And Blurrier as well due to the lack of progressive to the point a lot of games would cause us headaches and motion sickness :) If you have a modded American Xbox and are curious about how bad it is, try the Pal version of Azurik with Pal settings at 50hz (should work if you're plugged into a monitor) with composite cables.
There's technically 2 ways to do it, one is running the game at 17.5% slower than the original NTSC version. The other way, that allows music not to sound lower tempo was to run a algorhythm that removes 10 frames out of the 60 frames, so that you get 50 frames per second for 50hz. However, the issue with that trick was that you had to use more cartridge space to include that frame removal code, not to mention that games that run fast, such as Sonic, would look really choppy as it starts to skip frames that's not a true integer scale, so this frame removal code was only used in slower paced games such as RPGs (Phantasy Star is a good example) or games that need rhymic response such as the DDR-Dancing Stage franchise.
It's even more surprising by the 6th generation because most PAL TVs could do 60hz. Even in the 90s many PAL TVs could output PAL60. It really should have been an option. Also the frame rate issue was more because of how games were programed. You couldn't just drop frames if the system or refresh rate was too slow. Generally you had to show all 60 frames. Plus making it so it ran at 50fps would have been a huge ask for games because of that since all logic for most Japanese and American games relied on 60fps being hit
@@crestofhonor2349 yeah PAL 60 mode and raw NTSC support on my 2001 bought TV makes me wish console makers had chosen to just make one Western version of their consoles with an signal output toggle (either a physical button or in settings once we had console menus) to switch instead of everything before Dreamcast being trapt in slow motion Heck even then so many early PS2 games like Final Fantasy X or DMC1 didn't have 60hz support. I'd have gone back and bought so many old games on Megadrive and SNES that I missed when I was a kid if the local UK copies were not compromised with 50hz only
There is no PAL version of _Sonic the Hedgehog_ for Mega Drive-it's the same ROM used in the US, and that's specifically why it's slowed down like that. Had there been a PAL version that was properly programmed, there'd be no problem with speed (the image would still be squished, though).
I'd imagine the reason that Gamecube is used to record is because A) It's easy to emulate compared to the others so you can push those resolutions even higher. B) The Wii could also play Gamecube games and everyone owned a Wii whereas the original Xbox didn't sell nearly as well and the 360 has limited backwards compatibility. And C) There were a handful of titles that were only released on Gamecube and PS2 for whatever reason so maybe it was just a case of picking the Gamecube because it covered the most.
Remembering the enthusiasm towards the generational leap that the Dreamcast and PS2 brought, you tend to overlook how big a deal it was for European fans to start getting games at 60Hz. The GameCube felt incredibly smooth to me when I first played it, and it's probably because I had a childhood of slightly choppier, often slower, games before that.
@@C.I... Most PAL TVs by the late 90s to 2000s supported 60hz. This wasn't the 80s anymore. All they needed to do was provide a toggle to see if the image would display like with 480p when paired with the right cables
Finally getting to play Sonic games at full speed in the Sonic Mega collection was a godsend. Only for SEGA to later do the Sonic Gems collection with Sonic CD on it but not support 60hz. A friend at university sold his mega collection to buy gems and was hit with slow Green Hill Zone music and noticed immediately.
Now you gave me an excuse to softmod my Xbox. lol In a seriousness, I've been wanting to softmod it but every other guide is cumbersome. But yours is very clear and concise and it also shows that you don't need a game. So thanks for that, mate.
Re: Hot Take - GameCube was my favorite console of the generation! Despite my love for PS2, I loved my Cube a bit more. I think many others do as well.
I'm Australian, so I grew up with PAL games as well. And watching these videos my brain is going; 'Dear God? Was it always like this?' Although I had a modded ps1 and ps2. But I don't know if that made a difference.
RE the hot take, I bet it's people using Dolphin. More comprehensively stable emulation than PCSX2 and Xemu/CXBX. I guess as well, native HDMI is more readily available for GameCube through an adapter rather than a solder mod if we're taking original hardware captures. Love your content, Jon!
It's always funny seeing stuff like Sonic compared like that, with no internet or anything to compare it back in the day I didn't even know it was an issue.
i played it on one of those crappy mega drive clones and it ran even slower than that lmao, wasn’t until i got mega drive collection on my psp that i realised
It was until I was approaching my 40s that I noticed how slow sonic was in pal. I've been playing it on emulators through the years so never noticed until I got another mega drive recently and played sonic on it. I was like errrrrrrrr?
Nintendo (Retro) Consoles always have way more attention when it comes to emulation, hacking, homebrew and all that stuff. I suppose because many people in those communities grew up with their systems (not that other consoles have amazing communities too, these just tend to be smaller).
To answer the question at the end, I would honestly expect that the answer is that hardly anybody owns an Xbox at this point, whereas so much enthusiasm for the GameCube remains/Wiis are so common that it’s just the easy choice.
i know everyone loves to point at Sonic 1 but not all games were like that. Lots of PAL ports ran at the same speed as NTSC ones. sometimes theyd run at a higher res too. and thats ignoring games that were made for 50Hz first. sometimes it was the US that got games that ran too fast. not as common admittedly, because PAL devs actually tended to care, but it happened.
Love this, i literally dove deep into this rabbit hole when i got my og xbox a few days ago so the timing is great lol. You should talk about the 480i to 576i difference, we europeans were stuck with black borders around many of our games because instead of developers optimising our games to fill the extra pixels, they were like, have black borders instead lol. This sucks and games like devil may cry on ps2 looked especially bad like this, where the image was a tiny box in a black void.
