This is a simple guide to help you determine how you would like to run these old games on your modern monitor.
Modern graphics cards will allow you to adjust how games display on your monitor. You can access these settings via your graphic card's control panel.
The settings you need to find are the "Scaling" settings as shown below.
Here are the important settings to be aware of and to understand how they work.
No Scaling
For the best quality, this is the setting to use. No Scaling means for every single pixel the game outputs, only one pixel on your monitor will be used to display it. The result is the sharpest, highest quality game graphics possible.
However, as old games do not have many pixels and modern monitors do, the size of the game area on the screen may be too small to use and enjoy.
The game image will also be surrounded by big black borders as your monitor has far more pixels than the game outputs so those extra pixels are filled with black pixels.
Aspect Ratio
This is the setting most people will likely use. Aspect Ratio will fill your screen with the game image regardless if your monitor screen has more pixels than the game itself. It will also keep the original aspect ratio so the game graphics do not become distorted in any way. A golfer for example, will display in his/her correct proportions and not appear unnaturally wide.
Using this setting, you will have black borders on only 2 sides of your screen while the other 2 sides will totally fill with the game image.
The Aspect Ratio setting allows you to see the game large and it will fill much of your screen. In order to accomplish this, one pixel from the game needs to be spread over more than one pixel of your monitor in order to fill your screen with the game display. The downside, you will lose sharpness of the game's graphics.
Full Screen
This is the one you want to avoid. This setting will simply fill your entire screen with the game image regardless of anything. It means you will not have black borders but as the game needs to be stretched, you will have both a loss of sharpness and distorted graphics.
In summary, the best choice is always with No Scaling for ultimate graphics sharpness but the game area may be too small.
For most modern monitors, Aspect Ratio will be the most realistically usable option. You will have a large game image area and no distortion of the game elements. Certainly you can try No Scaling first to see if the image is large enough for you to use and enjoy.
If you want to specifically spend money and buy a monitor for old games, a 19 inch 1280x1024 is a great general choice.
I own several of these now as they are ideal for all games up to around the 2008 period. These are the games I really enjoy playing. Games after 2008 were starting to move toward widescreen and high resolution monitors.
Even if playing a low resolution DOS game, a 19 inch 1280x1024 monitor gives you a much larger screen image than you get with a Nintendo Switch screen as a comparison.
Check eBay for used monitors or Dell as Dell still make them new:
Dell 19 inch monitor
Here is an example of a DOS game that runs only 640 pixels across. On the 19 inch monitor, the image is large enough to comfortably play and enjoy.
