Agreed, CRT and real hardware (FPGA counts) just feels right. I always rolled my eyes when people talked about frames of lag, but when I went from HDMI to CRT/component, it was noticeable. Like my childhood muscle memory suddenly works again. Not “oh I must be getting old, I have to relearn how to play because my fingers forgot.”
Like, getting all the coins from a ? block in NES Mario. Emulation, I always flub the first couple bounces because the timing is different. Via CRT I could have not touched the game in months, but I nail it because muscle memory still works.