It's worth noting that some PAL games will take issue with these changes. The only way I've found to fix these files is to replace the problem files (when the games installed) with their NTSC counterparts, or you can just get the whole NTSC copy obviously.
@@MrskipperCP That might be because some PAL games were optimised by the devs to compensate for the 50/60Hz issue, so forcing it will make the game run too fast. I know this was the case with certain PS1 games for example.
I grew up in Europe with an OG Xbox, while my neighbour friend had a PS2. We both had Burnout Revenge on our console, and all I know is, I always noticed that the graphics on the PS2 looked worse. Could be that the resolution itself on Xbox wasn't better, but the graphics itself sure were.
Coincidentially right before Jon posted this video I was playing Fighting Vibers 2 on a Dreamcast emulator, now afaik that game never came to the US so your only options are either English in 50Hz or 60Hz but in Japanese, though luckily the European release does have 60Hz support so I can enjoy that game in glorious 60Hz with English.
Being from Australia we also have the PAL standard. I remember doing this back in the day on a mate's Xbox who had a PAL Xbox purely for LIVE play. In order to have progressive output I used a game save hack and loaded it up with the Enigmah video changer which worked on a technically unmodified Xbox. It still played local PAL games but output in NTSC and all the progressive signals along with it!
You want to be careful conflating 50Hz/PAL with slow gameplay. Yes there were a lot of poor conversions but for every Sonic 1 there was an MGS2 which was a magnificent PAL conversion. When a game is properly optimised for PAL, with framerate unlocked from game logic, it doesn't really matter - especially when the gameplay is 50fps like MGS2.
In response to your hot take, I tend to switch between GCN, PS2, and Xbox on a per game basis when recording multiplat stuff. Depends heavily on which version was best for that specific game.
I try to do some detective work to figure out the lead platform during development. Sometimes I look for button prompts in the trailers, and sometimes it credits a separate team in the credits of a port
@@trapez77 That usually works but there are exceptions - just off the top of my head, SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom was developed for PS2 first but is definitely best on Xbox.
@@trapez77 I grew up with the PS2 version, but it's largely objectively better on Xbox. Better draw distance, higher resolution textures, and more stable framerates aren't a matter of opinion. Now the added bloom is a stylistic change so I could understand if you don't like that. I personally didn't like it at first but it grew on me over time.
Trust me Jon, I agree with you when it comes to the XBox being the strongest, and in MANY cases it is the most superior. But there are some edge cases that make me use either Gamecube or PS2 over it. 1. GameCube does allow additional modding via Swiss such as reverse camera controls. Considering how many games use inverted camera during that generation, if a game doesn't have an in-game option to reverse the camera, you can't do it. 2. Some games are just superior on other consoles. Sonic Heroes for example is the best on GameCube. Xbox is very close but it does have some framerate drops. At least they both run in 60fps unlike the PS2 version, yuck. 3. This is probably the biggest, but Konami. Almost every single Konami game is superior on PS2 than on XBox. Metal Gear Solid 2 has frequent fps drops, Silent Hill 2 has better audio and FMVs (despite the extra DLC content which can be played via the GH version), and Castlevania Curse of Darkness has an awful glitch that leaves a horizontal line on top that scrolls alone with the player. Point is, I do think a lot of "Retro" creators tend to skip the Xbox due to the lack of nostalgia that other consoles like GC or PS2 had, but it's not perfect either. I'd say for multiplats 80% of the time I go with Xbox, but for Platformers I like using the GameCube. Excellent video as always, and looking forward to see what else you do with the OG XBox!
Regarding Gamecube if I'm to take a guess (aside from the Xbox doing so poorly in comparison) is because Gamecube is easily accessible, you can play Gamecube on a Wii, a modded Wii U, or via dolphin, while the original Xbox (afaik) is still a bitch to emulate (despite being a 86x system) and while some Xbox games are forward compatible with later iterations many games still don't support newer hardware.
As for the end take/rant, I think that the overlap between people who own GameCubes and the people that want to create content is probably high. Plus the GameCube is easier to move around, boots up more quickly (to my recollection), and is less prone to failure (my original Xbox broke a long time before the potentiometer for my GameCube’s optical drive failed).
@@batofdestinySometimes I wonder if that phrase is a corruption of 「どもありがとうロバートさん。」 (domo arigatou Mr. Robert.), since “roboto” doesn’t make sense to me.
Yeah the bots are getting really annoying. At least it’s easy to tell they’re bots since they all follow the same basic format (generic comment praising content followed by a bunch of emojis). I shudder to think we’re quickly approaching the day when we can’t tell the difference based on the message alone.
@@KlaxyndCould be a pun based on the wiki for the song. Tl;Dr, The song tells the story of a guy named Robert who was put in prison where robots are guards.
My first experience with the 50Hz/60Hz split was in Double Dash, wondering what the choice meant, and recoiling as setting it to 60Hz caused my TV image to get a ton of horizontal lines flashing down the screen like a seizure-inducing freakout
Well, so I am working on this. Just one hurdle, I have to do the initial setup blind, as I currently do not have a display that supports the PAL Xbox's native output. So, I do not know what I'll do about that right now.
Another way you can get sharp video quality out of these games is playing them on Xbox 360 via Backwards Compatibility. Goes straight through HDMi though the Backwards Compatibility is admittedly pretty limited
Hot take: some of the music in Sonic 1 sounded better in the slower 50Hz version. I'm thinking in particular Labyrinth Zone. I just like the chill way it plods along.
