I just bought a PAL version of Little Samson today for $200. It plays great. It’s just the music that’s sped up a bit. It’s kind of annoying but better than throwing down $1300 for the North American version. Great vid
Because pal consoles run at 50Hz, not 60, a lot of games had their music (and sometimes gameplay) sped up to compensate (others were left alone, and the music seems slow on them). So you don't have to worry about anything overheating, you're just hearing a version of the sound sped up to compensate for slower games.
Battletoads freaked out because it has been pal optimized. pal has more vertical pixels so the pal version has the life bar utilizing these pixels. ntsc just crops them out. Us Brits have the opposite problem. when I put a ntsc or unoptimized pal game in, it runs slower than it would on a ntsc system and there is a black line at the top and bottom. Don't use European games made by European developers in ntsc systems. Otherwise, you're fine
Battletoads is a particularly interesting one because Rare are - or were - a Brit development team, so it probably would have been designed to be a PAL game from the get-go. This probably contributes to why it's a relatively glitchy mess, because NTSC to PAL is relatively common and easy, but converting the other way is kinda unusual. The reason PAL systems are usually clocked slower because they have to draw more lines, and I'd be guessing those extra lines are probably the cause of your graphic corruption.
Could be the cause of your slowdown too. 60hz NES reaches bottom of the screen. Loops back to top. Software keeps drawing, then once its finished drawing the PAL screen, waits for the next vsync?
PAL NESes run at 50Hz, which resulted in games running slower and having borders. So some publishers tried to be cool and speed up the game so that it plays the same speed as NTSC. But you'd still get the borders on a PAL game because the TV aspect ratio is different.
These days the frequencies aren't a problem anymore, so regional locking is purely from a marketing point of view (to stop importing, don't ask me why...). Back in those days, some games were actually modified from 60hz to 50hz. Playing those games on 60hz again is the same as overclocking the 60hz games to 72hz (120% play speed). Other games WEREN'T modified, and ran slower than they should on a PAL NES. If you play those on a 60hz NES, they'd play normally again.
I'm from Sweden and I had to use PAL versions on PAL systems, but I didn't realize how slow they were compared to the NTSC versions until I started playing on emulators. I mean they aren't super-slow or anything, but they definitely feel slow compared to their NTSC counterparts. Playing on NTSC nowadays feels really relieving in a way, since everything flows much faster and smoother.
Själv köper jag bara PAL spel jag vet är helt o-optimerade. Så jag kan sätta in dem i min A/V moddade Famicom utan några som helst problem :) Annars försöker jag hålla mig till NTSC så gott det går, då det är extremt mycket billigare än PAL spel.
I suppose it makes sense that the games' music is faster on an NTSC machine. The music would have been a bit slow normally so they were probably sped up to compensate for the slower overall speed when playing on a PAL machine. However some developers didn't bother. Thats why Sonic 1 on a PAL Megadrive has slower music but luckily Sonic 2 onwards all had tweaked music.
I only have a few PAL games, abut they are exceptions. Dragon's Lair is far more playable (much less slowdown) in the Japanese and PAL versions than in the US version, but that was because they switched from CHR-RAM in the US original to CHR-ROM in the later other two versions. The PAL version feels like an unoptimized port of the Famicom version. (which actually makes it the ideal version to play on a capable NTSC console, given the price of the FC cart) The other game I have is more surprising. Rainbow Islands. Ocean's PAL version is actually a different port than Taito's NTSC versions. Oddly at least the map screen in the PAL version sounds more correct on my NTSC toploader. Almost makes me wonder if maybe Ocean intended to release their version in the US but instead we got Taito's version. And shockingly at a quick glance it seems like Ocean ported it better than Taito (at Taito's own game :D ). Super Mario Bros. is sped up in the PAL version because it was Nintendo's attempt to compensate for the PAL slowdown. But using an emulator to check, it feels they over-compensated making it still play faster than the NTSC version even when it's running at the correct speed.
I first noticed the overcompensated music speed in the Trolls in Crazyland! I'm guessing it was easier to program a different speed ratio than the actual 5/6 difference.
i know that if you go and watch a video of sonic 1 thats PAL youll notice that the whole game runs slightly slower then its NTSC counterpart, so that makes me wonder if the PAL version of some of these games were Optimized to run on that kind of signal. therefore they are running faster due to the refresh rate difference. im sure that games like batman and starwars where just shipped over and no kind of optimization was done to them, and because of that im sure the game would run really slow.
The Mario games I think were all edited somewhat for PAL. SMB has Fast music, Mario can run as fast as the NTSC version or maybe faster but his jumping is slow and the SFX also sound slow. SMB2 has normal music most parts but some are slightly slower, SFX are slower, and the jumping is slower but running is normal. SMB3 has Slightly fast and slightly slower music at different parts but some SFX are low pitch and or slow. Mario's Actions are slow but his running is normal.
