/vr/ - Retro Games

From Australia here, and whenever I put anything into 60hz, as some games let you choose, it drops the resolution down from 576i or whatever to 480i.

Even in the case if the progressive scan capable stuff, I swear the internal resolution doesn't change, the video processor just upscales the picture.

Don't get me started on dealing with letterbox stuff. Basically, pal is suffering. Be thankful with what you have. Modern consoles and handhelds are a godsend for us.

>Are there any /vr/ games that arguably run better in PAL?

Mario 1 is 20% fast on PAL.

>>1791126
There must be some games that were tweaked to run well on PAL but with the PAL format's 20% higher resolution than NTSC. I wasn't aware that there was a connection between refresh rate and resolution.

Anyway, I remember someone saying that Goldeneye and some Rare games run at a higher resolution in PAL. And if that's true there must be some other games that run at a higher res in PAL (that were properly adjusted by developers) but were already running at a slow PAL-like frame rate out of necessity in their NTSC version. Maybe whoever was claiming that was full of shit.

Besides the N64, I'm guessing there's some other PAL consoles that can natively display resolutions higher than the NTSC format's. Maybe the lower frame rate always makes the PAL games inferior, but there must be some games/consoles where the speed issue isn't dealbreaking or could be remedied by modding the console, using a flashcart etc. And there must be some TVs or monitors than can display 576 x 720 PAL games at 60hz.

>>1791215
Only N64 games by Rare took advantage of the extra PAL resolution on consoles. I can't think of anywhere place where it happened.

>>1791228
Wait, no actually I can think of one other place. Ecco Tides of Time on Mega Drive. PAL exclusive high-res.

Some games have extra content on PAL to make up for the delay from translating. The Mega Drive version of Prince of Persia, for example, has 4 more levels than the Genesis version. Another example is Spyro 1 which has an original track for the High Caves level in the PAL version but uses a remix of the Tree Tops level track for the High Caves level in the NTSC version.

Also, the translation delay sometimes meant that PAL areas got the only versions with bugfixes, or at least with more bugfixes than the American NTSC versions, which fixed bugs in the Japanese NTSC versions. Although it's not retro, the PAL version of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is the only one without game-breaking bugs.

Generally though PAL versions are worse.

a few megadrive games make use of 240 high res, not much but i guess the 16bit era was about when ntsc devs started to tinker with pal.

240 will still be letterboxed because a typical fullscreen pal tv might be displaying as many as 270 (540 interlaced) lines

>>1791274
only partially retro, but I remember that the port of FFIV on GBA had horrible bugs and framerate problems fixed for the PAL release (although of course the GBA is neither PAL nor NTSC..)

While looking up stuff related to this thread I read that supposedly some games on the SNES make use of the extra PAL resolution. Super Mario Allstars, Killer Instinct, Mario Kart and some of the Donkey Kong Country games apparently use the extra resolution. I wonder if it's possible to force an emulator to display these games at 60hz, (unless the speed difference has been compensated for) or to edit the rom's header or something to tell the emulator to run it in 60hz. I know there's a Terranigma rom out there that's been modified to run at 60hz, but I'm not sure if this is tied to the resolution.

>>1791339
I'm almost certain no SNES game does.

>>1791284
Thanks for the info. I replaced my US rom with the PAL version. I wonder that if since the games generally came out later in the PAL region (due to translation like another anon has pointed out), which sometimes results in bugs being fixed. As far as I know there is no difference hardware-wise between PAL or NTSC in the case of the Game boy, (not /vr/) GBA/DS and most other handheld consoles, so maybe the PAL region games are better in general if there is any difference between them and the US versions.

It's a shame that the European versions didn't come first, then we'd probably have better translations of a lot of Japanese games in the PAL/European versions that would be afterwards wussified for the American market. With the way as it is now, I doubt that any European English release does much in the way of fixing the mistakes or needless censorship imparted by the American localization.

Many N64 games were slightly higher res on PAL but had a slightly worse framerate

Pick your poison

>>1791503
>but had a slightly worse framerate
Yes, but this term can be a little misleading. PAL games do have a worse framerate because the technology supports 25/50fps, but it doesn't mean the games had more framerate DROPS.

The PAL versions of Goldeneye/Perfect Dark don't actually drop more frames than the NTSC version. They just start off at a lower point to begin with.

>>1791417

What's more, many European localisations of Japanese games will translate from the American to their own languages, because fuck paying the salary of someone who can speak Japanese to translate a video game when anyone who finished high school should speak decent English. Translating from Japanese into the entire EFIGS spectrum at once would run the risk of divergent translations in areas you can cycle between, which would have been fun.

