Castlevania The Dracula X Chronicles US

[Foffy]

I'll try to explain what I mean, for I'm not complaining about the pixels themselves. It's the fact that by default, bilinear filtering doesn't seem to be enabled in any which way on the image to smoothen out the image quality. It's as if the 'nearest' option is on, but it's not.

The first image is one that the game has by default, and the image quality here shows no bilinear filtering applied, regardless of settings. Even XBR typically fails to be applied to much of the sprites.

The second image is one using Spine36, which actually delivers an effect similar to what bilinear filtering would provide. It's a bit too blurry compared to what bilinear typically offers, and upon using it in the Rondo remake it appears a bit obvious why that's so; it's a shader that is rendering the game at a lower internal resolution.

Hopefully a visual example shows you what I mean. The first one looks like bilinear filtering simply fails to be applied from the emulator onto the game, for it's far too chunky and pixelated. The second image is actually closer to how it should appear. You can very likely get the PS1 version of the game looking like the second shot in an emulator for that platform with bilinear filtering enabled, not the first. That tells me something is off-base.