If your CRT had Component or SCART (not sure this was a brand thing so much as model to model, like imagine your parents bought a Sony TV with no HDMI port in the current year and then insisted you told them Sony was good in their defense) you often just needed one official cable and you were good to go. SNES and newer should be simple, NES needed modding but I wouldn't call that the norm.
The N64 goes back to requiring mods for RGB SCART though. The later SNES models removed RGB support too.
Similarly later GameCube models removed support for component cables.