>>1791197
As in Super Mario Bros on the NES? 20% is a pretty signfiicant speedup, that must have made it quite a bit harder.

>>1791197
that sounds intense, can I emulate that on an emulator somehow?

>>1791274
Smash Bros Melee was also heavily rebalanced going from NTSC to PAL. The result is a totally different tier list, if you follow those sorts of things.

I don't know about PAL, but Perfect Dark apparently runs very well on the Japanese version. I assume it's due to having more development time for that one, and using a more optimized version of the engine.

>>1791604
Can just run the PAL ROM, can't you? Actually, I'll test it now and get back to you.

>>1791604
You can adjust the speed in Nestopia, under the timings section.

>>1791109
>Are there any /vr/ games that arguably run better in PAL?
Yes, a real lot of them for home computers. For consoles there is a few of them, and again those are European developed games, that run faster then they should on NTSC systems. For example Bitmap Brothers games and Shadow of the Beast.

>>1791109
By nature of RARE being British and quite good at the time their N64 games have absolutely amazing PAL conversions that really show what could be done with a little bit of time. I think there's a few others on the N64 too but I can't recall them.
For some reason Nintendo's own PAL conversions on that system where fucking appalling

>That feel when Britfag
>That feel when grew up in Saudi Arabia
>That feel when SNES, Genesis and N64 were all Murkan versions
phew. looks like I dodged a bullet there bros.

Having NTSC SNES used to piss me off though 'cause in my small town growing up the SNES games came really rarely and I visited UK fairly often. So of course I'd see all those great SNES games in the UK and wouldn't be able to buy them. The first time I bought a whole bunch and took them back with me and they didn't work. It was a terrible experience. I had Super Mario Kart right there and I couldn't play it. Can you imagine that feel? But yeah, in the end looks like I lucked out.

For some reason there were Sega games everywhere in Tabuk (the city I grew up in) though. There were never any N64 games but Jeddah got them by the fuckload and I'd get a decent haul every six months or so. PSX piracy was also rampant but somehow I was never big on PlayStation.

>>1793834
>For some reason Nintendo's own PAL conversions on that system where fucking appalling
I threw up in my mouth a little after seeing Pilotwings 64 and Wave Race 64 for the first time. Their PAL ports did get less offensive later on.

I have to wonder why it took until the Dreamcast in 1999 to start offering the option of 60hz to Europeans when TV's over here have been able to handle NTSC inputs since the late-80's.

>>1791197
And I never knew why to me it is a hard game while everyone in the world seems to have beaten it at 3 years old.

>>1793889
Try reading the text on OOT in PAL, It's horrific.

And regarding the TV thing, here in the UK people just didn't buy as many TV sets that often and the transition to NTSC accepting ones was slow, even then not all tv sets could do it, I bought a TV set in 1997, had two full RGB scart inputs so it wasn't shit by any means, Can't do 60hz/NTSC. I can imagine that would have been the same if not worse in other European countries. There where also differing standards of PAL, and that whole SECAM thing in France. It's a mess

>>1793834
Pretty much every N64 developer(or games developer for any system really) based in Europe will put out fantastically optimized games which usually end up having advantages over their NTSC counterparts.
However these are dead limited.

>Are there any /vr/ games that arguably run better in PAL?
Super Mario Kart PAL was sped up to run at the same speed as the NTSC version. So when Europeans imported the game and run them through converters they actually ran 17% faster than normal.

I think the PAL Dreamcast can output 576 x 720.

>>1791109
Well, I know that Crash Bandicoot games on PS1 had proper resolution and proper speed, along with some difficulty adjustments (all of them made the game harder), then if we count almost every game developed in Europe (like Colin McRae Rally 2.0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGACXzEjgw4 ).
Sometimes, since the European versions came out few months later, games were less buggy than the original release or more optimized so they didn't have that much significant frame drops or even had more content inside, although those cases were really rare.

Also, NTSC->PAL converted games weren't 17% faster, but slower. That led developers into thinking that European gamers wanted more challenge since for many people there it was just too easy to win, so they used to add extra enemy here and there to compensate for that.

btw. back then you didn't even notice that you were playing somehow butchered down version, since you had no way to know if there was any difference, or even a way how to compare those two versions.

>>1793925
>and that whole SECAM thing in France
That wasn't even a slightest problem at all, both PAL and SECAM broadcast at 50Hz with the difference being that PAL uses amplitude modulation (like NTSC), while SECAM used frequency modulation. Side note, it wasn't only in France, I think that most countries which were under Russian communism used it (and then switched to PAL afterwards).

