CRTs have better refresh characteristics at the same refresh rate, which is relevant to NES Tetris because it runs at a fixed 60.1Hz (slightly faster than NTSC). But LCDs are available with higher refresh rate than CRTs, so if the software supports it you can get lower average latency on an LCD.

Do the display controllers for LCDs not wait for an entire frame to be written, so it can display it at once?

It's possible to buffer whole frames, but there's no technical requirement to do so. Gaming LCDs update line by line.

>there's no technical requirement to do so

It lets you avoid tearing even if the sender starts acting weird.

There are LCDs with a refresh rate more than double 60Hz, so even with entire frames worth of latency they could still be faster than a 60Hz CRT

The CRT's electron beam gets to "write" the video data onto the phosphor in real-time, as the analog signal comes off the wire.

But only once every 60 Hz (for a 60 Hz display). So, if you have an LCD display with higher latency but also higher refresh rate, you could on average be spending less time waiting for new information.

We're talking about the NES here, the physical output is analog, and locked to ~60.whatever fps

I’m not sure if the NES can, but by the 16-bit era the console can modify what’s being output between scan lines. Obviously that’s only beneficial if the action affects what is below the current scanline, but the way images were drawn allows for techniques that aren’t possible when the entire frame is buffered at a fixed refresh rate.

There is also a lot more to latency than just refresh rate. Retro RGB, My Life in Gaming, Digital Foundry and more have volumes on digital signal latency, and it is not as simple as getting a high refresh rate monitor or television. The TV itself can add latency. If going through a receiver, it can add latency. Need to scale a signal from 720p or 1080p to 4K? Maybe you’ll add latency, maybe you won’t. If the display doesn’t have a fast scaler, external devices can be used which will reduce the total latency, even though they may add some of their own (10-33ms).

But the framerate of a CRT is surely limited by the decay time required for the phosphor to stop glowing. I suppose this could be mitigated with a weaker beam for each higher framerate frame...but then you'd get a dimmer image.

Though after looking it up: seems hard to find, some quote as little as 1ms, but the general trend is towards 4-5ms, so 200fps in theory. Learn something new every day.

I suppose in that case, then it really just comes down to people having fond memories of lugging their CRTs to lans, but not wanting to re-enact it when we have great >=27" 144hz 4k monitors that are also like 10mm thick :p

I couldn't imagine how big and heavy a CRT with similar specs to modern displays would be!

Pretty big. I’m the OP and this is the CRT I have:

https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1738948621238694167

At least 40lbs

Funny story, one of my best friends, former head of BD for confluent and former power lifter got this CRT for me and literally carried this massive thing down the street in downtown DC to deliver it to me. Ha!