Now, the BEST output possible from a XBOX is actually installing the Stellar modchip, with the HD+ addon to allow direct digital output via HDMI. It requires soldering skills, but the output is clean AF.
I figured the GC is used for all the footage possible so UA-camrs can justify whatever obscene amount of money they spent getting non-composite footage out of a GameCube, be it mods, HDMI converters, or showing off those expensive OEM component cables.
Well, considering I've got two lying around, might as well try this! (3, but that third one has a broken HDD right now, which happened to be modded, looking into saving that, wasn't mine originally).
I think the GameCube is commonly chosen because most systems have the digital port, so getting HDMI 480p output can be done without additional hardware modification, and then scaled in post if needed. With the PS2 or Xbox you’ll need to convert analog to digital, which can cause additional headaches. The Xbox has the worst ADC of consoles that gen, and also stretches the 640x480 rendered image internally to 720x480 causing non square pixels (and reducing image quality). This can currently only be undone by the internal HDMI mods like Xbox HD+ or the Stellar Getting the best quality from that generation is certainly a lot of work and cost no matter the console!
So correct me if I'm wrong but this doesn't actually do anything for disc versions of PAL Xbox games? There's no way to display PAL disc games in 480p? I mean I COULD just load up the NTSC version with a modded Xbox but that would make a lot of my disc games useless so I dunno
not that i've recorded many multiplatform games from this generation but my personal reason for using gamecube footage over xbox/ps2 footage is simple: i don't have any of those consoles but i do have a modded wii u >:)
GSM allows you to force the PS2 to run up to NTSC 1080p but the problem is that the PAL PS2 has issues with like fitting the NTSC image vertically for some reason without adjustment (which GSM *does* let you do but you don't get to see how much until after it's applied). also in sonic mega collection plus while the mega drive emulation DOES run at 60hz, the audio is still slowed down but now with constant skipping to try and catch up
@@CrashFan03Most PAL PS2 games are optimized for 576i resolution as much as possible. There are always small borders because the PS2 can’t display a full 576i image in games. You can’t fit this into a 480i or 480p frame, so some of it is cut off. The same is even true of many PAL PS1 games, that run at 320x256. This can’t fit into a 240p frame either. I run NTSC games on my PAL PS2 and they run at 480i (and 480p when it’s supported) without any problem.
@@CrashFan03 Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. It’s great that developers made the effort but it does mean that they can’t play properly in 480i and still has minor drawbacks in 576i.
As someone who grew up with primarily PC gaming in Australia, I didn't get into consoles until the 6th generation. And knowing little about console gaming, I was debating on whether to get a Playstation 2, Gamecube or Xbox. I ended up going for the Playstation 2, which was a smart move on my end. Not only because it had the most games, but it actually had the option for genuine 60 Hz, which I didn't know was such a huge deal for gaming in PAL regions.
Maybe for CRTs in the early to mid 90s that was the case(?), but all the CRTs I owned as a teen in the 2000s all had 50/60Hz support (I'd always set my Dreamcast to the 60Hz mode). And these were cheaper TVs, not something I had to go out of my way to acquire.
So this is the new recommended method to soft mod Xbox? The last time I checked, you still needed to load 'Splinter Cell' (or one of a small list of games) save file. This seems fairly straightforward doing it from the XB UI. Is there any reason not to set a PAL system to NTSC, ie it will still work with scart etc? I was looking to mod my Xbox to set the HDD key to a 0s, so that if/when the HDD dies I wouldn't have to do the more difficult hardware mod to replace it. But it sounds like this would be a good option too.
I'm going to guess that many use the GameCube for gameplay because it was the only console to have digital out. Buy a Digital A/V to HDMI adapter ~$80 and you're done getting the best video signal you can get. Now my OG XBOX does now have HDMI out and it is great but I did spend around $300 and several hours of soldering, testing, etc. to get that same clean digital signal out.
The hot take response is very easy: dolphin. :D Really need to find and get one original xbox. They can do so great stuff and they are cheap. Nice video!
I think the Wii having near-perfect backwards-compatibility with the Gamecube plays a big part in why the Gamecube version of multiplatform games is often featured in videos. That, plus Gamecube is easier to emulate than Xbox.
I’ve got the official Xbox advanced rgb scart cable for my old Xbox and it looks great on my tv. Does this cable actually enhance the image quality? It came with the console so I don’t know anything different.
I have been collecting original xbox games for years for that exact reason, but the main benefit of gamecube games is you can emulate them in higher resolutions in Dolphin. Original xbox emulation is still pretty bad last time I have checked.
I think its because the GameCube had a Digital AV out and HDMI adapters are all thay you need for clean video without a round trip Conversion. You need to hard mod your Xbox for the same thing the more obvious answer is Dolphin is much better than Xemu
honestly I'd imagine the GameCube is favored for getting footage of multiplatforms is just down to Dolphin being one of the best and easiest emulators to use
In regards to your question about Retro accounts using GameCube, my first guess would be emulation. Dolphin is well known and easy to set up, whereas Xbox emulation is still in pretty rough shape, its just the reality that GCN is easier to capture in that form. There's an argument to be made that the people who want to MAKE coverage of retro consoles and the people who want to WATCH coverage of retro content tend to focus on Nintendo anyway, creating something of an echo chamber. The primary Xbox audience was the US, leading to a very casual market to prop it up. People bought it for Halo, GTA, and sports games, that's not really the same audience that is interested in retrospectives and deep dives on Otogi. All of this, I think, leads to an unintentional bias against the system, which sucks! Its a really cool system with a lot of overlooked games, even ones published by Microsoft themselves.
