tomkatt

I've been playing Chrono Trigger on the Steam Deck recently (Steam version) and found myself bugged by the lack of "retro" effect options. The game is great looking on a CRT or with the right shaders, and the raw blocky pixel look just didn't suit it. Normally I'd just shrug and emulate, but I wanted to play the Steam version with the new translation, and wasn't down to play it on the smaller DS screen. So like any lunatic, I went down a rabbit hole with Reshade and tested out a ton of configurations until I found something that looks pretty good on the Deck.

Links:

• per game reshade script for Steam games

• Retroarch shaders converted for Reshade

The Steam Deck's resolution makes it hard to work with shaders in Reshade, since most shaders are designed with at least 1080p in mind, but I came to what I think is a good solution with the following combination of shaders:

• CRT-Frutbunn (main shader)

• EasymodeCRT (Slight sharpen native res, fixes frutbunn's scanlines and brightness boost)

• Vibrance (slight color saturation increase)

I've included my settings with the screenshots below. I love the depth it's adding to the image in the shading and making the characters look more grounded in the space. CT has really great colors and shading, but the raw pixel look kind of loses that. The effect is subtle, but really works well IMO. Might be hard to tell on the screenshots (be sure to open the full size images), but on the OLED Deck in handheld mode it looks great, and even has some bloom, just a really smooth but clean retro look.

I wasn't sure if it'd be a fluke and just work for Chrono Trigger, so I copied the shader config over to TMNT: Shredder's Revenge and it looks pretty great there too (and as a bonus, makes the intro video look more like the old cartoon). Seems like this should work fine for any pixel art game.

Note: If you want to try this docked, it looks good on the TV too, but you need to set EasymodeCRT's resolution (screen and frame width/height) to whatever your resolution is (I do 1080p docked, YMMV).

Full Album (Note - images don't look great here, compression)

Better pics:

• Chrono Trigger raw pixels

• Chrono Trigger Shader

TMNT comparisons:

• https://c.l3n.co/i/ojBxi2.jpg

• https://a.l3n.co/i/ojBy9v.jpg

• https://c.l3n.co/i/ojBX3o.jpg

• https://b.l3n.co/i/ojBbN9.jpg

• https://c.l3n.co/i/ojBFXm.jpg

• https://a.l3n.co/i/ojBcri.jpg

Reshade settings

Really interesting sh'mup and great soundtrack. I especially like the stage 1 and stage 6 themes. It's amazing what the PC-Engine was capable of with the CD add-on.

Sadly, I'm terrible at it, and have never actually been able to play past stage 3, so good thing the first stage is such a banger. 😅

Fantastic game. I love the high energy beat here.

The current build of Jelos updated the libSDL from v2600.5 to 2800.1 and it broke a few ports. In particular the ones I know of are Panzer Paladin and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Both are fixed with the instructions below.

I saw in some threads people asking about it so here's the fix:

You'll need a copy of the 7/26 JELOS build or before from the github releases page and copy out the libSDL files from /usr/lib. To do this, you'll need to download the tar archive, then use something like 7zip to extract the SYSTEM file to a folder.

Copy off all the the libSDL2 related files that have a file size (ignore the ones that list as 0kb in size, those are symlinks). All told there are something like six files you need, the 2.0.so.02600.5 file, the ttf file, the image file, gfx file, and mixer.

You need to rename the filesaccording to the SDL2-CD.dll.config set in the game folder at /storage/roms/ports//dlls/

If you prefer, I already have all the correct files and renamed as needed. You can download them in zipped format here.

Once you have the correct files, correctly named, copy them into /storage/roms/ports//libs/

Lastly, edit the game's .sh file in /storage/roms/ports/ to add the following lines:

# # # export path for local libSDL
export LD_PRELOAD=$gamedir/libs/libSDL2.so.0

Add that to the script on its own line. I put it at line 29, after the "Loading... Please Wait." echo output line. Anywhere after the get_controls line should be fine.

If you mess up the file, or run into problems, the full file should look like this one.

From there, save it and run the game. And that should be it.

If you gather the files yourself instead of using the ones from the ZIP I linked and the game loads sideways (in portrait), get the libSDL2-2.0.so.0.2600.5 from the SYSTEM folder in the /usr/lib/SDL2-rotated path instead of /usr/lib, and copy it to your game's lib directory on the handheld, and rename it to libSDL2-2.0.so.0 to fix.

This is the Japanese version of Simple & Clean, the opening song for Kingdom Hearts.

Great song, been a fan of Hikki's music for over two decades now.

Sorry for double post the same song technically, but I love this version and Tiffany Mann's vocals are great.

My man on the drums is killing it in this version. Just watch him yo.

This song hits hard, I love it. Main theme kicks in around 28 seconds in.

I noticed that darker games on my x55 didn’t look good, like dark tones and blacks were almost inverted looking at stock settings. After a bit of tweaking, setting gamma from default (50%) to 67% got everything looking good.

After checking out a few YouTube videos it seems the gamma level on the display varies between units. I’ve seen it look good on default in some and even up to 100% on one video. Play with the setting and dial it in to what looks best for you.

If it helps I’m currently using:

• brightness 68%
• gamma 67%
• contrast 52%
• saturation 60%

Great soundtrack. This one's the battle theme from Ikenfell.

Also great game. The artwork is gorgeous (it was styled to look like a scaled up GBA game) and the combat system kind of feels like a mashup of Super Mario RPG and Mega Man Battle Network what with the tile system and timed attack bonuses.

Technically not game music, but nerdcore based on a game. Does this count? 😅

Terrible game from what I've heard (I haven't played it), but inspired a great song IMO. Mods, feel free to remove if this doesn't fit the theme of the community.