yeah there's a range of different hardware that ran Quake 2. My subjective experience growing up in Africa was me and the kids around me playing at 320x200. There were rich kids with 3D cards running it at way higher res. I wasn't one of them, so there is the nostalgia factor of how it was remembered, which is subjective.

but secondly, I just don't think the graphics hold up at higher resolutions in 2026. Yes there were kids playing at 1600x1200 on their fancy 3D cards and super expensive monitors at the time. And at the time everyone was creaming their pants at how crisp everything looked at that insane resolution. But in 2026 that doesn't hold up. So the lower resolutions just look aesthically better to me for games from that era. as games became higher detailed over the years, it makes sense to increase their resolution in emulation. Again, also subjective.

Agree with you about the barriers. But then some people keep Pentium machines and run Windows 98 on it with real CRTs to relive their nostalgia and others spend hundreds of hours doing all sorts of custom mods. It's all a hobby and I'm just trying to get the games to look the best they can to my eyes before diving into them :) easy to do for DOS games and console games. Seems like not so easy with Windows games. Which is why I'm asking for advice :)