You wanna know a funny thing about PAL XBOX games? all of them have 480p mode available in them! Hell even harry potter & the goblet of fire which in it's NTSC release infamously doesn't run in 480p for some reason works in 480p off of a PAL copy... you know the one that WOULDN'T let you use that mode!!
I think another reason for gamecubes being used for footage (other tha. Ease of emulation that others have mentioned) is that people collect gamecube, but not xbox. Xbox collectors are few and far between while everybody collects gamecube, so they use gamecube because thats what they have.
Pretty sure GameCube nostalgia is why its favored over XBOX for multiplatform games. GameCube is general is appreciated way more by UA-cam than it ever was when it came out, and a lot of lesser selling titles for that system (and the N64) are only relevant thanks to let's players. Looking at you Mario Sunshine...
Literally was impossible till the mid-90s when new TVs started supporting PAL-60 for higher-end TVs. Then took a few years to be widespread and supported by more affordable sets. But we had nothing to compare to and only once games started supporting 60hz by throwing an option up when you started a game did we really start to notice something was wrong. It wasn't just games this included TV Broadcast, VHS tapes, and DVDs. I remember an actor from Dawsons Creek promoting the new season in the UK being confused as to why their voice in the clip sounded higher pitched cos it was 30fps footage converted to 25fps. Movies also ended up being longer on home release than in cinema cos of this.
@@Khloya69 this is what happens when I get only 4 hours of sleep. Sorry. Yeah, you're absolutely correct. I remembered they get messed up but misremembered how. Yeah the 24fps content for films often got played at 25fps and a lot of times without pitch correction for the audio so the voices and music sounded off (I started getting imported NTSC DVDs for certain films and shows cos of this). I also prob mixed it up as the opposite happened in games where all the animations played 17% slower and you’d waste at least ten extra hours in a long JRPG compared to the NTSC version cos of it. Hope I get better sleep tonight so I don’t type anything so wrong tomorrow.
Well, I guess if I want a game to be non English I will stick to emulators. Especially Dolphin, because that emulator is just better than the Xbox and PS2 emulators by far.
I love how the USB stick was the wrong way round every attempt to plug it in! 10/10 for authenticity
That also happens in the bedroom lol
I'm still baffled that the solution to the 50Hz/60Hz issue was "we'll just have them run their games ~17% slower, done.".
And Blurrier as well due to the lack of progressive to the point a lot of games would cause us headaches and motion sickness :)
If you have a modded American Xbox and are curious about how bad it is, try the Pal version of Azurik with Pal settings at 50hz (should work if you're plugged into a monitor) with composite cables.
There's technically 2 ways to do it, one is running the game at 17.5% slower than the original NTSC version. The other way, that allows music not to sound lower tempo was to run a algorhythm that removes 10 frames out of the 60 frames, so that you get 50 frames per second for 50hz. However, the issue with that trick was that you had to use more cartridge space to include that frame removal code, not to mention that games that run fast, such as Sonic, would look really choppy as it starts to skip frames that's not a true integer scale, so this frame removal code was only used in slower paced games such as RPGs (Phantasy Star is a good example) or games that need rhymic response such as the DDR-Dancing Stage franchise.
It's even more surprising by the 6th generation because most PAL TVs could do 60hz. Even in the 90s many PAL TVs could output PAL60. It really should have been an option.
Also the frame rate issue was more because of how games were programed. You couldn't just drop frames if the system or refresh rate was too slow. Generally you had to show all 60 frames. Plus making it so it ran at 50fps would have been a huge ask for games because of that since all logic for most Japanese and American games relied on 60fps being hit
@@crestofhonor2349 yeah PAL 60 mode and raw NTSC support on my 2001 bought TV makes me wish console makers had chosen to just make one Western version of their consoles with an signal output toggle (either a physical button or in settings once we had console menus) to switch instead of everything before Dreamcast being trapt in slow motion
Heck even then so many early PS2 games like Final Fantasy X or DMC1 didn't have 60hz support.
I'd have gone back and bought so many old games on Megadrive and SNES that I missed when I was a kid if the local UK copies were not compromised with 50hz only
Aaaand that's why everyone in Europe played on PC.
i already knew it was based on the fact that shrek wasn't a launch title over there
Most UA-camrs use GameCube footage because it's not footage ripped directly from the GameCube it's Dolphin emulator footage.
There is no PAL version of _Sonic the Hedgehog_ for Mega Drive-it's the same ROM used in the US, and that's specifically why it's slowed down like that. Had there been a PAL version that was properly programmed, there'd be no problem with speed (the image would still be squished, though).
I'd imagine the reason that Gamecube is used to record is because A) It's easy to emulate compared to the others so you can push those resolutions even higher. B) The Wii could also play Gamecube games and everyone owned a Wii whereas the original Xbox didn't sell nearly as well and the 360 has limited backwards compatibility. And C) There were a handful of titles that were only released on Gamecube and PS2 for whatever reason so maybe it was just a case of picking the Gamecube because it covered the most.
Remembering the enthusiasm towards the generational leap that the Dreamcast and PS2 brought, you tend to overlook how big a deal it was for European fans to start getting games at 60Hz. The GameCube felt incredibly smooth to me when I first played it, and it's probably because I had a childhood of slightly choppier, often slower, games before that.
The vast majority of Europeans had TVs incompatible with 60Hz. Pick the 60Hz option, and you get a black & white and/or flickery picture.
@@C.I... Most PAL TVs by the late 90s to 2000s supported 60hz. This wasn't the 80s anymore. All they needed to do was provide a toggle to see if the image would display like with 480p when paired with the right cables
Finally getting to play Sonic games at full speed in the Sonic Mega collection was a godsend. Only for SEGA to later do the Sonic Gems collection with Sonic CD on it but not support 60hz.
