/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5324685
This doesn't just apply to consoles but also home computers BTW.

PAL is literally the shittiest video standard meant to fit into a retrograde and pathetic electrical grid of mis-matched standards and has resulted in hundreds of millions of brain damaged stooges lacking the creative capacity to make good games. PAL has been the most destructive force for Europe right ahead of the migrant crisis.

Because the japs made the good games, and they used 60hz.
Their games had to be converted to run at 50hz for europe, which was sometimes not done well.

>>5324695
Not just Japs, but also North Americans at Atari, Activision(pre-2007 Activision mind you), Magnavox, LGS, old EA, and Irrational games.
Also, What about Factor 5 software from Europe?

>>5324694
>3:2 pulldown intensifies
>lack of vblank time intensifies
>lack of standard RGB intensifies

Don't use cute and dreamy girls like M. for your shitposting, thx.

Also this >>5324695, it's not really our fault.

PAL is taller and has more scanlines. PAL pixels are also square while NTSC pixels are rectangular. It's generally easier to code PAL games because the slower speed gives you more time to work with and there's not as many issues with graphics glitching due to you running out of raster time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1fC1ecUcew

Watch how often the score bar flickers. On PAL that wouldn't happen.

>>5324710
>lack of standard RGB intensifies

Australia is a PAL region and we never had any RGB connector on our TVs.

>>5324710
PAL has nothing to do with RGB dumb fuck PAL is a compressed video standard for broadcast. Europeans are so fucking stupid.

>>5324714
I'm so sorry for you, anon. I thought all PAL TVs were manufactured to be the same between yuros and aussies, my b.

>>5324715
He was talking shit about Europe in general, I wasn't particularly referring to OP's topic.

>>5324685
argentina was ntsc, that graph is wrong

Look, it's simple. In theory PAL wins because it has better colours and better resolution and is just a better standard overall, a slightly slower refresh rate is less important. HOWEVER in practice, for retro videogames, NTSC wins because PAL was continually shat on by the industry.

>>5324734
Who besides most people in the Americas and Japanese devs?

I never liked the huge borders on PAL C64s. The smaller border on NTSC machines looks better to me.

PAL60 exists so PAL wins by default. The fact it wasn't used until the Dreamcast is complete and utter retardation.

NTSC bleed is what allowed the Apple II to have color graphics in the 70s. Couldn't have been possible in Europe.

>>5324714
Prior to HDTVs, not even all European sets had RGB except in France where it was mandated by law.

>>5324685
I think PALfags are so assmad over that 10hz because so much of the good stuff in the world was designed for it and often doesn't work well with 50. It's hilarious because nearly every "PAL" TV made in your lifetime is multi system or at least NTSC playback and many of them had RGB. Even more hilarious because most of the asspained are bandwagoners who could have got an NTSC console easier and cheaper than their PALshit. I mean come on. If you spent all your allowance and countless hours scouring some third world shithole for old games only to learn later that you could have bought better stuff online for a fraction of the cost you'd have a serious case of butthurt as well.

>>5324834
Why no good NTSC demosceners? The demo community is like 90% Europeans.

>>5324770
Except PAL60 is a huge parroted meme, most people don't even know the actual specifications for it (and what tangible advantages you get from using it) or how many consoles/tv sets/recording hardware actually support it. Why doesn't someone make a proper comparison or informative video about it?

>>5324852
Not him but a meme in what sense? Do you mean the poor compatibility with TVs? When it works it's literally the best of the both worlds. My N64 outputs PAL60 with NTSC games, I'm not sure how it works since those games don't normally work thanks to region locking.

>>5324852
PAL60 isn't a meme. It's literally NTSC refresh/resolution with a PAL colour crystal. That's all it is.

First of all, video games are computer programs first and foremost. Speed trumps all. Sorry that you grew up with butchered games. All games (that anyone cares about, i.e. not faggy euroshit like Plok) are made with NTSC and composite displays in mind.

>>5324914
So why did Americans think CGA bleeps and bloops games were ok while Europeans had Turrican and Giana Sisters?