I have similar problems playing NTSC games on my PAL Atari 7800. Some don't work at all, and others play at super speed. The Sega Master System handled this differently - it would naturally be able to run games from Europe or the US, but the speed the game would run at (regardless of region) was determined by which region system it was in.
dunno if someone already said it.... but the answer is really simple. NTSC runs in 60hz, while PAL goes 50.. that made the sound effects aswell as the gameplay on the pal machines be really slow so they cranked up the audio speed to make it sound like it does on ntsc... And when you pop it in your NTSC machine it gets even faster cous now the speed is "normal" They only did this on some games tho... The other effects i have no explanation for :D
Here the reason for the speedup. The power in Europe runs at 50Hz, but PAL draws progressively with one single pass at half that speed, 25fps. While power in USA runs at 60HZ, NTSC run also at half the frequency, 30fps, but it's interlaced so it does 2 passes to draw a single frame, so the speedup is actually 60/25=2.4 times faster.
Its the same for Mega Drive and SNES. Funny thing is, some companies wanted to get their PAL versions close to the 60 Hz feeling and fiddled with the timing. However, the companies that did a piss-poor job and didn't modify their games (like PAL Sonic 1) can be easiley fixed with a 60 Hz mod on your machine or by running on a NTSC system. Same goes for NES, you need to find the games that are not modified for good PAL results, they will play fine on your NTSC machine like the actual 60hz version
Ive recently come across exactly the same problem. I live in the uk, I ended up importing an ntsc nes clone. Something weird i discovered is that Pal Castlevania runs slow on a pal machine anyways. popped it into my ntsc clone and it runs at the speed you guys get it at. weird.
That's debatable. In some cases, I doubt you'd get a picture Luke, but I think it's more on console and input. On my old TV, I couldn't play my Wii NTSC games in colour through scart, however I could play my NTSC games on my Megadrive through co-axial, and my NTSC SNES games through co-axial and scart (albeit 50Hz). For the reverse, you might not get a picture at all, or if you do it could be very messy.
i was just reading up and that and it turns out you cant, there is a mod for the snes but not the nes, since the PPU picture processing unit is a completely different chip there is no way to over clock it or under clock it, unfortunately you might have to get a pal nes, to play pal games without glitching. ill pm you a link to a form with all the information, i found it really educational on this subject. thanks.
Retro gaming is full of frustration in the PAL regions, or at least with systems that connect to your TV Handheld games and computers such as the Commondore 64 and Amiga all work fine as far as I know
Better developers actually optimised the game for 50hz so it was still the same speed with less frames. So when they are run in 60hz (10 frames a second faster) they seem speeded up. So in fact the games that work for you are the games that were lazily ported to PAL.
Strangely enough, Ufouria used the PAL version on the Virtual console even in the US with NTSC emulations, resulting in faster audio, this is because that game never reached America.
I got some PAL Sega Saturn games from Australia, Panzer Dragoon and Exhumed. Exhumed works just fine, but there are some problems with Panzer Dragoon. The health bar is missing and for some reason you only get one life, even on easy mode. Other than that the game is very playable. Like many other people said here, you're problems come from differences between PAL and NTSC. If you really want to play those PAL games properly, you'll need a 60mhz/50mhz switch installed, or possibly a famiclone.
On some PAL games such as Punch Out and Kid Icurus that I've downloaded onto my brother's Wii, the music is actually a semitone lower than the US/NTSC versions, this is not an issue with the Wii, a friend of mine who owns a NES has recently commented on it to. Quite strange that in your case the PAL music is faster.
there´s always a problem on playing pal on ntsc on every console, what happen is some sound problems, half screen displayed, black and white screen and so many other things. NTSC rules!
Weird how it's not consistant with what it does exactly. Now I need to try who NTSC games do on a PAL machine haha. Going to test that out for sure in a bit.
Batman and starwars arenn't "pal optimized" its plays at full speed on an ntcs machine, but it would be slow on a pal machine. Devil world is the same way.
I guessing the reason Batman Return of the Joker runs fine is because it, as with a fair amount of Sunsoft games, contains a custom chip in the cartridge that handles most of the music and graphics (the parallax scrolling in the background is a giveaway).
that might have been the case back in the days when the consoles originally were released. Most TVs manufactured in the last 10 years or so should have no problem with both formats.
The only main issues i've seen using some NTSC on my PAL system, was some timing issues on poorly coded games. Some games use tricks to align certain sprites or the scoreboard on the screen.. and if it's not properly coded (like to be triggered on the scanline) it will mess up and you'll see your scoreboard in a weird place, or moving with the background.. or not rendering at all. Not to mention most "3d" race games seem to just mess up.. badly.
You'd be surprised but that's not just the reason why multi-system TVs were invented, it was to also offset the resolution and colour depth that NTSC could not handle. American TV's of old had tint controls at the front to normalise colours between different channels as its signal processing was non-existent. PAL is also closest to the natural framerate, whereas NTSC is a bit far off. It's common knowledge that old games were converted poorly, and lazily, between NTSC and PAL. Not the case now!
Then, my theory was right! :) The reason why I asked, that somebody wanted to import Asterix for the NES, even though he knew that the game is unplayable on NTSC console. Also, with a PAL NES you need to use a Sega Master System II powersupply? I use that to run my Famicom here in Hungary, so I was thinking about, should it work in the other way around: PAL NES + NTSC TV w/ Sega powersupply. I heard rumors that you can't use NTSC poweradapter on PAL system, since it will burn out the system! :S
Woah that's a little messed up! :D I've never understood the whole 50/60 mess :P PAL TV's run 50Hz 576i and NTSC 60Hz 480i. Were developers just too lazy back then, could they not be bothered to properly optimise games for PAL? xD Hell, if games were fully optimised for PAL they would look a lot better than NTSC, 576i FTW! TV's should have used one standard from the start, why did regions take different standards? Why not 567i 60Hz everywhere. Meh now i'm just rambling haha Great video 5/5
PAL games are a friggin pain because of this shit So many games aren't modified for 50hz speed, so they'll run slower than they should on actual PAL hardware because game companies didn't give a crap about Europe And Europe had to put up with this crap up until the PS2, believe it or not!
