Forced widescreen pillarboxing

>>3506081
Pictured is MDK for those unaware.

That's letterboxing.
FM Towns is full of that shit.

>>3506109
Yeah, thought I had it wrong in the back of my mind. Thanks.

In any case it's just the worst.

"Check it out, dude, we made the game widescreen when gives you a better viewing angle."

Okay dev, this kinda reduces resolution on my 4:3 display, but I see what you're doing.

This ought to look amazing on my 16:9 display though, right?

"Well, about that..."

>>3506121
You can try to adjust your display's settings to get a proper fit.

>>3506126
Yeah, but that's still fucking gay and my TV doesn't have options to fine tune the horz/vert stretching like that. Just a zoom. I suppose there's some zoom apps I could use to finagle it but, egh.

It's just a dumb thing to do to letterbox and fake widescreen. It only reduced resolution on displays of the day and vastly reduced display space on current TVs.

>>3506081
The OG serious sam games do this bullshit too.

>>3506121
Odds are they purposely lowered the game's resolution to improve its performance.

>>3506180
If they left the black bars off it would end up with people playing it stretched on a 4:3 screen.
Look at all the confusion about square and non-square pixels.

File: Superman 64.webm (3MB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 960x720px

Superman 64 default is letterbox
it has options for full screen, but strangely enough, it has also windowed option, down to 20% screen size...

it's designed for display on CRTs which would cut off the edges when using an optimal ratio

This sort of thing stopped happening when flatscreens became commonplace

if you want some retro games that make nice use of widescreen check out the sega saturn (greatest retro console most deserving of development in the modern day)

>>3506265
WHY? Is that a debug feature they left in the final game?

OoT Gamecube disc also does this at least in 480p mode.

>>3506230
>Odds are they purposely lowered the game's resolution to improve its performance.

This. The entire reason for making games that play in this small window in the middle, surrounded by tons of HUD everywhere, was because that was the only way to get the game running at a decent framerate. Smaller viewable area = less pixels to crunch for the machine.

>>3506276
>it's designed for display on CRTs which would cut off the edges when using an optimal ratio
No it wasn't. CRT's didn't have THAT much overscan. They had about 8 pixels worth which is fuck all.
Often these games were like that as a stylistic choice like MDK, but sometimes it's to keep performance smooth, Eg is capcom SNES games like streetfighter and final fight, they have huge black bars even on a CRT. Also RE4 on gamecube.

>>3506338
It was probably a way for people who wanted to be as far away from the game as possible so they could bear playing it.