A friend at university sold his mega collection to buy gems and was hit with slow Green Hill Zone music and noticed immediately.
Supporting these higher resolutions was extremely impressive for the OG Xbox at the time. I'm surprised that Europe never got these options.
Now you gave me an excuse to softmod my Xbox. lol
In a seriousness, I've been wanting to softmod it but every other guide is cumbersome. But yours is very clear and concise and it also shows that you don't need a game.
So thanks for that, mate.
Re: Hot Take - GameCube was my favorite console of the generation! Despite my love for PS2, I loved my Cube a bit more. I think many others do as well.
I'm Australian, so I grew up with PAL games as well. And watching these videos my brain is going; 'Dear God? Was it always like this?'
Although I had a modded ps1 and ps2. But I don't know if that made a difference.
Probably
RE the hot take, I bet it's people using Dolphin. More comprehensively stable emulation than PCSX2 and Xemu/CXBX.
I guess as well, native HDMI is more readily available for GameCube through an adapter rather than a solder mod if we're taking original hardware captures.
Love your content, Jon!
It's always funny seeing stuff like Sonic compared like that, with no internet or anything to compare it back in the day I didn't even know it was an issue.
i played it on one of those crappy mega drive clones and it ran even slower than that lmao, wasn’t until i got mega drive collection on my psp that i realised
It was until I was approaching my 40s that I noticed how slow sonic was in pal. I've been playing it on emulators through the years so never noticed until I got another mega drive recently and played sonic on it. I was like errrrrrrrr?
Tysm for addressing pal region stuff 🥺 I feel like hardly anyone makes proper easy to follow content about it, or doesn't include it in their videos
Your Daruk amiibo is tipped over in the background!
I guess the reason everyone captures Gamecube footage is because it is the easiest to emulate.
that and the fact that everyone has a wii to play gamecube games i guess
@@CrashFan03 Nah it really is just cause of how powerful and easy to run dolphin is
@@turtz0I'd say both personally
Nintendo (Retro) Consoles always have way more attention when it comes to emulation, hacking, homebrew and all that stuff. I suppose because many people in those communities grew up with their systems (not that other consoles have amazing communities too, these just tend to be smaller).
Yup. While PS2 emulation isn't hard, OG Xbox emulation is still quite hard on most people's CPUs
Love my og xbox, did a good deal of mods on it to save wear and tear on my discs, new 2tb hdd, new fan, and the full hdmi upgrade.
Perfect timing! Have been looking into modding my old Xbox (and maybe my Wii). So this vid will go in my modding playlist.
To answer the question at the end, I would honestly expect that the answer is that hardly anybody owns an Xbox at this point, whereas so much enthusiasm for the GameCube remains/Wiis are so common that it’s just the easy choice.
50hz in Europe; Jon video.
Literally the same way I figured it out lol
i know everyone loves to point at Sonic 1 but not all games were like that. Lots of PAL ports ran at the same speed as NTSC ones. sometimes theyd run at a higher res too. and thats ignoring games that were made for 50Hz first. sometimes it was the US that got games that ran too fast. not as common admittedly, because PAL devs actually tended to care, but it happened.
i love these jon homebrew videos
Don't you mean JONBREW?!
Love this, i literally dove deep into this rabbit hole when i got my og xbox a few days ago so the timing is great lol. You should talk about the 480i to 576i difference, we europeans were stuck with black borders around many of our games because instead of developers optimising our games to fill the extra pixels, they were like, have black borders instead lol. This sucks and games like devil may cry on ps2 looked especially bad like this, where the image was a tiny box in a black void.
Can the Xbox be used to record Game Boy Camera footage using GB Player? I don't think so...
It's worth noting that some PAL games will take issue with these changes. The only way I've found to fix these files is to replace the problem files (when the games installed) with their NTSC counterparts, or you can just get the whole NTSC copy obviously.
Can confirm. Had this issue whilst playing a pal crash woc in ntsc mode, the game ran 20% faster than normal
@@MrskipperCP That might be because some PAL games were optimised by the devs to compensate for the 50/60Hz issue, so forcing it will make the game run too fast. I know this was the case with certain PS1 games for example.
@@tcrime That sounds about right. Replacing it with a ntsc version of the game fixed the issue though I did have to start over on a new file
I grew up in Europe with an OG Xbox, while my neighbour friend had a PS2.
We both had Burnout Revenge on our console, and all I know is, I always noticed that the graphics on the PS2 looked worse.
Could be that the resolution itself on Xbox wasn't better, but the graphics itself sure were.
Coincidentially right before Jon posted this video I was playing Fighting Vibers 2 on a Dreamcast emulator, now afaik that game never came to the US so your only options are either English in 50Hz or 60Hz but in Japanese, though luckily the European release does have 60Hz support so I can enjoy that game in glorious 60Hz with English.
Oh! Thats so easy nowadays! Yeah Im absolutely doing this as soon as I can
That 50hz sonic opening theme sounds like the 60hz game over theme
The majority of PAL PS2 games rarely has progressive scan AND 60hz support, most PAL PS2 games are 576i/50hz only.
0:29 God! Hearing the slowed down Sonic theme actually tickled such a nostalgic memory for me.
Being from Australia we also have the PAL standard. I remember doing this back in the day on a mate's Xbox who had a PAL Xbox purely for LIVE play. In order to have progressive output I used a game save hack and loaded it up with the Enigmah video changer which worked on a technically unmodified Xbox. It still played local PAL games but output in NTSC and all the progressive signals along with it!