Oh cool well there is 2 different types of PAL. One plays at 50hz the other plays at 60hz. So that explains that. Maybe you should start a database of PAL games that will work at 60hz. In your description you say "mhz". I know it is a simple error but man could you imagine a 50mhz NES lol. That would have been awesome.
I just purchased an NTSC copy of Double Dragon and it runs slightly slower on my PAL Nes but it also flickers when you walk to the next screen, while not totally unplayable it's a little bit of a pain.
NEED HELP with this one: I live in europe and therefor i use the NES 220v AC9v power supply. But recently i bought an NTSC NES and i was worried if the european power supply is too much for the console to handle. It works perfectly with the 220v adapter but, here is my question: Will it damage the console if it's turned on constantly , over the longer period of time, like for hours?
Mathematically, they should be running at 60/50 = 6/5 = 1.2x normal speed. Good thing you had a modern monitor. Analogue NTSC TVs displaying PAL of the time had anything from screen rolling, to no colour, to messed up colours to part of the screen not being visible, to any combo of these, maybe other weird behaviour, too. I'd imagine that attempting to play a PAL VHS tape in an NTSC VCR will not work as sync would be totally screwed. I know one can record on any type of VHS blank in any VCR but one can not mix formats on one tape, so the best way to go would be NTSC blank tapes on a PAL VCR, where you would get extra time as PAL VCRs ran at 5/6 the speed of NTSC units.
Ivy A Nguyen VCRs and game consoles are two different systems. Game consoles must run at a certain constant framerate determined the system itself. VCRs simply spit out the image using a read head and run it to the TV at 50 or 60hz. Tape density is the same due to lower density of color values on NTSC but more frames. The reason PAL and NTSC tapes aren't interchangeable is to do with color variables and the inability to be processed on different standards (PAL 60hz and a small amount of American VCRs are a exemption from this rule.) Thanks to listening to my long winded speech about fucking framerates.
The Batman music was also running way too fast :/ The sad thing is, I think basically everything that was running at the correct speed on the NTSC machine would have ran at thw wrong speed on a PAL machine. Shadow Warrior/Ninja Gaiden would have had the right music but the gameplay would be too slow etc... I'm guessing the Battletoads was a pretty good PAL port which unlike most games had it's screen resolution corrected for PAL, hence the broken HUD when played on NTSC, and had its gameplay speed corrected, hence the broken gameplay speed. The rest of the games probably would have ran too slow, black borders and with the wrong aspect ratio. PAL world really got the short end of the stick :(
I hate it how they screwed up PAL games in the 8 and 16 bit era. Super Mario Bros had too fast music, Donkey Kong Classics had too slow music and Sonic 1 for the Mega drive too. Even Sonic 1 on the Sonic Mega Collection for the gamecube has slow music, really annoying.
For a long ass time developers would do lazy pal conversions, meaning borders and 17.5% slower gameplay. Super Mario Kart was really different as a result. It went on right up to around Mario 64, but most companies did proper conversions. UK developers would normally do proper conversions, Donkey Kong Country on Pal Snes being a good example. Pal in theory is a lot higher picture quality than NTSC, but in gaming it didn't always turn out that way. Although UK TV picture is better than US.
Oh, you got the purple screen instead of the grey one! I thought it was just my messed up modded unit that did that. Does all american consoles get that? Anyway, weird to see that stuff! Only thing I've noticed is some minor slowdowns in music, but that was some seriously weird stuff! Interesting to say the least! Gotta watch this more closely when I get home from work!
i have a mini issue with the sound on my NES, even being the game and the console on PAL the sound on Mario bros, seems a little bit speedy... i don't know if i have listened the wrong version as usual or it's a problem of the console... not super speed like yours but 0.5x at mine
my smb3 pal glitches sometimes on pal system so it's games fault not consoles or regions, but can you help me in that when i play some game on nes it sometimes flats the screen half to top
It's because PAL runs at something like 54Hz and NTSC runs at 60Hz, and since NES games are single threaded, and what's more, audio and animations are run off of frames instead of some other clock source, games not built specifically for the console (PAL vs NTSC) you're playing on will run differently. NTSC games on PAL will run much slower. PAL games on NTSC will run much faster. It shouldn't affect your consoles at all nor should they damage your system/TV. It's just the way the technologies diverged (I'm sure there's an explanation as to why PAL vs NTSC developed differently), and the fact NES games rely on frame-rate to time games - including audio.
Ok, HUGE question. I have 2 PAL B games. Both are in excellent condition, both have a copyright release of 1994. One is The Smurfs, and the other is Aladdin. Smurfs will work on my NES top loader, but Aladdin won't start gameplay. The title appears, but locks up as soon as I press start, HELP!!!! I want to play this game SOO badly!
