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 I was sorely disappointed with the video quality of the Star Wars: The Arcade Game emulation on the Rogue Squadron III bonus disc, but one of the comments suggested that I try an S-Video cable instead of the usual composite cable. Well, I haven't used anything but composite since I hacked my Atari 7800 to give chroma/luma output. In the meantime I'd forgotten how nice an image you can get with something better than composite (or RF, for that matter). Lines are sharper and colors are brighter, that's for sure. Sadly, I am not sure that it's enough to save SW:TAG, although it is an improvement in the video quality. Screenshots are included below.
It's too difficult to get in-game screenshots that are at the same point in the game, so for direct comparison I've taken some shots of the menus. First, a shot of the instructions for the game.
Click for the full-sized image.
The composite video is on the left and the S-Video on the right. You can see that the red is much brighter with S-Video. If you try to get the composite video to give the same brightness it affects the background and the black loses some of its depth. Regardless, I haven't been able to get the same brightness and sharpness with composite that I can get with S-Video. It sort of looks like the green is also brighter and sharper, but this shot doesn't show that very well. Interestingly, the white lettering is not that much more sharp or bright between the two video types. Incidentally the cyan letters in "PULL TRIGGER TO START" are a different color because those words cycle through different colors, so one shot was taken at a different part of the cycle.
Next, here is a shot of the level selection screen.
Click for the full-sized image.
As before, composite on the left and S-Video on the right. Here you can see that, in general, all colors are brighter and sharper with S-Video: blue, green, red, cyan, and purple. Comparing the weapons on the left with those on the right, as well as the nose of the X-Wing in the center, it's quite obvious that S-Video produces a better image.
Unfortunately, I don't have a TV with an S-Video input, so I'm going to have to live with the poor image for now. Oh well.
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In case you're interested in the gory details of WHY S-Video is better than composite (and why RGB or component video are better than both of them), you might want to give this site a read. It's a little complicated, but it seems to give a pretty good overview of the issues.
That said, I have all my consoles hooked up in either composite or RF (Except for my Jaguar, which enjoys the luxury of RGB), and I have no real complaints (except about my Genesis, which for some reason gets TERRIBLE video quality... I don't know what that's all about). I have terrible eyes, so any higher quality is probably wasted on me.
--Zero