I'm having some issues with some older games I play, such as Septerra Core, and Dark Fall. When the game is launched into full screen, the game starts up with the two black bars on the vertical edges of my screen (as is normal for most lower resolution games). However I notice that the ingame screen is slightly off center. The far left edge of the game screen is hidden behind the black border, while the far right shows a slightly brighter black void. I apologize if this doesn't make sense, I'm trying to explain it the best I can. I've attached an image that basically shows what I'm talking about. On the left border, what you should see is the version number of the game, which should read "1.04" but the one id hidden by...something.

I'm thinking that it's an issue with my monitor more than the game, but I'm hoping for any advice or answers. Thanks!

Does your monitor have an "auto adjustment" button? Try pressing that.

Otherwise you may have to manually adjust your monitor so that the game is centered properly. I've had this issue before and noticed that after an "auto adjustment" both the game and Windows desktop were centered as normal without anything cut off.

Check your monitor settings and your graphics driver settings for options to deal with aspect ratio adjustment. Your graphics driver should definitely have such a setting. Most monitors have one too, and it works independently from the graphics card. If both the monitor and the graphics card try to adjust the aspect ratio, then things can go wrong.

For more specific help, it would be good to know which graphics card, driver version, and monitor you're using.

AHA! Brilliant, thank you! I actually have an Emerson HDTV, and after fiddling with the remote I found a Features list that allowed me to change my Horizontal and Vertical Adjustment (as well as something called "Clock" and "Phase". No idea what those are, but I'm not touching them).

Thank you very much, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.