You want to be careful conflating 50Hz/PAL with slow gameplay. Yes there were a lot of poor conversions but for every Sonic 1 there was an MGS2 which was a magnificent PAL conversion. When a game is properly optimised for PAL, with framerate unlocked from game logic, it doesn't really matter - especially when the gameplay is 50fps like MGS2.
In response to your hot take, I tend to switch between GCN, PS2, and Xbox on a per game basis when recording multiplat stuff. Depends heavily on which version was best for that specific game.
I try to do some detective work to figure out the lead platform during development. Sometimes I look for button prompts in the trailers, and sometimes it credits a separate team in the credits of a port
@@trapez77 That usually works but there are exceptions - just off the top of my head, SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom was developed for PS2 first but is definitely best on Xbox.
@@GhabulousGhoti I like it better on ps2.
@@trapez77 I grew up with the PS2 version, but it's largely objectively better on Xbox. Better draw distance, higher resolution textures, and more stable framerates aren't a matter of opinion. Now the added bloom is a stylistic change so I could understand if you don't like that. I personally didn't like it at first but it grew on me over time.
@@GhabulousGhoti I don’t like how it looks and I don’t like how it feels with an Xbox controller.
Trust me Jon, I agree with you when it comes to the XBox being the strongest, and in MANY cases it is the most superior. But there are some edge cases that make me use either Gamecube or PS2 over it.
1. GameCube does allow additional modding via Swiss such as reverse camera controls. Considering how many games use inverted camera during that generation, if a game doesn't have an in-game option to reverse the camera, you can't do it.
2. Some games are just superior on other consoles. Sonic Heroes for example is the best on GameCube. Xbox is very close but it does have some framerate drops. At least they both run in 60fps unlike the PS2 version, yuck.
3. This is probably the biggest, but Konami. Almost every single Konami game is superior on PS2 than on XBox. Metal Gear Solid 2 has frequent fps drops, Silent Hill 2 has better audio and FMVs (despite the extra DLC content which can be played via the GH version), and Castlevania Curse of Darkness has an awful glitch that leaves a horizontal line on top that scrolls alone with the player.
Point is, I do think a lot of "Retro" creators tend to skip the Xbox due to the lack of nostalgia that other consoles like GC or PS2 had, but it's not perfect either. I'd say for multiplats 80% of the time I go with Xbox, but for Platformers I like using the GameCube.
Excellent video as always, and looking forward to see what else you do with the OG XBox!
I use Xbox because most of the time, it works on my Xbox 360 and looks sharp, not to mention the ones on Xbox One/Series.
Regarding Gamecube if I'm to take a guess (aside from the Xbox doing so poorly in comparison) is because Gamecube is easily accessible, you can play Gamecube on a Wii, a modded Wii U, or via dolphin, while the original Xbox (afaik) is still a bitch to emulate (despite being a 86x system) and while some Xbox games are forward compatible with later iterations many games still don't support newer hardware.
As for the end take/rant, I think that the overlap between people who own GameCubes and the people that want to create content is probably high. Plus the GameCube is easier to move around, boots up more quickly (to my recollection), and is less prone to failure (my original Xbox broke a long time before the potentiometer for my GameCube’s optical drive failed).
I don't use GameCube versions because, possibly also a hot take, I don't like the GameCube controller. There, I said it.
Kind of interesting Nintendo and Microsoft both screwed PAL gamers out of 480p in different ways but with basically the same outcome.
what are these bot comments 💀💀💀
Domo arigato mr roboto 🤖
@@batofdestinySometimes I wonder if that phrase is a corruption of 「どもありがとうロバートさん。」 (domo arigatou Mr. Robert.), since “roboto” doesn’t make sense to me.
Yeah the bots are getting really annoying. At least it’s easy to tell they’re bots since they all follow the same basic format (generic comment praising content followed by a bunch of emojis). I shudder to think we’re quickly approaching the day when we can’t tell the difference based on the message alone.
If Jon, then only Cartwright 🔥🔥🔥
@@KlaxyndCould be a pun based on the wiki for the song. Tl;Dr, The song tells the story of a guy named Robert who was put in prison where robots are guards.
My first experience with the 50Hz/60Hz split was in Double Dash, wondering what the choice meant, and recoiling as setting it to 60Hz caused my TV image to get a ton of horizontal lines flashing down the screen like a seizure-inducing freakout
Well, so I am working on this. Just one hurdle, I have to do the initial setup blind, as I currently do not have a display that supports the PAL Xbox's native output. So, I do not know what I'll do about that right now.
Another way you can get sharp video quality out of these games is playing them on Xbox 360 via Backwards Compatibility. Goes straight through HDMi though the Backwards Compatibility is admittedly pretty limited
Hot take: some of the music in Sonic 1 sounded better in the slower 50Hz version. I'm thinking in particular Labyrinth Zone. I just like the chill way it plods along.
Now, the BEST output possible from a XBOX is actually installing the Stellar modchip, with the HD+ addon to allow direct digital output via HDMI.
It requires soldering skills, but the output is clean AF.
So my take away from this is that Godzilla just keeps scoring W’s.
I figured the GC is used for all the footage possible so UA-camrs can justify whatever obscene amount of money they spent getting non-composite footage out of a GameCube, be it mods, HDMI converters, or showing off those expensive OEM component cables.
Well, considering I've got two lying around, might as well try this! (3, but that third one has a broken HDD right now, which happened to be modded, looking into saving that, wasn't mine originally).
