Strange Gaming Phenomenon: 4:3 in 16:9

I like checking out gameplay videos on YouTube, as well as Justin.tv recently, and one thing that always baffles me is seeing people playing non-widescreen games in widescreen format. I myself play on a widescreen display but if a game is natively 4:3, I would always correct my LCD to the appropriate aspect ratio. The opposite to this - people setting games to 16:9 when they only have 4:3 display - is less offensive to me because that problem usually just involves a bit of ignorance on the victim's part. I had a conversation with this guy on X-Box Live several years ago and we were playing some role playing game, I forgot which one, and we ended up talking about the types of televisions we were gaming on. He explained to me that he did not have a widescreen TV but then he informed me that he set his TV type as widescreen on the console, that it still worked on his TV, and everything looked "cooler" and clearer. I explained to him that though he was able to get a bit more graphics squeezed into the display, the image would be distorted and crushed together. He thought I was crazy.

Just because you can, it doesn't mean that you should.

Despite that revelatory event, I really want to discuss more about the 4:3 in 16:9 situation because to me, it just seems ridiculous. Do people really enjoy seeing seriously stretched image on the screen? All of a sudden, all the characters gain several pounds and the developer's original vision gets flatten by the gamer's inability to use some common sense. My significant other used to do the same thing when watching 4:3 movies or television shows on our widescreen living room display and oh how quickly I turned that situation around. Just know that changing the aspect ratio of your widescreen display (if you have the option to that is) to the proper 4:3 appropriation of what is being displayed will not result in ghosting these days. If you own a modern set, burn in is something of a fairy tale now. I have to admit that I was a late adopter of the high definition fixed pixel displays myself - I was big on DLPs before my latest gaming display because I did fear the burn in. Ironically, my significant other was the one who convinced me to go bold with my choice and after using my current display over the past year and seven months - including many hours of having black borders on both sides of the screen playing 4:3 games, none of the pixels are stuck at black yet and I don't worry about it anymore.

Sonic's pot bellied classic look doesn't require additional tweaking.

So fellow gamers, please respect your older video games and visually play them on your capable displays as they are meant to be played. Don't be shocked when you see that Kirby was never that much fatter in his old gaming days and the body proportions of the characters in those PlayStation 2 Japanese role playing games were not that off (well, maybe just slightly).

If you play this game in 16:9, you are more of a devil summoner than Raidou will ever be.