Do you have to have the image fill your screen or are you an aspect ratio purist?

I play a handful of old games every year, games old enough to have the old standard of 4:3 aspect ratio. If I'm playing on a PC, there may be some leg work involved trying to get it to run on Windows 10 so I'll google and hit up some random forum. More often than not, among them is a thread about a widescreen mod. I don't know if it's because I have a film background but the idea of changing the original aspect ratio is such a turn off to me. Of course, unlike video production, a widescreen mod doesn't have to mean cropping but the thought of seeing a presentation not intended by the designer is quite unappealing to me.

Then, there are games like the FFX Remaster, a title I love, that achieved it's 16:9 widescreen by cropping, which almost makes me boil.

The square-r 4:3 image, especially these days, feels unique and different, and it's beautiful in its own way.

Anyway, do you care? Do the black bars haunt you? Where do you stand on this matter?

Don't stretch games out. It's in the Bible.

I don't care what you do in your own home, but don't stretch a game out and tell me that it's OK. It's not OK.

Stretching games out is horrifying to look at.

That said, when in remasters or advanced mods they do the legwork to make 16:9 work it's fine usually

I always letterbox. I'll usually even do so when the game technically supports widescreen resolutions but stretches the UI in the process.

I'm an aspect ratio purist. I don't even emulate 4:3 games games in widescreen, since there are usually issues with the menus and how the game renders the environment.

I wrote about cropping on my blog. This is part of what I said:

Movies that were 1.85:1 are sometimes cropped to 1.77:1. They did this with The Godfather. Cut off parts of the picture just so that it would fit on people’s arbitrary modern displays.

The X-Files is another one. While it’s nice that there is more information now on the left and right now, they also cut off a small part of the top and bottom of the picture so that it would fit on a widecreen display. They could have done something in the middle. Wide, but not 16:9. I don’t wanna rewatch The X-Files with everything zoomed in. Why couldn’t they remaster the original versions in high-definition as well?

The Wire does this too. It was originally shot for 4:3 displays, and because of that there is a lot emptiness in the 16:9 HD version that you were never meant to see. The subject might be in the middle, surrounded by excessive emptiness. Other scenes are further zoomed in, removing information.

It makes me feel like I’m watching SDTV programming again. Back then, they cropped everything.

I don’t mind narrow aspect ratios at all. 4:3 is a good compromise between length and width. It’s closer to the ratio of human vision and allows the cameraman to shoot more even compositions and tall shots. It’s the same reason paintings and photos are seldom very wide and why many people prefer 16:10 monitors. Widescreen doesn’t give them enough height. Film directors should be able to use whatever ratios work best for them. Widescreen isn’t a one size fits all type of thing.

Man, I am REALLY disappointed to hear that The Wire in widescreen HD, among others, is achieved by cropping the top and bottom (or zooming). I had no idea, I haven't watched my Blu-ray boxed set yet, but that is going to drive me NUTS.

I can remember, even as a kid, that I thought it was SO insane they'd zoom every film to 4:3 on TV and for VHS copies. You JUST CAN'T DO THAT! It's like having a few neat scenes from your favorite film cut from the theatre version, because the executives or producers or whatever think people will walk out if they have to sit through another 5 minutes of the film. Sure, maybe if you hate it, that's best... but everyone goes to the theatre hoping, and often assuming, they'll like what they're going to see because it's something they're interested in, and then they learn that key bits were cut for an ASININE reason!

I should clarify, many scenes are wider and don't lose anything. But many others are cropped. When I learned about that and actually looked at the pictures, I no longer wanted the Blu-ray. HBO apparently went through a lot of work, including using CG, to make the show work in widescreen. But I'm still not in favor of it.

Preserve aspect ratio: absolutely required. Playing 4:3 games stretched to 16:9 is usually nuts, except in cases where the game was designed with 16:9 compatibility in mind. (Really, though, the true outlaws will play even 3:4 vertical games in 16:9.)

Clean/integer scaling: nice if it doesn't result in too large of a border around the edges. Good to have but not mandatory.

I don't mind cropping all that much actually, but stretching the screen always looks awful, especially in first person games which often have a kinda skewed perspective to begin with.

Stretching. No.

Rendering more. Yes.

Stretching games, movies, pictures, whatever is one of my pet peeves. I hate it and it looks awful. Zooming or pan and scan, in case of movies and TV shows, is also awful.

I also hate when remasters put weird borders and frames to keep the original aspect ratio and fill the black space, it just looks busy, ugly and tacky. Just put them black borders whenever necessary and keep the image as good as possible. But If there's a possibility to render more, that's cool.

Speaking of filling up the empty space with stuff and making it look busy, I feel like even Giant Bomb is sometimes guilty of this on some live streams.

I prefer original intent/design vs the possibility of a wider image. To me just because you have access to that extra information doesn't mean it's substantive. It's only really there to have breathing room while editing. At the end of the day though offering choice is the best way to go. Let the viewer choose what they prefer.

When it comes to stretching an image? Yeah, don't do that. Same goes for cropping the intended aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio and resolution are super important to me. Original or native is my first choice.