If a game doesn't natively support widescreen resolutions, I won't start modding them in.

I don't think I ever played any game at 1600x1200, though, partly because the text in a lot of them becomes so small as to be basically unreadable. So, I rarely go beyond 1024x768 for most old games.

Yeah mine does this. This is honestly my least fav feature of playing old games. I can't stand looking at stretched graphics, and yeah not every game seems to be able to do widescreen (or maybe sometimes just nobody's bothered to make a patch?)

I actually break out my old 4:3 monitor when I'm really dying to play a game that can't do widescreen. That's not exactly an ideal solution either, as the thing weighs like 50 lbs and takes up half my desk. It spends the majority of the time on my closet floor (and even takes up too much space there).. :)

Same here, but I also try to use the resolutions of the time.

For me it depends whether the widescreen mod does it's job without distortion. If it looks right, then sure, I'll use widescreen, if not then I'll just happily play at 4:3- in which case 1600x1200 works best for me (with maintain aspect ratio enforced at the monitor) because it suits my monitor which is 1920x1200 so at least the vertical matches natively. Once upon a time we only played games in 4:3 so it's no big deal, a good game is still good.

Games like Thief deadly shadows have excellent widescreen mods that look just right and undistorted. Max Payne 2 does not, the ones i tried made Mona look like she had a fat ass, and you definitely don't want Mona to have a fat ass, so 1600x1200 for that one. Gothic can also be made to run well in widescreen, but in that case I found it caused stability issues in later areas of the game- so back to 4:3.

Same goes for a lot of games that were on the fringe of the widescreen era, or got back updated to widescreen compatibility...but many such games cheat and distort the image horizontally which I find unacceptable.

So the answer to the OP is a solid "it depends". It's a case by case scenario.

Always the hack as long as the aspect ratio works. Some games I've gotten to work with 1440x1080 (16:9) where 1920x1080 didn't work, otherwise I play at 1280x1024 which is the highest 4:3 I can play, for some reason I always had issues with 1600x1200. When 1280x1024 is the highest available, I usually go with 8xMSAA to make up for the jaggies at least.

When games have support for DSR, I pick that as long as my GPU can handle it. It's really something about scaling down 2715x1527 down to 1920x1080, it usually brings out texture and clarity really well.

Older games rarely have good resolution options. Often higher resolution simply means everything is smaller. Certainly there's more on the screen, but that doesn't mean you can read any of it, as often the fonts don't grow with the resolution, so it's not clearer or anything. It's just tiny.

I've rarely played resolutions above 1024x768, and often go much lower, 800x600 as the nice balance allowing resolution and clarity while still being readable.

Another problem in choosing an excessively high resolution with old games is that the world texture & geometry detail don't live up to it. So you end up with fine, sharp edges on low poly geometry and stretched (blurred) textures.

Stretching textures removes contrast and if you look at old games today and think they look bland, dull, and depressing, this might be why. In the past, playing at a low resolution, with textures (and filtering) to match that resolution, a bright texel next to a dark one is used to make glowing detail, like computer screens, electronic panels & switches, glowing eyes on characters and so on. Once you turn up your resolution and the GPU stretches the textures to account for it, the interpolation is going to give you a smooth gradient of shades somewhere between the bright and the dark pixel. Contrast is gone, and the gradient tends towards grays or other muddy & ugly colors. Your game looks depressing.

Combined with the fine edges, this just hilights the "lo-fi"-ness of the game. It hilights the lack of detail. It literally makes the game look worse than it is. It's like slapping a low res web cam shot on a fine piece of art in a sad attempt to create a fake scene. It looks bad and does a disservice to the art.

I usually play them in the original resolution they were meant to be played (e.g. 640x480 or 1024x768) because quite often the text. user interface, characters etc. become too tiny in the higher resolutions. For instance yesterday when I started playing Fallout, I did install the widescreen mod for it but in the end I ended up playing it in the 640x480 resolution as I liked to see the characters and items bigger on the screen, and I didn't like how some screens in the game were even small in size (with black bars on all four directions) in higher resolutions.

Even in 3D polygonal games like System Shock 2, Unreal or Deus Ex, running in higher resolutions makes the in-game text and user-interface far too tiny, which I don't like. On the other hand, if some game is able to scale everything up in higher resolutions so that objects don't become tiny, then sure, I will run it in as high resolution where it runs well.

If the game was made for 4:3 aspect ratio and playing it in 16:9 would mean the image is stretched horizontally, that is a definite no no to me. I want to play 4:3 games in a 4:3 resolution, similarly like I want to watch old 4:3 TV series in 4:3 (I won't say that to movies because they normally are not made for the 4:3 aspect ratio originally, but adjusted to it by either cutting away picture from the sides, and/or using pan&scan which is silly.

I don't have a monitor that is 1200 tall, would probably use it much otherwise. Especially for old games made for 320x200, so that I could maintain both the aspect ratio and the crispness of pixels, which I like. Alas, but for those I have another solution that offloads most of the scaling and aspect correction work to the monitor, and the results are pretty good.

For newer games I'll happily use a good widescreen hack as long as it's giving me more, rather than less, to look at. I'll even live with some minor glitches, like maybe some objects disappearing from the edges.

i really dont care
i just play it in what looks good to me

You know, you can save yourself all the hassle by using GPU scaling. That's what I do to play 4:3 games on my 16:10 monitor, that will stretch 4:3 games. Your graphics card just adds black bars on the sides of the game, and your monitor doesn't stretch anything.

It's way more convenient than hoisting monitors around. Although I'd understand if you just hate empty black bars filling your widescreen monitor, or like to add to the nostalgia effect with the 50 lbs monster :)

Cool thanks I'll check it out next time I want to play 4:3. One thing that use to work with Warcraft 3 was to first set my desktop resolution to 4:3 with the black bars on the side. Then I would get the black bars in the game too.