Oh please......The "pertinent information" being the "resolution" itself (640x480) is still capable of representing a graphic scene.
Absolutely. And as we all know the Wii is absolutely notorious for it's cutting edge graphics. Hello?Also guess what? If I try to display your 640x480 NTSC screen on my 1680x1050 LCD monitor, it's going to look absolutely horrid. So stop. Making a "2D" game that suits any resolution is something the graphics card will do for you automatically, if you ask it to, so not doing so makes you look at best incompetent.
Are there cases imaginable where a 640x480 blitz game would run into real problems on certain new hardware?
Yes. On my hardware 640x480 games are unplayable (as it's an unsupported full screen resolution) and playing it in a window I imagine is going to be an exercise in frustration. But how would you implement different aspect ratios, with no difference in gameplay? (Adding black borders left and right would solve this but doesn't look nice.)
Compared to what? The only other options I see is:1) It's stretched out distorting the graphics, making everything look horrible.
2) Like above, except the GPU keeps the aspect ratio correct, adding black borders anyway.
3) It's not scaled at all, and you're playing a postage stamp size game on your 22" monitor.
I don't see how adding black borders is not preferable to either of those options, except maybe option 2, which is the same difference.
I don't have a widescreen monitor, and no-one i know has one.
So nobody you know has bought a new screen or laptop in the last 5 years?The only non-widescreen display I have is my old TFT screen which oddly enough has a 5:4 (1280x1024) aspect ratio. However distortion on that from 4:3 isn't too bad.
I get annoyed when games choose their own resolution on LCD screens. They should default to the desktop res if possible.
Amen!