High resolution monitors...for a low resolution gamer

[RSidell]

Well I just bought a VGA cable for my Wii and it's on it's way, and I'm really curious to see how Virtual Console games look on my LCD computer monitor. I can only imagine they look very harsh*, I mean imagine an 8-bit Mario (whose native resolution was 256×240) blown up onto a 1280×1024 VGA monitor (that's literally 5 times the size of the original resolution) Plus LCD monitors don't have the scanlines we are so used to on regular NTSC television sets, so that would only increase the "harsh" look of the already stretched graphics. I've heard many people say they have had good experiences on their 1080p HD-tv's with Virtual Console games, but it just doesn't make sense to me! So my question to you people (who are much smarter than me) is how can these games look respectable at all on these much better displays? Thanks in advance for the help, this will help me in determining what kind of monitor/display I buy in the future.
*=distorted, washed-out, and just plain un-natural.

[cgm]

It likely depends on the scaling used and personal opinion. Many TVs like to smooth off the lines of stretched video, making games look like crap. I'd like to see a straight 5x pixel enlargement (1x1 pixels= 5x5 pixels) with no smoothing ideally for NES games. I have a 1280x1024 monitor here, I should see how it looks full screen on an emulator.