RichterSnipes: I'll agree that it's definitely gotten easier to navigate over time. They've even got a starter guide on their site now! I'm primarily talking about the customization of it all. It's just that there's just so much available that it can get easily overwhelming. Starting smaller and then leaping into it afterwards just seems to be the most logical step for me.
And I wouldn't be a fan of CRT filters if it weren't for my need for Composite/S-Video filtering. Many old games actually depend on those analog signals for certain pseudo-effects to work correctly. That's especially true for games on the Mega Drive (that's what most folks call it around here, even if I don't), since that system doesn't support true transparency effects and has a limited color palette compared to the SNES. I only use CRT on top of that to make the image look less horrible afterwards.
Riiiiight, that would explain it. Never was a Genesis/MD player. I know it isn't representative of the system as a whole, but I often found titles for it to be muddy and dark in terms of the overall AV design. It was the gritty superhero reboot of games consoles in my eyes.