That’s weird then why they chose this kind of resolution. If they display only on odd lines, then the game “fills” 384 lines, so even more black borders than NTSC games on PAL TV which have 576 lines. It’s a 2D games, so not even very PSX’s GPU demanding
Maybe they were going for some sort of cinematic look, I believe Beyond Good & Evil did this later. Plus maybe there were really aiming at the NTSC market.
That’s weird the game’s resolution is exactly one third of PAL resolution. Besides, when fullscreen, the game has correct proportions for circles and squares.
By the way, why does PCSX Rearmed automatically stretch it fullscreen?
I have two CRTs here, both Toshiba, one a “Slim” model and other the standard model and a PSOne, and yes they have black bars on NTSC, but only if you set 4:3 on the TV menu, if you set “Expanded” the image is stretched vertically a little bit. Well, I’m not sure, but looks like the “Expanded” option was the standard of old CRTs and the 4:3 was added in the latest models.
Below: 4:3 vs Expanded
In the end is a freaking mess these aspect ratio subject in CRT era when that time was all about frequency, not resolutions and pixels. I tried to find the round circles, which gives Dino Crisis 2 for example a correct 4:3 aspect game… I’ve even try to find the right aspect ratio on the games manual which actually do not give a 4:3 aspect ratio to Dino Crisis 2… So, no conclusion…
I tried to find in the re-releases…
In the end the 4:3 DAR removing black bars if the game have any (like Squaresoft games) will be in average the most correct aspect ratio for PSX, which is exactly the PCSX ReARMed do. I would use the PCSX ReARMed if it wasn’t the dithering and sound being not as accurate as Beetle.
PS: Need to edit the original post, merge images and do it in separate posts because I m a new user.
There is no set resolution on CRT’s. The ps1 could output as low as 256x224 if it wanted to and many 2D games ran at this resolution, and the CRT just displays that resolution natively. If the games internal resolution was 256x192 it would just fill out the extra lines with black space to make up the remainder so it equals 224 which would fill the screen. So that means 16 black lines on the top and bottom each (and a couple of extra black lines on a PAL version).
From your screens it appears that beetle is displaying Heart of Darkness correctly. That’s 100% what i would expect from a game running at that resolution.
Expanded seems okay with me, aspect-wise. But yeah you’re right, answer to my questions should be this default-expanding option. Is there a way you get Heart of Darkness, to solve that final mystery?
Yeah, looks that the black bars it is a artistic view… In this case the PCSX ReARMed got it completely wrong…
HOD - NTSC - 4:3
HOD - NTSC - Expanded
The artists clearly wanted the game to have a cinematic feel.
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Thanks guys, things just got clearer now. However, that’s still weird why they picked that resolution which is exactly 1/3 of PAL format. I can imagine that the black bars give a cinematic look but when fully expanded with no black bars at all, ratio seems totally correct (as for the circles).
I guess I’ll have to get a PAL tv and a PAL version of this game to finally sort this out and rest in peace 
Good information thanks for sharing vmware
Hello Fourch i wanted to know what was your settings to have that CRT panasonic bezel and your video settings in general
Hi, Ryan
For the CRT Bezel, it’s quite simple: in Settings, Overlay, you can set any kind of PNG you want to have displayed on your screen.
As for the video to fit into the bezel, I used the Custom aspect ratio (X:320; Y:30 / L:1280; H:960). Those digits may change because I voluntary upscaled the bezel to have a bigger screen. That’s a bezel I found on the Internet.
Then, I set shaders to simulate the CRT look. I either use the CRT Geom Deluxe or sometimes the CRT Venom (I tweaked them a bit to match my tastes).
Hope that answers your question
Cheers
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I’m unearthing this subject because with last Beetle PSX HW version (0.9.44.1 e8609eb), cropping no longer behave as it used to. There’s now the “smart overscanning” similar to PCSX Rearmed. So for games such as Heart of Darkness (and probably some others), it no longer displays black top/bottom borders.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to display black borders manually, to mimic old behaviour? Does any one know if it’s gone forever?
Cheers
Indeed. I do understand you, fixing one’s problem may cause another one’s problem.
The old behaviour kind of obliged you to set up PAL games individually. But I think that’s not right actually, since PAL games always have the same offset (or am I wrong?). The black bars the guy was talking about on Crash 3 are there on NTSC version.
Would it be possible to have a “horizontal only” with new Crop Overscan? So it acts like the old behaviour, which was the most accurate for me. And for those who want their PAL games to unaccurately fill the whole screen, they have the new behaviour.
Beetle PSX is famous for its accuracy, I do believe it has to evolve that way.
Anyway, if you don’t intend to change this, I’ll stick to the 364a705 build which displayed black borders for Heart of Darkness.
Thanks for your amazing work
Cheers
So, back then, I used to think that 4:3 and removing overscan should be the perfect aspect ratio wise, which is what PCSX ReARMed do. Today definitively the ultimate aspect ratio is 4:3 choping horizontal overscan if having any and cutting of 8px top and bottom which is pretty much the Expanded mode of my CRT and the most common standard old CRTs. There are a ton o games that still display garbage textures and just removing the letterbox is not accurate like I used to think.
And I’m not entirely sure if the Heart of Darkness’s black bars really was an artistic choice, at least in the original PAL version. I didn’t find any footage of the original PAL, not that I really searched too, but what I found was this italian box…
In the screenshots there’s no black bar and the aspect ratio are squared… And the NTSC’s manual there’s no black bars too, but the screenshots are more rectangular…
The letterbox could be intentional or could just be a lazy port, to really confirm you need a PAL version running on a real PAL console in a real PAL CRT TV.
But anyway, this don’t change the fact that the really accurate way to display the NTSC version is with black bars, since is that way that the NTSC version of the game in the original hardware on a real CRT TV is displayed
Just ratifying.
Hi, thanks for your new insights. I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I came up to the conclusion that in a late stage of production, they somehow decided to give the game a cinematic look. But unfortunately, most backgrounds were already made, so the only way was to add “void” to simulate black bars. You’re right, correct aspect ratio is 4:3 with no bars at all. It’s obvious during the intro cinematic and the moon eclipse.
And that could explain the screenshots from PAL box and NTSC manual, because those screenshots are usually taken from the engineor game editor, not from a CRT.
The only way to sort this puzzle out is to call Eric Chahi himself!
Anyway, even if full 4:3 screen respects the ratio of drawings and arts, it “breaks” the feel and look the studio wanted the game to have.
Amazing game by the way 
despite all this haha
The development of Heart of Darkness took a long time, featuring some platform changes and cancellations, including the jump from DOS to Windows PCs. That probably explains inconsistencies and seemingly odd aspects about the graphics.
Hello! I have registered just because I can’t find a solution of the issue in any place on the internet. In fact, this is the only thread where this is examined.
I want those black bars to show up in PAL version of PCSX rearmed. Why? Because even if the difference is small, the “smart aspect ratio” is stretching the image just a bit. I’m very sensible to that kind of change and drives me nuts. In the original post you can see this crearly in the Crash images.
However I’m don’t have any idea of how to turn this off. I’m trying to set this up in various SBC devices without succeeding. I want those black bars! Does anyone know how can I get them to show up, and how to disable this strange smart stretching?