>>5324890
>My N64 outputs PAL60 with NTSC games

Like, how do you know it's PAL60 and not straight NTSC? You yourself say you have no idea how it works since it's not stated anywhere in the game/console. Maybe the console has two crystal oscillators like late model PS1s? Maybe it's outputting a garbage signal that your TV is autocorrecting? How do you personally know that PAL60 is inhenerently "the best of both worlds" when you don't have a NTSC shot from the same set to compare. Does it also preserve the extra resolution?

>>5324910
>PAL colour crystal

>>5324917
Behold the superiority of English composers
https://youtu.be/ZbhDiL2VoeE

>>5324928
These games slap
https://youtu.be/oUvzYqPztho

Sigh. I didn't want to do it, but I have to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5h1smUA4lQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaejwInoRPw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f8Oc1ANHAA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arLSgEmK6cw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cehaqXFCGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O6v5VNFCXc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B65t1VRGekw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apBUOVU2oZg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O3inzWEKyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcyPvbqHjrM

>>5324923
Not him but the PAL N64 only has a single crystal oscillator and I know this for a fact because I've got the right testing equipment. It's PAL in 50hz mode and PAL60 in 60hz mode because no matter the mode, the frequency of the colour crystal stays the same.

>>5324917
>forgetting about the Atari 8bit, Atari ST, Vic-20 and C64 NTSC game devs

>>5324923
I get a grayscale image if I choose NTSC colour on the TV, so it has to have PAL colour when choosing PAL just works. I've done comparisons with a Wii, those can do NTSC and PAL60. The difference is very clear, you won't get the rainbow effect and there's less blurring. It doens't preserve the extra resolution, it has the same number of scanlines as NTSC. If it kept the extra lines I'd imagine it would go too far off the specification.

>>5324936
Cringe

>>5324936
We've been over this and over this. Nobody played any of those games on PCs back then except for Arkanoid. You played Ultima and Space Quest on a PC, not fucking Paperboy.

>>5324936
No one will ever care about your furry shovelware box, guys.

>>5324943
>>5324937
So why not call it "bonkers PAL" instead of PAL60, because that's basically what we're arguing about. Post 2000 TVs enabled support for all kinds of fucked up shit including the functionality to manually switch encoding methods, so that's why you ain't seeing black and white pictures like people with ordinary TVs would.
My TV from 1996 can actually display 240p NTSC, but it gives up on 480i, there's a lot of arbitrary stuff from each manufacturer to keep in mind, with nothing set in stone.

>there's less blurring

I don't think blurring has anything to do with the color enconding, especially for a system which has blurring right from the source.

>>5324957
KEK
>A BLOO REEEEEEEEEE RAGE NOBODY CARES ABOUT [MACHINE I HATE]

>>5324937
Do you know why not all PAL60 is the same? Depending on the source it may or may not work.

>>5324964
It should always be the same, but some TVs just can't handle PAL60. Also contrary to what the above poster said, it wasn't a post-2000s thing. The first TVs with support for it came out in the early 90s.

Also people might be confused about what is actually being output. PS2 outputs NTSC, not PAL60 unless you use homebrew.

>>5324761
PAL C64 for comparison and it looks like the PSU ate his RAM.

>>5324961
>So why not call it "bonkers PAL" instead of PAL60
Might as well, but it's not like older TVs didn't support it. I used to have an 80's TV that displayed PAL60 just fine.
>blurring
The colour gets blurred, look at this image. There's a clear dithering pattern visible with PAL.

>>5324979
>It should always be the same
I would think so too, but sometimes different sources give different results. For example Wii might work, but N64 gives a double image.

>>5324979
>it wasn't a post-2000s thing

All I'm saying is that most post-2000s TV sets had all kinds of signal tracking/recognition to ensure the image was properly displayed, along with manual mode changes. To be honest, it should have been the standard by then, but it really wasn't. Some TVs can't handle PAL60 because it's a pretendo signal under any convention.

