Bezels are clipping the screen

[akaGrimus]

Hi there,

I am very new to using Launchbox. I installed the program, imported a set of SNES Roms (I own) and ran the wizard that imported RetroArch, box art, videos and bezels. Once I launched the game (in this case Super Baseball 2020) the game was really clipped. I attached the screenshot.  

Thanks for any help!

[skizzosjt]

I noticed this after firing up Sega Master System games through Retroarch. They defaulted to either something like 3:2 or 8:7 ratio. I bet the same is happening here. It's a display aspect ratio setting and I think SNES might default to 8:7....whichever one it is it will looked "messed up" when we're used to seeing these games on a 4:3 aspect ratio. The bezels are made to work with a 4:3 aspect ratio for SNES hence what looks like the game screen is getting cropped down. so you just need to change this setting in Retroarch. I cannot remember how to get to the exact setting off the top of my head so you will need to poke around in likely video or display options. It might be on "core provided", you would want 4:3

[skizzosjt]

OK I wanted to give better advice. Here is more details of what to check, please do the following....

 

Open Retroarch and run the game as you normally would

Once the game is running open the menu with the F1 key

Go to "Main Menu", then "Quick Menu", then go to "Options" (Note it should default to going to the Quick Menu screen when you first hit F1)

Adjust "Preferred Aspect Ratio" to 4:3

Now this only works if you have the main video settings set to "Core Provided". That is under "Settings", "Video", "Scaling". You want Aspect Ratio set to "Core Provided". I think this is the default setting, but if you want to be safe double check it is set like that

Note on this same screen I have integer scale OFF and Crop Overscan ON

 

Closing Retroarch should save the options file (.opt file) so double check it saved by reopening the game, or any game for SNES at this point, and it should look as intended without cropped off sides. And just to clarify, the BEZEL is what is pseudo cropping the game screen. The whole game screen is still there! If you turned off the bezel right now before making any other adjustments you would see the whole game screen but it would be albeit at the larger aspect ratio

[akaGrimus]

Thanks @skizzosjt I am thinking this might be an issue with my Laptop as it has a strange resolution. I tried a bunch of different aspect ratio's and nothing seemed to fix it, but once I got rid of my bezels the 4:3 ratio worked pretty well. I think I might just have to go bezel-less

[skizzosjt]

Hi there @akaGrimus! you're right, some laptops do not have a traditional 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio which is what the bezel you used would expect. The bezel itself is made to cover a 16:9 aspect ratio display, with the center portion being transparent to allow the 4:3 aspect ratio game to be seen through it. so that does sound plausible that your challenges here are related to your laptop display. It might be 16:10 or 3:2 for example, and would therefore use a resolution that isn't conducive to using 16:9 bezels.

 

If that is in fact the cause for the cropping issue example you shared, you would just need bezels that were designed with the aspect ratio of your display. I'm not sure if those are widely available, since 16:9 is sort of the industry standard for many years now. Enthusiasts may have not had enough demand to put in the effort to make bezels for other aspect ratios

 

I could assist further, if you need/want it, if you wanted to use the 16:9 bezel and want to see the entire game screen. There are settings in Retroarch's menu to resize the game screen to any customized size really. So the caveat here is if you wanted to maintain proper 4:3 aspect ratio of the game, you could squish the game down to be a little smaller so the left/right sides aren't cut off, but you will ultimately end up with some black space at the top and bottom. Or you might not care at all about maintaining 4:3 aspect ratio, if so, you could squish the game size down a bit on just the left/right side (leaving the top and bottom at the current spots), and it will look as correct as possible given your system isn't 16:9