I haven't modded an Xbox in years and had no idea how simple it had gotten! Now I can burn my copy of Splinter Cell!
I think the GameCube is commonly chosen because most systems have the digital port, so getting HDMI 480p output can be done without additional hardware modification, and then scaled in post if needed. With the PS2 or Xbox you’ll need to convert analog to digital, which can cause additional headaches. The Xbox has the worst ADC of consoles that gen, and also stretches the 640x480 rendered image internally to 720x480 causing non square pixels (and reducing image quality). This can currently only be undone by the internal HDMI mods like Xbox HD+ or the Stellar
Getting the best quality from that generation is certainly a lot of work and cost no matter the console!
720x480 always has non-square pixels & 1080p tvs upscale it to either 1440x1080 or 1920x1080 that restores the original aspect ratio
Love the mod and homebrew stuff. Excellent!
Important step!! Check your USB drive for any data before letting the Xbox format it. Formatting the drive will erase everything on it.
So correct me if I'm wrong but this doesn't actually do anything for disc versions of PAL Xbox games? There's no way to display PAL disc games in 480p?
I mean I COULD just load up the NTSC version with a modded Xbox but that would make a lot of my disc games useless so I dunno
not that i've recorded many multiplatform games from this generation but my personal reason for using gamecube footage over xbox/ps2 footage is simple: i don't have any of those consoles but i do have a modded wii u >:)
If something like this existed for the PS2, that would be so cool
GSM allows you to force the PS2 to run up to NTSC 1080p but the problem is that the PAL PS2 has issues with like fitting the NTSC image vertically for some reason without adjustment (which GSM *does* let you do but you don't get to see how much until after it's applied). also in sonic mega collection plus while the mega drive emulation DOES run at 60hz, the audio is still slowed down but now with constant skipping to try and catch up
@@CrashFan03Most PAL PS2 games are optimized for 576i resolution as much as possible. There are always small borders because the PS2 can’t display a full 576i image in games. You can’t fit this into a 480i or 480p frame, so some of it is cut off. The same is even true of many PAL PS1 games, that run at 320x256. This can’t fit into a 240p frame either.
I run NTSC games on my PAL PS2 and they run at 480i (and 480p when it’s supported) without any problem.
@@SuperJM9 ah i presume the menu is also optimized for 576i?
@@CrashFan03 Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. It’s great that developers made the effort but it does mean that they can’t play properly in 480i and still has minor drawbacks in 576i.
As someone who grew up with primarily PC gaming in Australia, I didn't get into consoles until the 6th generation. And knowing little about console gaming, I was debating on whether to get a Playstation 2, Gamecube or Xbox. I ended up going for the Playstation 2, which was a smart move on my end. Not only because it had the most games, but it actually had the option for genuine 60 Hz, which I didn't know was such a huge deal for gaming in PAL regions.
most pal ps2 games don't support 60hz while most pal dreamcast, gamecube & xbox games support 60hz
@@gamecubeplayer Oh, I see. I guess I must've forgotten. Though it was still worth it for the massive library of games and longevity of the system.
I'm sure at the UK Xbox had Dolby 5.1 removed from it as well but the American versions could do it
Besides soul calibur 2 not doing it, do the other pal xbox games work in 480p and higher?
Not a single PAL Xbox game can do 480p or higher
@@GVG ah ok, so it's mostly to play the US roms instead of using our pal physics games? (For us in EU)
Anyone know the game at 2:12 to 2:19?
EDIT: Found it, if anyone else wanted to know it’s Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria :)
I assume however that this process doesn't allow you to play your Xbox on a PAL CRT? Because the Xbox is now outputting an NTSC signal
Maybe for CRTs in the early to mid 90s that was the case(?), but all the CRTs I owned as a teen in the 2000s all had 50/60Hz support (I'd always set my Dreamcast to the 60Hz mode). And these were cheaper TVs, not something I had to go out of my way to acquire.
Even if you did have the issue with black and white, using SCART makes this a non issue
It's just much easier to mod a wii or use dolphin for footage than to have a modded Xbox or ps2, no?
Is there a way to get the dashboard to display in 480p? Mine seems to be stuck in 480i.
So this is the new recommended method to soft mod Xbox? The last time I checked, you still needed to load 'Splinter Cell' (or one of a small list of games) save file. This seems fairly straightforward doing it from the XB UI.
Is there any reason not to set a PAL system to NTSC, ie it will still work with scart etc?
I was looking to mod my Xbox to set the HDD key to a 0s, so that if/when the HDD dies I wouldn't have to do the more difficult hardware mod to replace it. But it sounds like this would be a good option too.
Love your content Jon. Bless you and your family!
may b people have a easier time capturing gamecube because they already have it set up or dolphin installed.
Second Language English speaker here: Shouldn't it be: THE Original XBox and THE PlayStation 2?
Re: The GameCube bias, it's just that you subconsciously know that the GC is the best. Sorry Jon, you know in your heart that it's true.
I'm going to guess that many use the GameCube for gameplay because it was the only console to have digital out. Buy a Digital A/V to HDMI adapter ~$80 and you're done getting the best video signal you can get. Now my OG XBOX does now have HDMI out and it is great but I did spend around $300 and several hours of soldering, testing, etc. to get that same clean digital signal out.
i think just more people have access to a wii/dolphin than xbox or ps2/pcsx2
Xemu is also hard to run
@@crestofhonor2349 and barely functional
@@3DWorldMan You're thinking of Xenia. Xemu runs most Xbox games
I believe PAL Need for Speed Underground did have a Progressive Scan toggle on GameCube. Not that it matters now that we have Swiss. 😂
The hot take response is very easy: dolphin. :D
Really need to find and get one original xbox. They can do so great stuff and they are cheap. Nice video!
