VOGONS


First post, by mombarak

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Hi.

I am currently trying to create desktop wallpapers for fullhd from old dos games like monkey island and simon the sorcerer. Unfortunately all tools I tried like Gemini or Upscailr only made the picture very soft and all looked like the terrible simon the sorcerer remaster, as if it was an ugly oil painting.

Does anyone know of a tool with better results? I saw some guys with crazy results on Reddit but I do not know if that was recreated by hand.

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/MonkeyIsland/comment … ester_shinetop/

Reply 2 of 8, by mombarak

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Shponglefan wrote on 2026-03-08, 17:08:

In that linked Reddit post, they state they were using ReShade 4.9.1. So presumably you would have to determine what settings they used to get a similar result and then just take screenshots.

Oh is that an upscaling tool? I thought this was more for the coloring and lighting. Will definitely look into it if it is free.

Reply 3 of 8, by StriderTR

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I've been using Seedream 4.0 via NightCafe.

Example below. Told it to "scale the image up" and set the output to 16:9 (2560x1440), input image was 1024x640. Seems to do a decent job. Not sure how it will do with lower res start images or pixel art. I'll mess with it later and see if I can figure anything out. I'm not a fan of normal scaling either, at least for pixel art.

Edit: So, this is the best I can get... I downloaded a 600x400 Monkey Island Demo screenshot and played around with some prompts. The best results came from "Upscale the start image. Maintain colors, style, pixel clarity and sharpness. No image softening". The result is below. Still better "recreating" using a start image than free upscaling software on lower res images in my opinion. Not perfect...but not terrible. Even the paid scalers on NightCafe suck at pixel art.

On a side note. I wanted a clear image of the condor and egg from FF7, I like how it turned out too. Created using Seedream 4 and a screenshot from the game on PC.

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Reply 4 of 8, by Joseph_Joestar

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I mean, you can just use DOSBox with output=openglnb, scaler=none and aspect=true.

file.php?id=169360

In the example above, the game is running on an 1920x1200 monitor, which scales the native 320x200 resolution perfectly (6x on each axis) and then adjusts it to a 4:3 aspect ratio. This screenshot was taken via Fraps, with no adjustments other than cropping the black borders on both sides.

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Reply 5 of 8, by mombarak

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Wow. Thank you both. This look much better than what I had so far. I will definitely try both.

Reply 6 of 8, by Joseph_Joestar

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A few more examples with the black borders left on:

The attachment DOSBox_Monkey1.jpg is no longer available
The attachment DOSBox_MK2.jpg is no longer available
The attachment DOSBox_Tyrian.jpg is no longer available

Again, this is just plain old DOSBox-0.74-3 using the settings mentioned above running on an Asus ProArt 24" 1920x1200 monitor. Nothing else was needed.

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Reply 7 of 8, by NeoG_

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Any image editor that can use the nearest neighbor resizing method will produce the same result. In GIMP you can do it by setting the "Interpolation" to none when resizing. In Photoshop set the resize method to Nearest Neighbor.

It's kind of funny that you are trying to use the most advanced upscaling when you needed to use the oldest, haha

Last edited by NeoG_ on 2026-03-10, 00:21. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 8 of 8, by StriderTR

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I never even thought of just using DOSBox.... when I actively use it almost daily. haha

Stupid AI corrupting my thought processes. 😜

DOS, Win9x, General "Retro" Enthusiast. Professional Tinkerer. Technology Hobbyist. Expert at Nothing! Build, Create, Repair, Repeat!
This Old Man's Builds, Projects, and Other Retro Goodness: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/