Since the US version of Battletoads has a 2 player glitch not present in the PAL and Japanese versions, if I were US resident, I'd just get the Japanese version and play it on my US NES via an adaptor. Or just stick to the Genesis and Game Gear versions of the game.
I should've bought it when I could get it cheap, but by the time I considered it, it was hard to find under $80. Too much to pay for a game I already owned on NES. Oh well, at least I got several good exclusives in that time.
I would like to know this as well. i live in europe and have a pal nes. and i was wondering if i should keep investing in pal games to play or just try and switch to ntsc
I got Mega Man for PAL NES and the console and the game is way slower than it should be. It really sucks, but it saves me the trouble of buying any more PAL games :( The really weird thing is that the Virtual Console Mega Man has the exact same problem! How easy would it not be for them to at least fix the damned VC version so it plays as fast as it should do!
Batman plays fine o your system because it wasn't PAL optimized, in other words, the PAL version wasn't modified in any way apart from the region lock out. That also means that Europeans played that game painfully slow...
i have 2 ntsc games for my NES, they work fine, no problems or glitches at all....its really weird that PAL games dont work on an NTSC system, but NTSC games work fine on a PAL system...
you really need an NTSC copy of Battletoads because my uncle Scott's NES never had that game glitch on him and it played an normal speed which was awesome even though that cartride my uncle Scott had was an NTSC copy but that game is harder than a rock so beware of extreme difficulty because level 3 is the hardest level in the game
Wow I really stuffed that double post up. Sorry about that. The first post starts with "Basically" and the secone starts with "Better" so read them in that order :P
this issue is not even that simple, eg. There are A and B versions of some games. Generally the A version is unoptimised and B version is. Super Mario bros is a good example. Original black label cart runs slow as hell in pal. "B" version which I have (on a mario\tetris\world cup cart) runs slightly faster than NTSC speed.
"A" and "B" are license variations due to Nintendo splitting ownership of the PAL NES with Mattel, each company getting certain countries to sell it in.
Dude, that throat sounds rough still. I hope that you're getting enough rest these days. Maybe you should stay away from the green Pepsi. :) As someone earlier mentioned, when you play the 60hz version of Sonic The Hedgehog on a 50hz system, it sounds like the game is running in slow motion! Sonic the Slowhog indeed. Why couldn't publishers try harder for 50/60hz compatibility! Oh wait, that was brought up earlier too. Awesome vid. STAY AWESOME dude!
hmm, I am sorry for you man... I have the PAL NES from Mattel and I deactiveted the regional lockout chip that made a difference between pal A and pal B. I know, it sounds strange, but from the same moment on my NES was even reading NTSC Games without any problems... If shipping wouldnt be that expensive I would organise you a european one - GRRRR
The Games that work fine are the ones not optimized for PAL, ie they are the same on a NTSC. They would work slow on a PAL. The ones that glitch have been optimized for PAL it seems, so they are actually the good ones because they don't work, if you get me. Just not for you.
I just bought a PAL version of Little Samson today for $200.
It plays great. It’s just the music that’s sped up a bit. It’s kind of annoying but better than throwing down $1300 for the North American version. Great vid
Because pal consoles run at 50Hz, not 60, a lot of games had their music (and sometimes gameplay) sped up to compensate (others were left alone, and the music seems slow on them). So you don't have to worry about anything overheating, you're just hearing a version of the sound sped up to compensate for slower games.
Battletoads freaked out because it has been pal optimized. pal has more vertical pixels so the pal version has the life bar utilizing these pixels. ntsc just crops them out. Us Brits have the opposite problem. when I put a ntsc or unoptimized pal game in, it runs slower than it would on a ntsc system and there is a black line at the top and bottom. Don't use European games made by European developers in ntsc systems. Otherwise, you're fine
+The Mighty Megalink PAL games runs slower than NTSC, which makes the NES to screw up. doesnt matter if you use the top loader if its not a PAL one.
Battletoads is a particularly interesting one because Rare are - or were - a Brit development team, so it probably would have been designed to be a PAL game from the get-go.
This probably contributes to why it's a relatively glitchy mess, because NTSC to PAL is relatively common and easy, but converting the other way is kinda unusual.
The reason PAL systems are usually clocked slower because they have to draw more lines, and I'd be guessing those extra lines are probably the cause of your graphic corruption.
Could be the cause of your slowdown too. 60hz NES reaches bottom of the screen. Loops back to top. Software keeps drawing, then once its finished drawing the PAL screen, waits for the next vsync?
You would think so, but release timelines tend to indicate that British developers often start with the American NTSC version!
PAL NESes run at 50Hz, which resulted in games running slower and having borders.
So some publishers tried to be cool and speed up the game so that it plays the same speed as NTSC.
But you'd still get the borders on a PAL game because the TV aspect ratio is different.
These days the frequencies aren't a problem anymore, so regional locking is purely from a marketing point of view (to stop importing, don't ask me why...).
Back in those days, some games were actually modified from 60hz to 50hz. Playing those games on 60hz again is the same as overclocking the 60hz games to 72hz (120% play speed).
Other games WEREN'T modified, and ran slower than they should on a PAL NES. If you play those on a 60hz NES, they'd play normally again.
I'm from Sweden and I had to use PAL versions on PAL systems, but I didn't realize how slow they were compared to the NTSC versions until I started playing on emulators.
