Scanlines or unfiltered? Widescreen or square? Wallpapers or black borders? You can curate the perfect game display in Capcom Fighting Collection!
There are plenty of examples of Capcom Fighting Collection's high level of customization. For instance, the collection offers in-depth options for each game, ranging from gameplay rules, secret characters, and even arcade cabinet boot-up. So, it's no surprise that the collection also offers various display options.
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CFC's display options are abundant. For instance, you can add filters to make each game look how it would on a 90s TV set. Or you can change the display size to widescreen, 4:3, and more. Lastly, various wallpapers showcase each game's artwork on the screen's border. With so much to tinker with, these settings are worth checking out!
To change the display and filter options in Capcom Fighting Collection, boot the game you wish to play. Once the game is running, open the pause menu. From there, select the DIsplay & Sound Settings tab. A window will open, allowing you to adjust the following settings.
Unfortunately, there is no way to hide the Pause Menu UI to see how each display filter looks before resuming your game. So, we added a side-by-side view of each filter below for comparison.
CFC's game catalog has a display filter enabled by default. But what is the point of these filters? Are they necessary? The purpose of each display filter is to replicate arcade cabinet monitors and CRT TVs from the era when these games launched.
CRT TVs, more commonly known as SD TVs, display images through lines of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) known as scanlines. Electron beams coated in red, blue, and green phosphor deflect across each tube while magnets control the illumination and color shown on the screen.
LED and 4K TVs do not use cathode ray tubes. Instead, they have minuscule light-emitting diodes coated around the edges and the back of the screen. Therefore, there are no scanlines.
The difference between how CRT and LED/4K TVs depict an image explains why CRT TVs look much lower in resolution by comparison. So, if you stared closely at a CRT TV, you could see tiny black gaps between each pixel. When games like Darkstalkers, Red Earth, Cyberbots, Street Fighter 2, etc., were made, developers designed them with these gaps in mind.
Conversely, if you ever played a retro game on an HDTV and wondered why everything looks blocky and flat, it's because of the absence of scanlines. These same scanlines added contrast and texture to the game's pixelated sprites.
In short, display filters help players experience retro games how developers intended them to look.
Still, whether you use these filters or not is a personal preference. Some people enjoy the added detail they give to retro games. Others find these filters darken the screen, blur their view, and inhibit gameplay. Twitch streamers, for instance, typically disable display filters so viewers can see the game without obstructions.
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Chris Sanfilippo (He/Him) is an actor, singer, writer, and gaming fanatic based in New York. Career highlights include work at The Gateway Playhouse, Fireside Dinner Theatre, and 54 Below. Chris's favorite game genres to play are fighting games, visual novels, puzzle games, and music/rhythm games. He is still waiting for a proper sequel to Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.