For both of these points, please don't assume that because you don't like the sound or graphics of the NES, nobody does. As for the NES/FC's graphics and sound quality, it may be very low by today's standards, but sometimes can be fantastic in its simplicity. Sometimes I am in the mood for nothing more advanced than a nice, fun NES game. Call me crazy (or even a feces connoisseur) but I like to get the best out of the NES, including stereo sound from the CPU, and RGB video (got myself a Titler for that). The switch to RGB really makes a difference, and cleans up the whole picture. Sometime soon, I'll post a page that I'm working on about RGB output for several systems. Now separate to my opinion above, are some technical problems of the NOAC, which I've seen in different incarnations. Here's what I wrote about them on a couple of different pages (the DrPCJr and Game Theory Admiral both use an NOAC variant): The Doctor PC Jr's PPU emulation is not completely accurate and is a little quirky. The BG is offset by one horizontal pixel to the left. So, sprites and the BG are slightly misaligned. Also, when the scroll register is 0, one vertical strip of pixels of the adjacent name table is visible on the right side of the screen. Furthermore, when the sprites and BG are turned off in the left border, one vertical strip of BG is visible to the left of this border! In addition, the 'colour emphasis bits' are overly-emphasized in the PC Jr, making the effect of these bits much more visibly pronounced. (This might explain why certain games appear very dark on Famicom Clones: the games have all 3 emphasis bits set; thus the effect is more apparent on clones (and the Dr. PC Jr.) than on a real NES/FC system.) My main gripe with the GTA is its poor sound quality. Yes, many games sound good and loud when played through the GTA. But try any game that uses PCM samples (such as most Konami games, Sunsoft, etc...) and you'll notice the problem. When the GTA's sound hardware plays a sample in this way, it sounds a bit overloaded, but it also usually silences the other sound channels after the sample has played! So, imagine playing your favourite game, when a drum hit plays and the sound almost all disappears! This does NOT happen normally on a real Famicom/NES. The company that made the GTA should have done better. So, if the usual glitches of Famiclones don't bother you, great. The common PPU glitches don't bother me so much, either. However, clones with bad audio really get on my nerves, and wreck the gameplaying experience. If Messiah chooses to use the standard NOAC - even as a component of their "custom" design, that's a shame, since they're going the lazy way and giving players the short end of the stick. If they wanted to, they could implement RGB, S-Video, or even component output, since it all depends on how complicated they want to design their PPU clone. I still prefer a properly maintained & cleaned toaster NES, as it is.