I mean they aren't super-slow or anything, but they definitely feel slow compared to their NTSC counterparts.
Playing on NTSC nowadays feels really relieving in a way, since everything flows much faster and smoother.
Själv köper jag bara PAL spel jag vet är helt o-optimerade. Så jag kan sätta in dem i min A/V moddade Famicom utan några som helst problem :)
Annars försöker jag hålla mig till NTSC så gott det går, då det är extremt mycket billigare än PAL spel.
I suppose it makes sense that the games' music is faster on an NTSC machine. The music would have been a bit slow normally so they were probably sped up to compensate for the slower overall speed when playing on a PAL machine. However some developers didn't bother. Thats why Sonic 1 on a PAL Megadrive has slower music but luckily Sonic 2 onwards all had tweaked music.
I came here after finding out 9 of the 20 games on the PlayStation Classic use PAL versions instead of NTSC.
I only have a few PAL games, abut they are exceptions. Dragon's Lair is far more playable (much less slowdown) in the Japanese and PAL versions than in the US version, but that was because they switched from CHR-RAM in the US original to CHR-ROM in the later other two versions. The PAL version feels like an unoptimized port of the Famicom version. (which actually makes it the ideal version to play on a capable NTSC console, given the price of the FC cart)
The other game I have is more surprising. Rainbow Islands. Ocean's PAL version is actually a different port than Taito's NTSC versions. Oddly at least the map screen in the PAL version sounds more correct on my NTSC toploader. Almost makes me wonder if maybe Ocean intended to release their version in the US but instead we got Taito's version. And shockingly at a quick glance it seems like Ocean ported it better than Taito (at Taito's own game :D ).
Super Mario Bros. is sped up in the PAL version because it was Nintendo's attempt to compensate for the PAL slowdown. But using an emulator to check, it feels they over-compensated making it still play faster than the NTSC version even when it's running at the correct speed.
I first noticed the overcompensated music speed in the Trolls in Crazyland! I'm guessing it was easier to program a different speed ratio than the actual 5/6 difference.
i know that if you go and watch a video of sonic 1 thats PAL youll notice that the whole game runs slightly slower then its NTSC counterpart, so that makes me wonder if the PAL version of some of these games were Optimized to run on that kind of signal. therefore they are running faster due to the refresh rate difference. im sure that games like batman and starwars where just shipped over and no kind of optimization was done to them, and because of that im sure the game would run really slow.
Do more videos on this, the speedrunning community needs to knoiw which games go faster and which who goes slower.
i'd actually like hearing that mario brothers at that speed lol
Tim
The Mario games I think were all edited somewhat for PAL. SMB has Fast music, Mario can run as fast as the NTSC version or maybe faster but his jumping is slow and the SFX also sound slow. SMB2 has normal music most parts but some are slightly slower, SFX are slower, and the jumping is slower but running is normal. SMB3 has Slightly fast and slightly slower music at different parts but some SFX are low pitch and or slow. Mario's Actions are slow but his running is normal.
That music sounds crazy. Great video!
Dude! You need to record the music from Speedy Mario. It's SO AWESOME!
I have similar problems playing NTSC games on my PAL Atari 7800. Some don't work at all, and others play at super speed. The Sega Master System handled this differently - it would naturally be able to run games from Europe or the US, but the speed the game would run at (regardless of region) was determined by which region system it was in.
dunno if someone already said it.... but the answer is really simple.
NTSC runs in 60hz, while PAL goes 50..
that made the sound effects aswell as the gameplay on the pal machines be really slow so they cranked up the audio speed to make it sound like it does on ntsc...
And when you pop it in your NTSC machine it gets even faster cous now the speed is "normal"
They only did this on some games tho...
The other effects i have no explanation for :D
Here the reason for the speedup. The power in Europe runs at 50Hz, but PAL draws progressively with one single pass at half that speed, 25fps. While power in USA runs at 60HZ, NTSC run also at half the frequency, 30fps, but it's interlaced so it does 2 passes to draw a single frame, so the speedup is actually 60/25=2.4 times faster.
Its the same for Mega Drive and SNES. Funny thing is, some companies wanted to get their PAL versions close to the 60 Hz feeling and fiddled with the timing. However, the companies that did a piss-poor job and didn't modify their games (like PAL Sonic 1) can be easiley fixed with a 60 Hz mod on your machine or by running on a NTSC system. Same goes for NES, you need to find the games that are not modified for good PAL results, they will play fine on your NTSC machine like the actual 60hz version
Ninja Gaiden was kind of like a ninja version of Castlevania
Listen to that out-of-tune PCM bass in the Batman game! That's the one sound channel that doesn't get lowered in pitch by the PAL NES.
Ive recently come across exactly the same problem. I live in the uk, I ended up importing an ntsc nes clone. Something weird i discovered is that Pal Castlevania runs slow on a pal machine anyways. popped it into my ntsc clone and it runs at the speed you guys get it at. weird.
