You already know that feeling, the nostalgia coming back when you replay the games of your childhood. Playing with a controller on the living room TV is enough to share it. But some of us have a thirst nothing quenches: they want the exact experience, the original one. And the most important part of it is the picture.
Recalbox reproduces on your CRT television the exact resolutions and refresh rates of most consoles and arcade boards of the era. Not an emulation of the period picture: the period picture.
CRT support is built into the Raspberry Pi Zero 2, 3, 4/400 and 5/500 images. It does not exist on PC nor on handheld consoles.
| Board | Compatible screens | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Recalbox RGB Dual / RGB Dual 2 | CRT TV (SCART), PVM, VGA monitor | The official Recalbox solution, developed by the team: plug and play, built-in sound, automatic detection. The RGB Dual 2 adds composite output and 16:9. |
| Recalbox RGB JAMMA / JAMMA 2 | JAMMA arcade cabinet | To plug a Raspberry Pi straight into a real cabinet. |
| VGA666 | CRT VGA monitor, PVM, CRT TV with a modified cable | Third-party adapter. Cannot be used at 31 kHz. |
| Pi2SCART | CRT TV, PVM | Third-party HAT for Raspberry Pi 3 and 4. |
| RGBPi | CRT TV, PVM | Third-party SCART cable. |
The Recalbox RGB Dual 2 and the Recalbox RGB JAMMA 2 are available on the Recalbox shop; a complete RecalTower + RGB Dual 2 kit and a composite RCA cable are offered too.
Plug the board onto the Raspberry Pi, connect it to the television, power on. That is all: the board is detected at boot and Recalbox configures itself to send the picture to your screen.
A dedicated menu then appears in the MAIN MENU (START button), depending on the detected board: RECALBOX RGB DUAL SETTINGS, RECALBOX RGB DUAL 2 SETTINGS or RECALBOX RGB JAMMA SETTINGS.
📷 Screenshot to come:
crt-menu-rgb-dual.png
Those boards cannot be detected automatically: you have to declare which one you use. Open the crt/recalbox-crt-options.cfg file on the [RECALBOX] partition (visible when you put the SD card in a computer, or in /boot/crt/ over SSH) and set:
# For a VGA666
adapter.type = vga666
# For a Pi2SCART
adapter.type = pi2scart
# For an RGBPi
adapter.type = rgbpi
Only one adapter.type line at a time. Reboot: the system configures itself for your adapter.
The RECALBOX RGB DUAL SETTINGS menu (or DUAL 2 / JAMMA) gathers all the everyday settings:
| Option | Purpose |
|---|---|
MENU RESOLUTION |
Interface resolution. 480i is recommended: text is hard to read at 240p. |
SCREEN TYPE |
15 kHz, 31 kHz, multisync… Only change it if you know what you are doing. |
PRIORITY TO HDMI |
Use the HDMI output first when a cable is plugged in. |
SELECT GAME RESOLUTION AT LAUNCH |
Choose 240p / 480i / 480p when starting each compatible game. |
SELECT GAME REFRESH RATE AT LAUNCH |
Choose 50 Hz or 60 Hz at launch. |
AVOID INTERLACED MODES |
For screens that cope badly with interlacing. |
AVOID LOW FREQUENCY MODES |
Skips modes below 57 Hz, poorly supported by some televisions. |
SUPERREZ MULTIPLIER |
Improves horizontal sharpness depending on your screen. |
FRONTEND SCREEN CALIBRATION |
Recentre the interface picture. |
On the Recalbox RGB Dual 2 you also get the composite output (FORCE COMPOSITE, COMPOSITE SIGNAL STANDARD), the 16/9 CRT TV mode and the handheld consoles aspect ratio. On the RGB JAMMA, the whole cabinet setup (sound, number of buttons, credits, autofire…) lives in the same menu.
If the picture is slightly off on your television, add to crt/recalbox-crt-options.cfg:
# Horizontal and vertical offset, per resolution
mode.offset.p1920x240.horizontaloffset = -2
mode.offset.p1920x240.verticaloffset = -2
The resolution name is part of the key: p1920x240, p1920x224, p1920x288, p320x240, p384x288, p640x480, p1920x480, p1920x240at120, i640x480, i768x576. An offset only applies to the resolution it names.
The simplest route is the screen calibration entry in the interface options: it writes these keys for you, resolution by resolution.
Since Recalbox 10, video modes are no longer read from files: they are computed on the fly by switchres, from the characteristics of the emulated system and the declared capabilities of your screen. There is no longer a list of modes to consult or to override.
The
modes.txt,systems.txtandarcade_games.txtfiles of earlier versions are no longer used. If you created any in/recalbox/share/system/configs/crt/, they have no effect and can be deleted.
Tuning is now done through the options described above: screen type, resolution, and the offsets in recalbox-crt-options.cfg to recentre the picture.
Need help? Join the Recalbox Discord, the CRT channel is very active there.