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NES games causing temporary image retention on the Switch and external screens

Yasumi

Yasumi

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,182
Robothaus posted the following in the Switch Online Release thread.

RobotHaus said:
45 minutes at most.
It's starting to far away ( I hope), but it was very clearly there.

Here's a link to what's left of it while I try to get rid of it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

RobotHaus said:
I agree.


I hope so, and by playing some Zelda is getting better. Still, it makes me super reluctant to play any more NES titles.

If it helps any, I was playing with a scan line filter on.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

v1Rfbhg.jpg


There are also apparently reports on Reddit of the same issue occurring with Dr. Mario specifically. I'll see if I can find some more pictures if they do pop up.

This is pretty concerning, and honestly puts me off from touching the NES games at all. Hopefully something can be done on Nintendo's end to prevent this from happening further.

Edit: The most likely cause:

Robin64 said:
It's because Nintendo's CRT has the same "wobble" the NES Mini had, rather than being just scanlines. On the NES Mini, we could hack it to turn the wobble part of the filter off.

Basically, the edge of the NES pixels are being shimmered back and forth super rapidly to create the RF cable style effect. The pixels are being changed between two identical unrelaxed states over and over (on static parts) and eventually that that remains and they can't relax. This is the retention you see and it's why it's not a copy of the UI (as ghosting would be) but rather a map of the pixel shimmering.

There was another game recently on Switch that did this, but I can't remember what it was right now..
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Last edited:
detuned radios

detuned radios

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Oct 25, 2017
4,315
Generally LCDs don't get permanent burn-in. Image retention issues like this usually go away after a bit.

This is also a hardware issue with the LCD, and the NES games just happen to be a reliable cause of it - any prolonged stationary UI elements could feasibly do the same thing.
 
Tathanen

Tathanen

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Oct 25, 2017
4,822
The hell? Plenty of older games have static elements, why would this burn in differently?
 
Nacho

Nacho

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,291
NYC
Probably could be somewhat prevented with a lower brightness. That's pretty crazy and I'd expect the screen to have been more problems with other games if this happens after only 45 minutes.
 
Raein

Raein

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
980
It's an LCD, how can it have burn-in? Wouldn't this just be temporary ghosting?
 
ZeoVGM

ZeoVGM

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Oct 25, 2017
67,616
Providence, RI
This seems strange. I never heard of this being a widespread issue on the Wii U GamePad. And there are plenty of static elements in other games.

It shouldn't even happen that fast, should it?
 
OP
OP
Yasumi

Yasumi

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Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,182
Found another one. Happened to someone using their computer monitor as a screen.



DnbVC2UWsAE5GjU.jpg


Seems the CRT filter may be fucked.
 
MegaXZero

MegaXZero

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Jun 21, 2018
5,079
No problem for me when I played Dr. Mario.

And I doubt this is burn in. Especially if it was getting better
 

Deleted member 23212

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Oct 28, 2017
11,225
What? How would it burn-in, I thought Switch games had a 60Hz refresh rate so I don't see how that could occur.
 
darkside

darkside

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Oct 26, 2017
9,841
So... what happens if you aren't playing these on an LCD? Like is this not an issue if its docked
 
z0m3le

z0m3le

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,417
Burn in takes a very long time, switch also has an option to reduce burn in, as does most tvs, I don't see how the service could have done this. It's likely a problem with the TV itself or possibly the switch. Maybe he had access to it for a few days an left it on with all those reductions removed.
 

KratosEnergyDrink

Using an alt account to circumvent a ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,523
Weird thread.

Yes, of course as with all LCD screens, static bright elements could leave ghost images. It happens with every game, but because NES games like DR. Mario are very bright and cover only a part of the screen it is easily visible.
 
Illusion

Illusion

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Oct 27, 2017
8,407
I just notice some distortion after a hour of playing Dr. Mario.

It's going away but yikes. I dont even use that much brightness on any device alone, let alone my Switch.
 

feroca

Banned
May 12, 2018
823
Not burn-in as that doesn't happen in minutes, neither on LCD.

Maybe ghosting or something else. Though that won't stop the usual responses of some. :p
 
sleepnaught

sleepnaught

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Oct 26, 2017
4,538
I've never had any kind of image retention problems on any LCD screen before. Did this happen on the Switch screen itself or a tv/monitor? This seems more of some kind of software glitch and not actual burn in.
 
mindatlarge

mindatlarge

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,917
PA, USA
Umm, that is nuts. I'm used to this sort of thing being a plasma owner...imagine retention happens very quickly, but I have not heard of this sort of thing, at least to this extent, with LCD displays.
 
Atheerios

Atheerios

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,757
Just want to say that yes, this may be a real problem.

When homebrew was just becoming a weird for Switch similar burn-in problems happened. And just like here it wasn't a time-dependant thing, it could occur very fast.

It had something to do with the screen driver as it had the capability of damaging the screen if the coding is bad. Probably something similar may be happening here, a bug in the NES program related to the display controller.
 
low-G

low-G

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,144
How the fuck did Nintendo find some way to induce LCD retention / burn-in like no other computer user has discovered in the decades of LCD tech?
 
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