What resolution should I make my retro pixel game (that’s supposed to look like playing a SNES/Genesis title but as if they had widescreen back in the day) so I can scale it correctly to fit a modern HD 1080p resolution (without stretching the image and/or losing anything)?
I thought the original Genesis resolution of 320x240 was going to work but it doesn’t scale quite right and loses some pixels on the x axis.
What you are looking for is either perceived DPI (if you want resolutions to display more content but retain the aesthetic)
So in the 1980s a 16 inch tv was pretty common so lets look at that DPI
320x240 which is a 4:3 ratio with a 16 inch diagonal is 25 DPI.
So you are aiming for each inch of your displayed game, roughly being 5x5 pixels to get that aesthetic.
Or if you want to just extend the resolution but with a new aspect then in which case
Just find out the ratio by dividing the two
i.e. 16/9 = 1.7777777778
then multiply your height by that ratio to get the width.
i.e. 240 * 1.7777777778 = 427 (rounded) so your res is 427x240 for a 16:9 ratio screen like 1920x1080