>PS2 outputs NTSC, not PAL60 unless you use homebrew

Which kind of homebrew are we talking about anon? The same kind of homebrew that states shit like 576p?

>>5324994
That's really cool, did you use two different consoles to achieve that?

I don't think the blur has anything to do with NTSC, in fact I don't even think it's blurred, but you just can't see the pattern really well because of the color banding caused by some factors like poor encoders (see the Genesis) or the rapidly moving water. I would really like to see what the bottom shot looks on any other TVs by our Amerifriends to see if it's consistent.

Speaking of which, do you have a refresh modded Mega Drive to see if your TV also goes to town with that?

>>5324994
>For example Wii might work, but N64 gives a double image.
It might be due to very slight variations to the colour crystal frequency on N64. Like some low decimal place variation to the MHz which some TVs are tolerant of and others aren't. N64 doesn't officially support PAL60 so I guess it's something Nintendo never bothered to fix.

>>5324997
>Which kind of homebrew are we talking about anon?
GS Mode Selector, you can choose between NTSC and PAL60 with it. PS2 flexibly changes between two colour frequencies.

>>5324734
Wouldn't say it was "shat" on, more like PAL developers didn't make anything good pre 32-bit.

>>5325019
>you can choose between NTSC and PAL60 with it.

Yes, I too love those sweet 50 refreshes per second that stupid nonsense option in deprecated GSM builds allows me to play with. I still love it because it can force 240p, but that PAL60 shit is complete nonsense, the games just play at 50Hz.

>>5325021
>Jet set Willy
>Farenheit 3000
>Giana Sisters
>both Turrican games

>>5325024
No they don’t. They actually play at 60hz, but optimisations to PAL versions might fuck shit up when ran at 60hz.

That being said, any PAL PS2 game with an official 60hz (NTSC) mode will run 100% perfectly when forced into PAL60 since nothing is different other than the colour crystal frequency.

>>5325014
It's emulated on Wii. The emulator has options for NTSC, PAL and PAL60. Makes it easy to get comparison shots like that.
>do you have a refresh modded Mega Drive to see if your TV also goes to town with that?
No, I don't.

>>5325025
All of those are trash though.

>>5325028
>It's emulated on Wii.

What a letdown, I genuinely thought you were displaying proper 60Hz on an European SNES. I figured it didn't look as "bad" as it's supposed to with all the dot crawl.

>>5325030
>t. has never played any of them.

>>5325027
>They actually play at 60hz

They don't on my end, and I'm using NTSC games. They just run slower than intended because that's what switching 50Hz does to the grand majority of 60Hz games. I tried this countless times because I was going to record it on DVD. Please provide proof that they do. What is your PS2 model?

>>5325038
I have. They're very mediocre clones of Japanese console games with terrible controls and very poor level designs+generic enemies.

>>5325040
What about The Turrican series and Dizzy?

>>5325039
Well, either you're doing something wrong or your GSM Selector version is broken. My PS2 model is SCPH-30002 and forcing PAL60 works perfectly. I can do it to a copy of PAL FFX and it runs at the proper 60hz speed and with smaller borders. Works perfectly for NTSC games over hard drive too.

>>5325043
Turrican was covered above. It is a mediocre Mega Man clone with bad controls and terrible level design far overrated by Lemon64 users.

>>5325052
>either you're doing something wrong or your GSM Selector version is broken

None of those. The PS2 I tried this on is a SCPH-30004 R so we're basically on the same page, except you come from Australia. How much you want to bet that's the reason why it fails to work on mine?

>>5325053
You clearly haven't played the TG-16, Sega Genesis, Atari ST or Amiga versions. Plus, there's an IBM PC version of the 2nd turrican.

>>5324685
Oh man, some extra colors. That will sure help with my gameplay, Sonic looks so vivid as he moves slow as a rock thanks to my retarded and awful standard, thank you Europe!

>>5325153
>Oh man, some extra colors
And a few more scanlines.
>Sonic looks so vivid as he moves slow as a rock
Cleaner graphics and less likely to glitch out though.

