Living in a PAL territory you get used to being screwed by video game companies . And I don’t mean a gentle slap and tickle behind the bike shed, I mean a hand over your mouth after lights out style screw.

Little things like the “worldwide” PlayStation 3 launch and the fact that Rock Band won’t arrive until May are a few recent examples. But that said, things have improved, and most games now come out in PAL territories reasonable soon after the NTSC release. More importantly I can’t think of a recent example of the dreaded bad PAL conversion which can was the bane of my existence for quite a while.

As a way of apologising to PAL gamers for bad conversions and late releases developers and publishers often create extra content and package it in with the PAL release. Below are a few examples from my collection.


SILENT HILL 2



Silent Hill 2 only came out two months after the North American release, but Konami still felt so bad they made this awesome 2 x DVD slip-case edition of the game.




Here is the inner cover removed from the slipcase and then spread out. Scary, yes?

The inner cover of this edition has a few quotes from Mary, the main character’s wife, such as “our special place...” and “you promised you’d take me here again...” and of course “James you dickhead! Who taught you how to reverse park..?”. Moving stuff.





The artwork inside the inner cover is amazing. The shiny headed nurse looks like she’s having so much fun! Maria on the other hand looks kinda sleepy. She was such a loose bitch, but at least she put out, James’s wife Mary just seemed like a such a drag.

The bonus disc packed in with Silent Hill 2 was brilliant. It had a documentary on the game which delved deeply into the game’s origins, creation and storyline. In all honesty waiting the extra two months for this disc was well worth it. But there was a catch – the DVD was coded for Region 2, which meant that you had to call who ever the publisher was at the time and order a new disc. Thankfully it arrived fairly promptly, and you could keep your old disc.


FINAL FANTASY X



Final Fantasy X was a shit PAL conversion. There’s no two ways about it. The game looked terrible as the developers tried to squash a 4:3 game into a 16:9 frame. I owned a TV that could stretch it out thankfully, but those that didn’t had to stare at a fat whore looking Yuna for 40+ hours. Don’t get me wrong, my love for this game is undying, but the PAL version did look like a smashed crab.

The worst part is that the game came out in July 2001 in Japan, then arrived in North America on December 2001 and then took another five months to reach Australia. Why couldn’t SquareSoft (they weren’t Square Enix yet) put in just a little bit more effort for the PAL release? Surely between July 2001 and May 2002 they could have made the game at least run a consistent frame rate and not grind whenever you summon an Aeon. Bastards!



To make up for this a bonus disc was included, which included a very interesting ‘making of’ and some other Final Fantasy X crap. But like the Silent Hill 2 caper it was the wrong region. This time however there was no replacement disc being made. For me it wasn’t a huge deal because I could watch it on my computer, but those gamers who only watched DVDs on their PlayStation 2 were shit out of luck. Great job Square!

Incidentally, SquareSoft managed to pump out an ‘International Version’ of the game around January 2002. It had full English voice acting and a few other tweaks included. But like all their other “international” versions, it was so “international” that it would only run on Japanese PlayStation 2s. Once again, great move Square! (And yes I know other companies make these “international” versions too, but why? To tease us?!)


RESIDENT EVIL 4



Still feeling the burn from my previous “bonus disc” debacles, I was sceptical that the Resident Evil 4 Collector’s Edition on the GameCube could live up to its promises. But the Australian version came with a bonus GameCube game disc (not a mini-DVD) that was guaranteed to work on my system.


Here’s the DVD style cases for the game and the bonus disc.


Behold the bonus disc in all it’s glory!

The slipcase packaging and the two DVD cases made it look like you were getting a shit load of extras with the game. What you actually got was the PAL version of the game, which was the same as the NTSC version except for a stupidly bad Easy mode, and a collection of cutscenes from past Resident Evil games on the GameCube. It also contained a few short interviews and information on the other games in the series. While not as good as the Silent Hill 2 bonus disc it was still a great addition.

On a side note, for some reason Resident Evil 4 had a ton of special editions released around the world. For a full list click here and check out all the different ones available.


METAL GEAR SOLID 2



If there is one company in this world who knows how to treat PAL gamers right it’s Konami. The PAL version of Metal Gear Solid 2 looked great and thankfully ran almost flawlessly, except for a few screen tearing issues.



Release in 2001 on 14 November in North America, PAL gamers had to wait until March 2002 to get a copy of this brilliant (and overly criticised) game. In this four month Hideo Kojima and his team worked on not only making a sure this game world run well on PAL consoles, but also adding extra content. The new European Extreme difficulty was a bitch, but the Boss Survival mode was fun and the Casting Theatre was a smart way to watch old cutscenes again.



In addition to these extras, PAL gamers were also treated to a ‘making of’ DVD, which was produced by the same people who made the Silent Hill 2 ‘making of’. This time however there were no region issues, and like before it was extremely well made. It should be noted that this making of is nothing like the Documents of Metal Gear Solid 2, but is its own separate entity.



The packaging was also great with cleat DVD case allowing you to see the reverse side of the cover. On it was some great artwork of characters featured in the game. Yay for Konami!


So there you have it, my collection of PAL exclusive collector’s editions and bonus discs. Hopefully I didn’t come across too whiny. Nowadays being in a PAL region isn’t as of a big issue, especially on the PlayStation 3 which is the only true region free console. The Xbox 360 is slightly region free, but there are a lot of big games that still have region coding, especially from Japan. Don’t get me started on the locked-down Wii.

When will people learn that region coding only furthers piracy? And that than pushes people into buying goods off the black market, which than supports terrorism. So, in a round-about way you could argue that Nintendo, and to a lesser extent Microsoft, are funding terrorist organisations. We're through the looking glass here people!