That's debatable. In some cases, I doubt you'd get a picture Luke, but I think it's more on console and input. On my old TV, I couldn't play my Wii NTSC games in colour through scart, however I could play my NTSC games on my Megadrive through co-axial, and my NTSC SNES games through co-axial and scart (albeit 50Hz). For the reverse, you might not get a picture at all, or if you do it could be very messy.
i was just reading up and that and it turns out you cant, there is a mod for the snes but not the nes, since the PPU picture processing unit is a completely different chip there is no way to over clock it or under clock it, unfortunately you might have to get a pal nes, to play pal games without glitching. ill pm you a link to a form with all the information, i found it really educational on this subject. thanks.
Retro gaming is full of frustration in the PAL regions, or at least with systems that connect to your TV
Handheld games and computers such as the Commondore 64 and Amiga all work fine as far as I know
Better developers actually optimised the game for 50hz so it was still the same speed with less frames. So when they are run in 60hz (10 frames a second faster) they seem speeded up. So in fact the games that work for you are the games that were lazily ported to PAL.
Strangely enough, Ufouria used the PAL version on the Virtual console even in the US with NTSC emulations, resulting in faster audio, this is because that game never reached America.
Yup, they had to give us a version with English text without doing a bunch of mods!
I got some PAL Sega Saturn games from Australia, Panzer Dragoon and Exhumed. Exhumed works just fine, but there are some problems with Panzer Dragoon. The health bar is missing and for some reason you only get one life, even on easy mode. Other than that the game is very playable.
Like many other people said here, you're problems come from differences between PAL and NTSC. If you really want to play those PAL games properly, you'll need a 60mhz/50mhz switch installed, or possibly a famiclone.
good info luke, thanks
Very Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Playing NTSC games on a Pal NES slows it down very much. :(
I remember playing Asterix (PAL only) on a NTSC console, and what I could advise... NEVER EVER TRY IT. You'll get a seizure instead (litterally).
On some PAL games such as Punch Out and Kid Icurus that I've downloaded onto my brother's Wii, the music is actually a semitone lower than the US/NTSC versions, this is not an issue with the Wii, a friend of mine who owns a NES has recently commented on it to. Quite strange that in your case the PAL music is faster.
8:28 Luke... Please... *STOP SMOKING ON those dark Mario shrooms!!!*
Shoot, running Battletoad that slowly would make the driving section soooo much easier.
LOL! luke! over clocked mario and over clocked ninja gaidan/ shadow warriors. it sounds funny! too bad on BT tho, very awesome game, and very hard!
there´s always a problem on playing pal on ntsc on every console, what happen is some sound problems, half screen displayed, black and white screen and so many other things.
NTSC rules!
Just hearing... WTF is up with the DPCM samples in the PAL Ninja Gaiden?
Weird how it's not consistant with what it does exactly. Now I need to try who NTSC games do on a PAL machine haha. Going to test that out for sure in a bit.
Well hey, you got the easy version of Battletoads now, and be the first person in history to actually be able to complete the game. :D
Ducktales the Moon Pal on an NTSC NES Sounds even better cuz it don't sound overclocked.
Batman and starwars arenn't "pal optimized" its plays at full speed on an ntcs machine, but it would be slow on a pal machine. Devil world is the same way.
I guessing the reason Batman Return of the Joker runs fine is because it, as with a fair amount of Sunsoft games, contains a custom chip in the cartridge that handles most of the music and graphics (the parallax scrolling in the background is a giveaway).
that might have been the case back in the days when the consoles originally were released. Most TVs manufactured in the last 10 years or so should have no problem with both formats.
epic ninja gaiden music
The only main issues i've seen using some NTSC on my PAL system, was some timing issues on poorly coded games. Some games use tricks to align certain sprites or the scoreboard on the screen.. and if it's not properly coded (like to be triggered on the scanline) it will mess up and you'll see your scoreboard in a weird place, or moving with the background.. or not rendering at all. Not to mention most "3d" race games seem to just mess up.. badly.
amazing lesson
You'd be surprised but that's not just the reason why multi-system TVs were invented, it was to also offset the resolution and colour depth that NTSC could not handle. American TV's of old had tint controls at the front to normalise colours between different channels as its signal processing was non-existent. PAL is also closest to the natural framerate, whereas NTSC is a bit far off.
It's common knowledge that old games were converted poorly, and lazily, between NTSC and PAL. Not the case now!
Then, my theory was right! :) The reason why I asked, that somebody wanted to import Asterix for the NES, even though he knew that the game is unplayable on NTSC console. Also, with a PAL NES you need to use a Sega Master System II powersupply? I use that to run my Famicom here in Hungary, so I was thinking about, should it work in the other way around: PAL NES + NTSC TV w/ Sega powersupply. I heard rumors that you can't use NTSC poweradapter on PAL system, since it will burn out the system! :S
Woah that's a little messed up! :D
I've never understood the whole 50/60 mess :P PAL TV's run 50Hz 576i and NTSC 60Hz 480i.
Were developers just too lazy back then, could they not be bothered to properly optimise games for PAL? xD Hell, if games were fully optimised for PAL they would look a lot better than NTSC, 576i FTW!
TV's should have used one standard from the start, why did regions take different standards? Why not 567i 60Hz everywhere. Meh now i'm just rambling haha
Great video 5/5
Well, the NES only produces 240 lines either way, so a PAL NES just ends up squishing and letterboxing the picture from what I've seen.