On a CRT display, PAL really really flickers. And that sucks.

PAL format has absolutely zero advantages over NTSC as far as system that fall under this board are concerned.
PROVE ME WRONG

>>5325183

>>5324706
That's why I have a hard time taking these guys seriously.

>>5324838
Because people in NTSC countries were actually playing games with their game machines.

>>5324838
Could be because most people in the US and Japan had jobs? I was with a few Amiga groups and only worked on a handful of demos because between work and other stuff I didn't have much time. But the guys in Europe on their 8th year at art school or 8th gap year had plenty of time.

>>5324852
Being a yuge parroted meme doesn't make it any less good. I can see why you want that video to tell you what the actual specs are. You sure looked like a fool when you lectured everyone about how they didn't know what they were talking about and they handed you your ass.

>>5325254
Euros had tech demos like Flimbo's Quest and DNA Warrior that vaguely resembled games.

>>5325256
btfo

>>5324838
PAL is slower, thus more time/cycles for demo effects. It's that simple.

>>5324685
>France Russia and west Africa use a weird format I've never heard of called SECAM
That's bizarre, anything notable about SECAM?

>>5325321
SECAM is crap, that was why France ended up legally mandating all TVs to carry a SCART input.

>>5325323
It sounds like it's just an inferior version of PAL anyway, right?

As far as games are concerned, speed trumps all.
More frames is more frames; to see, to process with; to react within. It's more responsive, as well as less painfully flickery on CRTs with desirably low persistence.
As for colors, RGB mods do exist. Fixing and removing distortions like that is much, much easier than retiming games entirely to work at a different rate.
>>5325168
>And a few more scanlines.
That very little games actually made use of, due to incompatibility with other regions making conversions difficult. It was much more common and easier just to leave those scanlines empty.

Regardless, I'm glad modern computers aren't limited by either ancient standard, and can adapt to both as necessary in many ways.

>>5325062
I somehow doubt there's something special about Australian PS2 consoles.

Virgin PAL vs Chad NTSC.
Both better than SECAM.

I always thought PAL slowdown was to express how europigs are so dumb. This thread shows I was right.

I thought NTSC had more htz, but I see what hurts more is having to defend shitty PAL.

>>5324794
Like where?

>>5324727
Argentina (and Paraguay and Uruguay) was PAL-N, no NTSC outside of imported stuff

NTSC was an absolutely awful broadcast standard with yellowy low res picture as the norm on TV. Literally the ONLY thing it was good for was it meant slightly faster frame rates in videogames made before the year 2000. That's it.

>>5324685
Pal ≠ 50hertz
NTSC ≠ 60hertz
PAL and NTSC are just video standard, and 50-60hertz electric standard.
In Europe Nikolas Tesla wanted 220v/60hertz, but Schneider Electric in Germany take 50hertz only by metric logic.
PAL is better, but majority of developpers are from NTSC region, so few have take the time to adapt theyre ntsc gamed for PAL consoles.

>>5325609
HAHA no

As a PC guy, I'm so glad I didn't have to bother with all this crap.
I used to connect my rig to my crt tv set back in the early 2000s for shits and giggles. I think it was a 480i svideo connection. Displayed everything without a hitch, no matter what the framerate. Didn't care if I emulated PAL games or NTSC games. So the tv sets are blameless.
Sounds to me like all this NTSC/PAL business is just a hardware problem for consoles and old micros. Why not switch to emulation?

>muh 10 more hz
NEVER THE SAME COLOR TWICE

>>5325904
We had this thing called picture adjustment. You unfortunately could not adjust Hz. :^)

>>5325904
This was only really a problem in the vacuum tube days.

>>5325781
Get a load of this kid

Brazil isn't PAL, it's NTSC 60.

T. Brazilian

>Brazil
>PAL
I never realized PAL even existed before emulation, it was weird as fuck playing some european SMS releases.

>>5325781
This has to be a joke.
There is no way anyone could be this dumb.

>>5324710
I'd rather have the 3:2 pulldown than sped up movies.