Ive had disc drive issues out of the original xbox
Pretty much al of the 6th gen consoles are starting to have disc drive related issues. They are getting old
I assume GameCube footage is used most often because of how many people own a GC or Wii, and because of how easy it is to emulate.
I think the Wii having near-perfect backwards-compatibility with the Gamecube plays a big part in why the Gamecube version of multiplatform games is often featured in videos. That, plus Gamecube is easier to emulate than Xbox.
Actually there are select pal psone games that are 60hz. Very few.
Damn, I never knew this. My XBOX was always modded xD
I’ve got the official Xbox advanced rgb scart cable for my old Xbox and it looks great on my tv. Does this cable actually enhance the image quality? It came with the console so I don’t know anything different.
I have been collecting original xbox games for years for that exact reason, but the main benefit of gamecube games is you can emulate them in higher resolutions in Dolphin. Original xbox emulation is still pretty bad last time I have checked.
I think its because the GameCube had a Digital AV out and HDMI adapters are all thay you need for clean video without a round trip Conversion. You need to hard mod your Xbox for the same thing
the more obvious answer is Dolphin is much better than Xemu
honestly I'd imagine the GameCube is favored for getting footage of multiplatforms is just down to Dolphin being one of the best and easiest emulators to use
1:47 The NES didn't output interlaced video though
i think he was just using that footage to showcase the CRT, not the content therein
Me who received a free Xbox from a friend a year or two ago:
In regards to your question about Retro accounts using GameCube, my first guess would be emulation. Dolphin is well known and easy to set up, whereas Xbox emulation is still in pretty rough shape, its just the reality that GCN is easier to capture in that form. There's an argument to be made that the people who want to MAKE coverage of retro consoles and the people who want to WATCH coverage of retro content tend to focus on Nintendo anyway, creating something of an echo chamber.
The primary Xbox audience was the US, leading to a very casual market to prop it up. People bought it for Halo, GTA, and sports games, that's not really the same audience that is interested in retrospectives and deep dives on Otogi. All of this, I think, leads to an unintentional bias against the system, which sucks! Its a really cool system with a lot of overlooked games, even ones published by Microsoft themselves.
Anyone know the best way to connect a softmodded PAL Xbox to a modern TV? Component cables for the OG Xbox weren't sold in this region.
just use component cables because the pal xbox is still wired for them (just like the ntsc ps2 is still wired for rgb scart)
You wanna know a funny thing about PAL XBOX games? all of them have 480p mode available in them! Hell even harry potter & the goblet of fire which in it's NTSC release infamously doesn't run in 480p for some reason works in 480p off of a PAL copy... you know the one that WOULDN'T let you use that mode!!
Whats the game at 2:13?
I would also like to know
Same here I wanna know
Apparently it is Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
the reason everyone uses gamecube: cables.
Is it because of Dolphin?
Not an Xbox owner but to be honest 50Hz never bothered me and it still doesn't.
Your voice is so beautiful man
Really annoying that he's doing a fake deep voice.
2:12 What game is that? And more importantly: Is it running in PAL60 progressive? :D
I want to know it too, sorry for the notification but i have the same question
Yo @seiseiSeiki, DonWalkJr responded in another comment, it is Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria.
@@Vraelf Ah, thanks for letting me know!
I myself used a PSP for the exploit, works just fine
I think another reason for gamecubes being used for footage (other tha. Ease of emulation that others have mentioned) is that people collect gamecube, but not xbox. Xbox collectors are few and far between while everybody collects gamecube, so they use gamecube because thats what they have.
Pretty sure GameCube nostalgia is why its favored over XBOX for multiplatform games. GameCube is general is appreciated way more by UA-cam than it ever was when it came out, and a lot of lesser selling titles for that system (and the N64) are only relevant thanks to let's players. Looking at you Mario Sunshine...
Hey everyone, Jon here!
How did Europeans cope? Had they just never seen 60 somehow?
Literally was impossible till the mid-90s when new TVs started supporting PAL-60 for higher-end TVs. Then took a few years to be widespread and supported by more affordable sets.
But we had nothing to compare to and only once games started supporting 60hz by throwing an option up when you started a game did we really start to notice something was wrong.
It wasn't just games this included TV Broadcast, VHS tapes, and DVDs. I remember an actor from Dawsons Creek promoting the new season in the UK being confused as to why their voice in the clip sounded higher pitched cos it was 30fps footage converted to 25fps. Movies also ended up being longer on home release than in cinema cos of this.
@@sonicsean34 aren’t movies 24fps though?
@@Khloya69 this is what happens when I get only 4 hours of sleep. Sorry.
Yeah, you're absolutely correct. I remembered they get messed up but misremembered how.
Yeah the 24fps content for films often got played at 25fps and a lot of times without pitch correction for the audio so the voices and music sounded off (I started getting imported NTSC DVDs for certain films and shows cos of this).
I also prob mixed it up as the opposite happened in games where all the animations played 17% slower and you’d waste at least ten extra hours in a long JRPG compared to the NTSC version cos of it.
Hope I get better sleep tonight so I don’t type anything so wrong tomorrow.
Well, I guess if I want a game to be non English I will stick to emulators. Especially Dolphin, because that emulator is just better than the Xbox and PS2 emulators by far.
So if Jon talked about Xbox today, then when will he talk about Cel Damage?
Nothing could fix the original Xbox regardless of where you live.