>>1791517
If anything that means that a game with more framerate drops would have a more stable framerate for the PAL version, assuming it drops to the same low, since the difference between the low point and the stable point would be smaller. That's really stretching for something good to say about the framerate though.

>>1793889
As far as I'm aware, the DC was the first console of the flicker-filtered interlace era.

I guess the industry moving away from 240p to 480i+480p was the kick in the pants needed to git gud with pal

Kind of off the subject, but sometimes I wonder when I'm downloading DVD rips of movies that have no HD version and I see both PAL and NTSC rips or disc images. I wonder that the 20% higher resolution and slower framerate might be an okay tradeoff if you're trying to watch it on a high definition display, because the low resolution standard definition really makes the movies look like shit.

The weird thing is that to my knowledge, the N64 was probably the earliest console that supported PAL60 mode without modification.

You can enable it if you run an NTSC game on a flashcart - the game will not switch to NTSC but to PAL60.

>>1791109
All games made for home computers, such as Amiga, C64 and the ZX Spectrum.

>>1791228
The PAL version looks like it has a narrower horizontal FOV. Any seasoned FPS player can tell you this is not a good thing, higher resolution or not.

>>1794965
For movies, go for PAL. The movies are only 24fps anyway. If they're sped up for the PAL release and it bothers you, you can always play them back at the proper speed on your PC.

>>1795530
It doesn't. That's just the screenshot not being taken in the exact same place in both versions. The horizontal resolution is identical but the aspect ratio is difference. NTSC version is very slightly squished due to borders.

>>1794529
It was widely acknowledged in the gaming press, anyone over the age of about 13 who had more than a passing interest would have had knowledge of it and the black bars of shoddily converted pal games was immediately obvious

I still maintain the original Mega Man is better in PAL with slowdown as the music is somewhat less frantic.

>>1794987

I was so happy when I discovered that with my Everdrive.

Of course I found out the big late-model LG CRT I have that's better than my shitty DSE Chinese one, freaks the fuck out with the weird PAL60 output. Double transparent image and all. Very odd.

>>1795530
even in modern games where widescreen actually gives a significantly higher FOV, it doesn't matter that much actually (at least if you have mouse free-look)

>>1795604
this
anyone who read gaming magazines knew about bad pal conversions and what to do about it. only plebs who used stock consoles with rf adapters were oblivious.

>>1795720
>even in modern games where widescreen actually gives a significantly higher FOV, it doesn't matter that much actually (at least if you have mouse free-look)
Reminder that GE\PD supported letterboxed 21:9 widescreen with retardedly wide FOV. Because reasons.

>>1794965
>Kind of off the subject, but sometimes I wonder when I'm downloading DVD rips of movies that have no HD version and I see both PAL and NTSC rips or disc images. I wonder that the 20% higher resolution and slower framerate might be an okay tradeoff if you're trying to watch it on a high definition display, because the low resolution standard definition really makes the movies look like shit.
PAL DVD is vastly superior to NTSC DVD. The 4% speed increase isn't that noticable, and the resolution bump from 720x480 to 720x576 is much more significant.

>>1795871

too bad most stuff is just upscaled ntsc sources

>>1795896
>too bad most stuff is just upscaled ntsc sources
Do you have any citation for that?

>>1791607
>I assume it's due to having more development time for that one, and using a more optimized version of the engine.
Probably has to do with the fact that blood isn't splattered on bodies or walls

>>1794987
Do you speak about a PAL or NTSC console?
Don't you also need an RGB-cable for that to work?

>>1799351
You need a PAL console for it to work. And no you don't need RGB. RGB is neither PAL, nor NTSC, nor PAL60 anyway. RGB is RGB.

>>1799351
FYI The N64 doesn't output RGB.

>>1795604
>>1795743
Maybe if you were older and playing those games but the vast majority would have been kids who didn't read magazines, it was all adverts and word of mouth.

As it happens I did read magazines (somewhat, I was quite young) but it's not like they plastered every issue shouting 'LOOK HOW MUCH WORSE PAL GAMES ARE THAN NTSC, BUT THERE'S NOT A LOT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT'

That would be bad marketing for just about everyone. I only really found out how far the difference went a few years ago, and considering it was still up to the GC and PS2 era when they started giving the option for 60hz which a lot of people still couldn't do, most people weren't aware. Most people still aren't aware. Most people don't actually care when they don't know.

>>1795868
The bottom one seems more natural...