All screenshots on this blog are pixel perfect, which means that each pixel of the original image is represented by one pixel (or an integer multiple thereof) on your screen. This also means that the pictures are not aspect-corrected.
On a real C64, the displayed pixels are not perfectly square. Instead, they are squished horizontally at a ratio of about 0.936:1. This assumes the computer is a PAL model which was the predominant version in Europe.
For this reason, the images shown here are all a bit wider than they would appear on the real hardware. This is most noticeable with pictures containing spherical objects, like this one:
With corrected aspect ratio, it looks like this:
Now, why don't I simply correct all images? Because correcting them alters their picture information in a destructive way. The non-square pixels are approximated by filtering the initial image. If you zoom in on the corrected picture above, you can see how the "pure" pixel information got messed up with in-between pixels.
Pixel art (or at least a possible definition of it) is about meticulously placing pixels by hand. Throwing a scaling filter over the whole thing would be a disservice to the artists, at least in my opinion.
On the other hand, when I fire up an emulator to play some old games, I gladly turn on some filters to make the experience more like looking at an actual CRT monitor. But for this blog, I want to allow the viewer to look at a picture and still be able to tell the pixels apart.
As you can see in the above example, the difference is actually not that significant. In fact, I'm not even sure if the artist intended the blue planet to be perfectly spherical, as the gray moon above the text logo looks like an egg regardless of aspect ratio.
In any case, correct aspect ratios are a subject of debate, not only for C64 graphics.
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