Depends on the game and the CRT. Not all CRTs were made equal, my old Eizo FlexScan had a near LCD like quality as long as you didn't go above 800×600 (above that, the filtering kicked in with some additional blur), so is my professional HP monitor with a Trinitron tube (RIP).

Some games also took advantage of color artifacts. Some didn't.

[–] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Depends on the game but I don't think people needed high-end TVs to notice the difference. When I was a kid and I first tried emulation, I remember noticing how some games looked weird and blocky on PC, even though my CRT TV was an extra blurry hand-me-down.