How to make your game look like a PS2/GameCube game. This is...

5 views Nov 05, 2026 ~1 min read

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How to make your game look like a PS2/GameCube game. 

This is everything I learned from my sixth-gen experiment 🧵  

#gamedev

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first obvious thing, render at low res and upscale

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bloom by downscaling and blurring the frame, kawase blur is your friend blog.frost.kiwi/dual-kawase/#k…

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same idea for depth of field blur, but blend it based on distance. Maybe also try doing two planes of blur, might look good but I haven't tried

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sun shafts or god rays, another fullscreen pass developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugem…

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crunch the color precision and apply dithering to avoid banding, but if you DO want banding it CAN be a cool art direction choice

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the deflicker filter is a big part of why the image on GC is blurry - the blend_v function blends the pixel with its vertical neighbours. Then composite-cable emulation and CRT emulation

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and a comparison of every step together in a few different configurations

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Full video if you have that kind of time or want a single reference

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I collected some sources here and will try to make it more comprehensive as I'm sure more will be relevant as I learn and correct the approach

gist.github.com/gsimone/76bdcd…

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