>>5326695
Brazil is PAL-M, uses the NTSC frame rate and frequencies but PAL colour encoding, so mostly had modified NTSC games/consoles.

Isn't Nippon half 60hz half 50hz? What happens if I use a NTSC TV in the 50 hz half?

>>5324685
PAL, as a video standard, is objectively better. Significantly better video quality, no dot crowl, colors don't need tuning, higher resolution, and movies can be transferred without ruining them with the telecine process (at the cost of 3% shorter running time).

For video games, it is only worse because most games were made in 60hz land. That and perhaps it is easier to steady a 1/3 frame time speed since 50/3 isn't an integer number, while 60/3 is. But if your game runs at 20fps then you have bigger problems. But, as you have less frames per second, you need less processing power, so you are more likely to get a stable framerate (it's why PAL games are less likely to have frame dropouts).

>>5326985
Not correct, PAL-M uses PAL colour encoding but with a frequency slightly lower than that of NTSC colour encoding. If memory serves, anyway.

>>5327718
That's the mains voltage, not the TV frequencies.

>>5327728
PAL does still produce dot crawl though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJGmxm2K4Qk

PAL is a newer video standard than NTSC and it was designed to correct certain problems with the former.

>>5324694
Hey, at least PAL/SECAM Europe was majority white.

>>5327747
PAL is to slow to crawl. It produces dot "glide". Named after the technical term for what you call a snails movement.

>>5327734
It's close enough to the same carrier, 3.576MHz vs 3.597MHz

>tfw in a more perfect world we'd have a worldwide 60 Hz (not 59.94) system with PAL's color-encoding scheme.

>>5328086
I'd rather have 120Hz for absolutely everything with fully accurate sRGB or better color, no lossy encoding whatsoever.

>>5324685
Okay then...

>>5325025
what a great list of well known and widely praised games. really helping your case with those blockbusters

>>5329692
Hello Mr. Sarcasm.

>Yuroniggers coping this hard
Sorry boys heh

>>5325331
Poorly converted PAL games had the exact same frames, the games just ran at 5/6ths the speed. So when the ntsc version displays frame 60, one second has passed, but on PAL you would be at 1.2 seconds for frame 60.

So PAL unequivocally sucked prior to 64/32 bit machines. With those machines, proper pal conversion was possible if the developer coded it. Many SNES titles also had some attempt to correct the speed, but they were usually not complete fixes. I am actually not sure what the deal was with the non-nintendo machines.

>>5330861
>i don't always bullshit but when i do i do it underage

>>5330861
eh? PAL didn't "unequivocally" suck prior to 32/64 bit machines. Many games were perfectly optimized for PAL, especially the good games.

>>5332719
Sonic the Hedgehog 1991.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aIq81Q6eKY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAHmU3bwX-0

Just for fun here's C64 Renegade. Top video is a real NTSC machine, bottom is emulated PAL. The game is definitely faster on NTSC and the music doesn't sound as twangy.

Also this would be the original PAL release of the game patched for NTSC. They did release Renegade in the US on disk format but it had a number of differences including no in-game music and not using the keyboard for controls.

>>5333734
>good

>>5325053
>Turrican was covered above. It is a mediocre Mega Man clone with bad controls and terrible level design far overrated by Lemon64 users.

I always thought of Turrican as a Metroid clone, myself. A Metroid clone with linear levels. But, I really liked Mega Turrican on the Sega Genesis, and the SNES Turrican games were pretty fun too. Though I also liked Turrican II on the Amiga. There is also a port of Turrican II on the Genesis/ Mega Drive, but it was turned into a licensed game for the JCVD movie; Universal Soldier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE2AYLPKcNk

I actually really liked this bastardized version. It still plays like Turrican II and is really smooth on the Genesis hardware. Plus this one has Van Damme as the player character, instead of whatever the name of the Turrican guy is.

>>5324685
The problem isn't PAL itself, the problem is games meant for NTSC not being optimized for PAL and running like shit accordingly.