Someone ran MW3 on a CRT screen, and now I wish it was 2005 again

The ghost of gaming past periodically visits the world through the medium of imaginative players, such as Twitter user Ghost Wacke, who managed to run 2023’s MW3 on a CRT television set. His Nov. 25 video shows MW3 running smoothly on the CRT TV, and it made me wish it was 2005 again.

The video posted on Twitter sees the user hooking up the CRT to his trusted, new, and shiny PS5 console with an adapter. He explains that it’s a relatively easy thing to do, especially with consoles, which simultaneously made me happy and sad. The result of his finicking with connecting the RCA cable with the adapter and then the console is a stunningly smooth output of Activision’s latest rendition of CoD, albeit with that iconic eye-popping radiating screen brightness.

It’s no shock that the game would run smoothly, seeing as CRTs usually run at higher refresh rates than even some of today’s gaming monitors. But it’s how some of the particle effects looked like, particularly the blood splatters of low HP, that reminded me of the old days of CoD running on the PS2 and CRT screens.

Those of you old enough to remember know what it was like to have your eyes hurt after a few hours of being glued to a CRT, playing through all the campaigns of CoD 2. From the deserts of Africa to the frigid suburbs of Stalingrad, all of those great moments had a specific charm when displayed through such screens. I spent countless hours playing multiplayer CoD 4 (the original Modern Warfare) on my grandmother’s CRT, even though her PC at the time could have done with a more suitable monitor.

But it makes me happy to have experienced it so. The pleasure of old CoD, the iconic scenes of Captain Price and his Bravo Six, storming Stalingrad with no more than an ammo clip in the original CoD 1, and the pathos of taking a final stand against enemy hordes in CoD 2 are all moments that, for whatever reason, were made all the better displayed through the rigid, glaring CRT technology.

And it’s clips like these, small though they may be, that make me realize how far we’ve come since.