Commodore 1201 monitor presets: building the first monochrome experience

Commodore 1201 is a tiny 10" hi-resolution monochrome display made by Thompson for the Australian and New Zealand markets. This monitor design made me curious about experimenting with old monochrome gaming and the art of setting image up to have enough shades to enjoy the graphics.

Finding reference material about the c1201 was a bit difficult, so I had to make some guesswork from YouTube videos and take some freedom in design because of the oddly shaped tube and the very large overscan area I exploited for deep bezel reflections.

My research on the monochrome experience led to some sensation on official Libretro forum: initially I was using a color 'gel' layer and handmade per-channel white balance to mimick old amber vibe, with an additional Lottes Gridmask.

Montezuma's Revenge on c1201, first test with Color Gel and Lottes Gridmask

The 'Color Gel' solution was pretty nice for use with old 8 bit graphics and color palette, but way dark and too limited in contrast to work fine with the 16 bit era.

Slam Pinball on c1201. A little too dark to be enjoyable?

Developer Guest.R, a major authority in CRT shaders, saw my concept screenshots and decided to implement a realistic 'Luma Conversion' tecnique, introducing life-like monochrome shading. Monochrome effect is now included in both Guest.R CRT toolkit and HyperSpaceMadness Mega Bezel Reflection Shader.

Agony on c1201, amber with Trinitron fake scanlines test

Further investigations brought evidence of monochrome monitors with actual scanlines and gridmask from same manufacturer color monitors models, and other scenarios with composite artifacts from NTSC and PAL signal cables that tricked us into thinking about some monochrome monitors actually displaying not-physically-required scanlines: this is not the case of the Commodore 1201 monitor, a native hi-performance plasma monochrome display.

Jim Power in Mutant Planet on c1201, amber with Lottes Gridmask test

Nonetheless, lots of testing was needed to introduce realtime phospor-decay trails, a subtle shading and vignetting, bright fluo high-lights and a solid texture the make the whole thing appealing while keeping it easy on our tired retro-gamers eyes. Lo-fi scanlines and gridmask were partially removed in favor of a more realistic sharp visualization.

Montezuma's revenge on c1201, final dark amber with plasma texture

Lotus Turbo Challenge III on c1201, final dark amber with plasma texture

Lotus Turbo Challenge III on c1201, some final dark amber gameplay

C1201 was only available in dark orange/amber flavour: nonetheless, I decided to create alternative green and black/white profiles to bring more retrogaming memories and for future applications, as some color monitors implemented monochrome variants for productivity.

Loco on c1201, phosphor white with plasma texture

Oil well on c1201, phosphor green with plasma texture

In real world Commodore 1201 monitor is compatible with a wide range of Commodore Series: C16, Commodore 4/Plus, C64, C128 and even Amiga thanks to the high resolution, so it's historically correct to make this available onfor Amiga presets of TheNamec Mega Bezel Commodore Pack!

On a side note, I'm very proud one of my design to be the first real monochrome overlay and I'd like to once again thank comrades Guest.R for luma correction feature and HyperSpaceMadness for the lightning fast integration and additional customization.