PAL games are a friggin pain because of this shit
So many games aren't modified for 50hz speed, so they'll run slower than they should on actual PAL hardware because game companies didn't give a crap about Europe
And Europe had to put up with this crap up until the PS2, believe it or not!
Oh cool well there is 2 different types of PAL. One plays at 50hz the other plays at 60hz. So that explains that. Maybe you should start a database of PAL games that will work at 60hz. In your description you say "mhz". I know it is a simple error but man could you imagine a 50mhz NES lol. That would have been awesome.
that top loader is a famicom i have one of those but they call it the nes 2 what is up with that???
those it play both kinds of games?
I have a moded PAL NES and I play NTSC games all the time I have never had a problem. you should try doing it the over way.
I have a bunch but only tested them on a NTSC system so far, but it is really werid that it works the other way around...
I just purchased an NTSC copy of Double Dragon and it runs slightly slower on my PAL Nes but it also flickers when you walk to the next screen, while not totally unplayable it's a little bit of a pain.
I was hoping you'd let the time run low on Super Mario so it would play even faster.
NEED HELP with this one:
I live in europe and therefor i use the NES 220v AC9v power supply. But recently i bought an NTSC NES and i was worried if the european power supply is too much for the console to handle. It works perfectly with the 220v adapter but, here is my question:
Will it damage the console if it's turned on constantly , over the longer period of time, like for hours?
Mathematically, they should be running at 60/50 = 6/5 = 1.2x normal speed. Good thing you had a modern monitor. Analogue NTSC TVs displaying PAL of the time had anything from screen rolling, to no colour, to messed up colours to part of the screen not being visible, to any combo of these, maybe other weird behaviour, too. I'd imagine that attempting to play a PAL VHS tape in an NTSC VCR will not work as sync would be totally screwed. I know one can record on any type of VHS blank in any VCR but one can not mix formats on one tape, so the best way to go would be NTSC blank tapes on a PAL VCR, where you would get extra time as PAL VCRs ran at 5/6 the speed of NTSC units.
Ivy A Nguyen VCRs and game consoles are two different systems. Game consoles must run at a certain constant framerate determined the system itself. VCRs simply spit out the image using a read head and run it to the TV at 50 or 60hz. Tape density is the same due to lower density of color values on NTSC but more frames. The reason PAL and NTSC tapes aren't interchangeable is to do with color variables and the inability to be processed on different standards (PAL 60hz and a small amount of American VCRs are a exemption from this rule.)
Thanks to listening to my long winded speech about fucking framerates.
The Batman music was also running way too fast :/
The sad thing is, I think basically everything that was running at the correct speed on the NTSC machine would have ran at thw wrong speed on a PAL machine. Shadow Warrior/Ninja Gaiden would have had the right music but the gameplay would be too slow etc... I'm guessing the Battletoads was a pretty good PAL port which unlike most games had it's screen resolution corrected for PAL, hence the broken HUD when played on NTSC, and had its gameplay speed corrected, hence the broken gameplay speed. The rest of the games probably would have ran too slow, black borders and with the wrong aspect ratio.
PAL world really got the short end of the stick :(
+Jan Johansson No NTSC game will run at correct speeds on PAL.
Josh Junon i know, that's not what I wrote
Jan Johansson I know, I was confirming what you said.
+Josh Junon oh, sorry
4yrs later.. it was worth reading down this far, thanks for this helpful post!
I hate it how they screwed up PAL games in the 8 and 16 bit era. Super Mario Bros had too fast music, Donkey Kong Classics had too slow music and Sonic 1 for the Mega drive too. Even Sonic 1 on the Sonic Mega Collection for the gamecube has slow music, really annoying.
For a long ass time developers would do lazy pal conversions, meaning borders and 17.5% slower gameplay. Super Mario Kart was really different as a result. It went on right up to around Mario 64, but most companies did proper conversions.
UK developers would normally do proper conversions, Donkey Kong Country on Pal Snes being a good example.
Pal in theory is a lot higher picture quality than NTSC, but in gaming it didn't always turn out that way.
Although UK TV picture is better than US.
if i can remember correctly, the famicom you played ninja gaiden on should be able to play any region. ive tried it and it works well.
Oh, you got the purple screen instead of the grey one! I thought it was just my messed up modded unit that did that. Does all american consoles get that?
Anyway, weird to see that stuff! Only thing I've noticed is some minor slowdowns in music, but that was some seriously weird stuff! Interesting to say the least! Gotta watch this more closely when I get home from work!
i have a mini issue with the sound on my NES, even being the game and the console on PAL the sound on Mario bros, seems a little bit speedy... i don't know if i have listened the wrong version as usual or it's a problem of the console... not super speed like yours but 0.5x at mine
i wanted to mean 1.5x
glad you liked the games man :D....sucks about the problems...at lest you have them for collection purposes :D
Do pal addams family cartridge work at NTSC American NES?
that was marios crystal meth days, a dark time for the guy
I have pal versions of Disney movies. My grandma bought them for us somewhere.
Oh man,
I just picked up a copy of Action in New York. The PAL version of S.C.A.T.
I hope it works okay.
Review Tech USA brought me here!!
