The very first thing that the wife and I did after we’d tallied up our wedding presentation was to go out and purchase a massive new television. That was two and a half years ago, and it’s served me well over time.
The TV has one little issue though: it doesn’t play entirely nice with old video game consoles. They will hook up and display and everything, but they suffer for a noticeable input lag. This quirk is common to all HDTVs as far as I’m aware, so why is it worth talking about? Because my TV has a “game” setting that works really well for eliminating that lag, but it has a major flaw when used on an input that’s coming through normal composite cables, the very kind that an N64 or PS1 would use.
Everything seems fine at first when you set the input’s video setting to “game.” It’s displaying properly, the sound is coming out fine, and the input lag is gone. But then, suddenly, a massive wave of rainbow-coloured noise washed over the screen. It only lasts a second, but it happens every 15-20 seconds, so it’s a little annoying. It’s also much more distracting than it sounds.
Up until last month, I lived perfectly fine with the input lag. Oh, sure, it’s a little annoying, but most of the time it’s not a huge deal. It’s not like I play any rhythm or otherwise timing-sensitive games on my N64. But then Donkey Kong 64 happened along. Several of its mini-games and challenges flummoxed me hard. They were seemingly impossible to beat, the most maddeningly frustrating gaming experiences that I’d had in ages.
Yet I didn’t recall the game being so overly difficult. What happened? Input lag. You might call me crazy, but when I started switching the video mode from “normal” to “game” every time a mini-game popped up, DK64 became a much smoother, more bearable experience. Even the stupid Beaver Bother mini-game, a mini-game which I truly believe was forged in the depths of Hell, went from impossibly hard to a mild annoyance. My aggravation subsided, and I was free to finish the game.
If you’d told me a couple months ago that input lag could have such a profound effect on a single-player 3D platformer, I would have called you nuts. The fact of the matter is that it completely changed my Donkey Kong 64 experience. When your controls are slowed by even half a second, it makes so many elements of the game so much more difficult than they actually are. Having to deal with the stupid noise wipe was nothing at all compared to the trouble caused by the lag. Funny thing is, I haven’t come across any other games that it hampers quite so badly. Um Jammer Lammy and Jet Force Gemini are just as difficult with or without any lag, and pretty much every other game has worked just fine.
The moral of today’s story? I guess it’s that I need to pick up an old standard definition TV to play my really old video games on. And then find somewhere to put that TV, since there really isn’t a big enough spot anywhere in my home to accommodate yet another gaming setup.
Oh, or I could just never play Donkey Kong 64 again. That’s probably the right thing to do. Because really, eff that mess.