known good so there is something physically wrong with the console then.

[OhYou_]

1 hour ago, emosun said:

did you want to tell us how you connected the 64 to the tv or is that a secret for us to figure out

with the av cable? its a n64 plugged into a crt. that's just how it works when it was new and now, you plug it in to the same colored holes on the tv, they only support composite.

[B16CXHatch]

The N64 is notorious for having a very soft, smeary image. It's a form of anti-aliasing that the system actually applies to the output intentionally. It accomplished what Nintendo wanted for the most part back when it came out but has proven to be less than ideal today. After seeing how good SNES, GameCube, PS1, PS2 and even PS3 can look on a CRT with decent S-Video cables, the N64 was a total let down when I upgraded its cables. It made little difference thanks to the anti-aliasing.

 

However, you saying that it looked OK on a newer TV has me thinking that maybe there is something wrong with the N64 or the way it's hooked up. It's an old system, and it's analog video. It wouldn't be surprising. Otherwise, the N64 tends to look even worse on modern TVs.

 

One thing I would recommend is try switching your A/V cables. Try to make sure you are using a good condition original Nintendo composite cable or, if you TV supports it, a good quality S-Video cable. I know I said it was disappointing earlier, but S-Video does still provide a slightly better image on the N64 vs composite. Just not the big leap of the other systems.

[ShayOh]

6 hours ago, emosun said:

did you want to tell us how you connected the 64 to the tv or is that a secret for us to figure out

RCA cables.

[emosun]

5 hours ago, OhYou_ said:

with the av cable? its a n64 plugged into a crt. that's just how it works when it was new and now, you plug it in to the same colored holes on the tv, they only support composite.

no the n64 can also be connected via coax , scart , any of the dozens of cheapo converters that change the signal to a more modern one , or any of the hundreds of mixers or amplifiers that support video switching , might even be run through a vcr first..... thats why you ask.

[emosun]

42 minutes ago, ShayOh said:

RCA cables.

the n64 typically renders 3d object at HALF the resolution of an old tv (240 instead of 480) while also blurring the image on purpose to hide the lack of antialiasing while also have very little memory for texture data so what kind of quality were you expecting from it?

[ShayOh]

16 hours ago, emosun said:

the n64 typically renders 3d object at HALF the resolution of an old tv (240 instead of 480) while also blurring the image on purpose to hide the lack of antialiasing while also have very little memory for texture data so what kind of quality were you expecting from it?

Well I just connected it to the flat screen (pretty old one, might not even be 4k)

And it looks far better and the game is playable. So I guess false alarm, the problem is the CRT, at least for anything newer then Sega Genesis..

At least I got it for free.

[Mark Kaine]

On 3/4/2024 at 5:32 AM, ShayOh said:

remember connecting the Nintendo 64 before, to a newer flat screen, that the rest of the HDMI capable consoles plugged to, and it didn't look bad at all

this never happened... unless it was a 480p "flat-screen" or something?  

[thrasher_565]

On 3/4/2024 at 8:51 PM, ShayOh said:

Well I just connected it to the flat screen (pretty old one, might not even be 4k)

And it looks far better and the game is playable. So I guess false alarm, the problem is the CRT, at least for anything newer then Sega Genesis..

At least I got it for free.

is it an oem cable? because the cable it self is also vary importend. the nintendo oem cable is good but an svideo cable would be the best composite you can do with out moding the system or attaching a $200 retro tink.

 

showing a pic of the crt with the n64 would be helpful and a pic of the back of the crt and what crt you have.

 

this is what i got and its good so good i cant tell the difference from svideo and rca...

Edited April 4 by thrasher_565

[Agall]

On 3/3/2024 at 9:32 PM, ShayOh said:

it looks terrible.