NES screen cropping on the sides (Castlevania and Super Mario Brothers)

[snessy7]

I am seeing some slight display cropping of game screen on left and right sides when playing NES games with retroarch on SNESC, as discussed in this RetroPie thread:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=64230

In my case I noticed the issue with original Castlevania. Instead of seeing this on the top left side:

SCORE PLAYER ENEMY

I see this due to cropping:

CORE LAYER NEMY

Is there something I can do to tweak this or does it need to be addressed in retroarch hmod?

[snessy7]

I figured out how to force to use nestopia:

/bin/retroarch-clover nestopia /usr/share/games/CLV-H-IBVCD/Castlevania.nes.7z

and its a lot better. The game still looks very slightly cropped but I can see the missing letters.

[TheDribble]

Thank you this helped me greatly, that was annoying

[snessy7]

The original Super Mario Brothers is also cropped on the left and right using default fceumm. Again I corrected it by forcing nestopia core.

This probably affects no telling how many NES games. I've looked through the retroarch menu but the only relevant setting, crop overscan, is already disabled.

Here's another thread discussing the same issue:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6294/nes-cropping-overscan-issue/11

It seems there may be some config settings that might correct this for default fceumm core, but I haven't bothered trying to figure out if I can telnet in and make them myself. Would be nice if this could be correct in the retroarch hmod.

[snessy7]

Was able to fix this with a configuration change. Using the shell server tool I logged into the SNESC and modified the retroarch-core-options.cfg file in /etc/libretro.

Change the line:

fceumm_overscan = "enabled"

to

fceumm_overscan = "disabled.

Also can change the line:

nestopia_overscan_v = "enabled"

This appears to fix all NES overscan issues. I think retroarch hmod should include this change by default.

Another example I saw was in the original NES DuckTales. On the title screen the "Nintendo of America" text at the bottom is slightly cut off without this change.

[snessy7]

You got it.

[snessy7]

You log in as root, no password. It's just a linux environment, so some basic skill there is helpful, although it only takes a few simple commands to make the change. I edited the config file with vi because its almost always available on these embedded systems, but I don't know if there is a friendlier text editor available on the system like pico maybe. Editing with vi was quick and simple however, if not intuitive for the uninitiated. There are plenty of short basic vi tutorials online.

[snessy7]

I also noticed hakchi always crashes when you're done and exit the telnet client.

[snessy7]

Congrats. That should work too. I can probably just post the few telnet commands and directions if its really needed by anybody.

[bob12111]

I haven't tried NES games (I leave my NES Classic for them), but the GBA games have a similar screen cropping issue. The cropping is really only when the display is set to "Pixel Perfect", there is no cropping in 4:3, but the pixels seem a bit uneven...