Great video. Thanks for that!
my smb3 pal glitches sometimes on pal system so it's games fault not consoles or regions, but can you help me in that when i play some game on nes it sometimes flats the screen half to top
when i played PAL super mario on a NTSC nes, it sounded like it was on helium
It's because PAL runs at something like 54Hz and NTSC runs at 60Hz, and since NES games are single threaded, and what's more, audio and animations are run off of frames instead of some other clock source, games not built specifically for the console (PAL vs NTSC) you're playing on will run differently. NTSC games on PAL will run much slower. PAL games on NTSC will run much faster. It shouldn't affect your consoles at all nor should they damage your system/TV. It's just the way the technologies diverged (I'm sure there's an explanation as to why PAL vs NTSC developed differently), and the fact NES games rely on frame-rate to time games - including audio.
Ok, HUGE question. I have 2 PAL B games. Both are in excellent condition, both have a copyright release of 1994. One is The Smurfs, and the other is Aladdin. Smurfs will work on my NES top loader, but Aladdin won't start gameplay. The title appears, but locks up as soon as I press start, HELP!!!! I want to play this game SOO badly!
Unless if it's a model 2 NES.That plays everything.Including Famicom games if you have a adaptor.
Since the US version of Battletoads has a 2 player glitch not present in the PAL and Japanese versions, if I were US resident, I'd just get the Japanese version and play it on my US NES via an adaptor. Or just stick to the Genesis and Game Gear versions of the game.
Use an everdrive and play the Japanese rom on an NTSC system.
I should've bought it when I could get it cheap, but by the time I considered it, it was hard to find under $80. Too much to pay for a game I already owned on NES. Oh well, at least I got several good exclusives in that time.
I would like to know this as well. i live in europe and have a pal nes. and i was wondering if i should keep investing in pal games to play or just try and switch to ntsc
Dude all I'm going to say is welcome to our world!
I got Mega Man for PAL NES and the console and the game is way slower than it should be. It really sucks, but it saves me the trouble of buying any more PAL games :( The really weird thing is that the Virtual Console Mega Man has the exact same problem! How easy would it not be for them to at least fix the damned VC version so it plays as fast as it should do!
Batman plays fine o your system because it wasn't PAL optimized, in other words, the PAL version wasn't modified in any way apart from the region lock out. That also means that Europeans played that game painfully slow...
Actually, the speed doesn't feel that bad in Batman. Of course, it helps that the NES was competing with the likes of the C64 and ZX Spectrum.
TheTurnipKing it may have been slow but didnt FEEL slow, and most had no basis for comparison.
It wasnt Slow Batman. It was just Batman.
TheTurnipKing it may have been slow but didnt FEEL slow, and most had no basis for comparison.
It wasnt Slow Batman. It was just Batman.
i have 2 ntsc games for my NES, they work fine, no problems or glitches at all....its really weird that PAL games dont work on an NTSC system, but NTSC games work fine on a PAL system...
Why were there different standards anyways?
you really need an NTSC copy of Battletoads because my uncle Scott's NES never had that game glitch on him and it played an normal speed which was awesome even though that cartride my uncle Scott had was an NTSC copy but that game is harder than a rock so beware of extreme difficulty because level 3 is the hardest level in the game
What if we run ntsc games on a pal console (nes region free mod) ? Did they run correctly or not (slow or faster)
Wow I really stuffed that double post up. Sorry about that. The first post starts with "Basically" and the secone starts with "Better" so read them in that order :P
this issue is not even that simple, eg. There are A and B versions of some games. Generally the A version is unoptimised and B version is. Super Mario bros is a good example. Original black label cart runs slow as hell in pal. "B" version which I have (on a mario\tetris\world cup cart) runs slightly faster than NTSC speed.
"A" and "B" are license variations due to Nintendo splitting ownership of the PAL NES with Mattel, each company getting certain countries to sell it in.
thx, great info deep in this thread!!
What exactly do you mean by "modded". Chip? Have you disabled your lock out chip yet?
Dude, that throat sounds rough still. I hope that you're getting enough rest these days. Maybe you should stay away from the green Pepsi. :)
As someone earlier mentioned, when you play the 60hz version of Sonic The Hedgehog on a 50hz system, it sounds like the game is running in slow motion! Sonic the Slowhog indeed.
Why couldn't publishers try harder for 50/60hz compatibility! Oh wait, that was brought up earlier too.
Awesome vid. STAY AWESOME dude!
Rad Racer PAL cart doesnt work properly on an NTSC console either. Graphical glitches.
How do you play PAL nesgames on an ntsc nes?
hmm, I am sorry for you man... I have the PAL NES from Mattel and I deactiveted the regional lockout chip that made a difference between pal A and pal B. I know, it sounds strange, but from the same moment on my NES was even reading NTSC Games without any problems...
If shipping wouldnt be that expensive I would organise you a european one - GRRRR
so if i get my ntsc nes region free can i play my pal games full screen at 60 hz?
I must have an NTSC game in my NES, since the game itself runs at 2x speed
Do you know of a video that goes over the history of the two? I've been curious, but never enough before today.
how can u tell the difference between PAL and regular.? I never heard of PAL until recently.. is there a difference on the cart. picture.?
The Games that work fine are the ones not optimized for PAL, ie they are the same on a NTSC. They would work slow on a PAL. The ones that glitch have been optimized for PAL it seems, so they are actually the good ones because they don't work, if you get me. Just not for you.
@CollisionCat Well, up until halfway-through the PS2 then :P