[Editor's note: I never truly understood how bad PAL gamers had it until reading Perry Simm's Monthly Musing piece. -- CTZ]
I know what you think: "I have heard the whinings of the PAL gamers often enough and know them inside out by now. Time for them to STFUAJPG." But let me tell you: You probably don't know the half of the horrors of PAL gaming. It's an ocean of shit so unbelievably big and deep, you can't imagine it in your wildest dreams. Even if you are a PAL gamer yourself, you maybe aren't fully aware how much you got screwed during your life.
The two most common complaints about being a PAL gamer are the release dates and the pricing. And yes, it's true. Fun fact: When
Chrono Trigger DS gets released here
some time in 2009, that will mark the first time
Chrono Trigger is released here
ever. It never came out here for the SNES or the PS1. Same goes for
Super Mario RPG, or
Earthbound. And you know what the first
Final Fantasy was to be released here?
VII. Yes,
VII. No Kefka for us until 2002 on the PS1.
Today, these things in particular are not that much of a problem, thanks to NOT emulators, eBay, etc. And it became better. But from time to time, they show you how much they still despise you (See Brawl).
And the pricing, oh yes, it's all very true. When Chrono Trigger DS was announced for 39,99$, many people bitched about the price, the Square Enix tax and so on. You know how much the first Cooking Mama for DS is over here? Roughly 55-57 in US Dollars. Same for the first Phoenix Wright, even after two years.
But there is one thing that's worse. While it fortunately isn't such a big problem with the current generation anymore (at least I think it isn't -- I don't own any of the current consoles, but I haven't at least heard anything bad in that way), it's a pain in the ass concerning all other generations.
The damn conversions.
I still haven't gotten a PS2. I would love to go to a store and buy one and a handful games for it, but it's not that easy. There are two problems:
1) NTSC runs at 60 Hz, PAL usually at 50 Hz, which means: Most games run around 17% slower here. As I said, I don't think this problem exists with the current generation of consoles and with HDTV and all that, but older games are always a tiny bit slower, until there is a special 60 Hz mode (practically all TVs can display PAL at 60 Hz without a problem) built into the game or the console. The Dreamcast for example was the first console to feature such a PAL60 mode, but there are still games that don't support it. On PS2, there are at least a few games that feature PAL60. But the majority is just too slow.
With older game consoles like the SNES or the NES, all games are slowed down (or at least 99% of them). That means if a European tells you that he has beaten Ninja Gaiden (err... Shadow Warriors) on the NES, you can laugh at him, because what he has beaten was in reality a slowed down and therefore easier version of the game. Granted, it is not that much of a difference, but in faster, reflex-based games it matters quite a bit in my opinion. And when you play it, you can feel the difference. In the PAL version of Super Metroid, Samus controls sluggishly and feels heavy as a rock. In 60 Hz, she flies like a bird. Another problem is the loss of the sense and thrill of speed in racing games or say, Sonic the Hedgehog (see the video further down).
2) The second problem is even worse. Because PAL has more lines than NTSC, the PAL picture is vertically squashed, with black letterbox borders, if it's not properly converted. That means that square blocks aren't squares anymore and characters become shorter and fatter. In the last 10 years, the conversions generally got a bit better, but even one generation ago there were still many games that weren't adapted at all. A famous bad example is Final Fantasy X, which you can't buy here without getting eye cancer. It's like watching a version of Yuna that must have eaten far too many pizza rolls (or whatever people eat in Final Fantasy X). And games older than the 6th generation are doomed anyway.
To illustrate my points, watch this comparison of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, first in NTSC, then in PAL.
The biggest problem, which infuriates my hatred the most, is that many people just don't care. They don't even notice the difference, because they are morons without the slightest sense of aesthetics. These are the same people who don't notice when a movie is displayed in the wrong format or chopped on the sides (and if they notice, they don't care - because they are morons).
Well, many of you probably won't understand either why all this bothers me so much. But I simply don't want to play a slower, uglier version of a game, especially when I paid a European price for it. If I wanted to own and play PS2 games the way they were intended, I'd have to buy a PS2, spend roughly 100$ on modifying it, so it can play NTSC games (or import one, modify it for running on the European power supply network without exploding) and then import every single game I want to play and that isn't properly adapted from the US, paying horrendous shipping costs. And while this may be manageable, it should not be fucking necessary.
God bless PCs and handhelds.
Contest:
7:26 PM on 09.11.2008
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That comparison takes me back to my MEGADRIVE days.
But evidently I was taken in! I had the slow as shit version and didn't even notice until now, when it was compared to the true version =[
Good subject, good rant.
I'm a PAL-gamer, but I never knew the difference was so fucking huge... Horrible... just horrible... glad it all got solved nowadays... sure explains a lot about why these 'rereleases' nowadays feel so much faster then I seem to remember :)
And yes, I am still eagerly awaiting my first time through Chrono Trigger. Come on '09!
Btw, it would also effect any attempt at world record times on a video game. That is, if you didn't use the in-game timer...
But hey, you guys got Terranigma for SNES, and we didn't (That's the only PAL game I can think of that you got and we didn't).
If you have a system that can play "backups" you can patch most games with a PAL/NTSC selector when you boot it up.
Thus, Super Metroid actually plays better emulated on my PSP than it would on my Wii. And I don't feel the least bit guilty, because I paid for the un-optimized cart back when it came out, and I've still got it.
The worst part is when it affected even more expensive peripherals. I was one of the people stupid enough to get the Super Game Boy back when it was released, and guess what? The PAL Super Game Boy essentially squashes and slows down any Game Boy games you put in there.
Sega were one of the first ones to do anything the PAL issue with a lot of their PAL Saturn games running at full speed and with minimal boarders. With the Dreamcast they went one better with the PAL60 option which was great IF the game made use of it.
The Gamecube and Xbox both usually had good PAL conversions as well as the PAL60 option but still not every game made use of it. It’s a real pain if you want to play a 50Hz only Xbox like Halo on the Xbox360 when you’re using VGA which only supports 60Hz.
Did a speed test myself, for every 5 sec of NTSC you have 6 sec of PAL roughly on emulator. I'd prefer to see the originals played side to side on the megadrive to see the true difference.
In general PAL games are bad. 60-PAL & 60-NTSC are different too, finding out the game was the later and never worked on TV was frustrating to hell.
I was such a Sega fanboy as a kid, I took the slowass Sonic game and then went "SOO FAST!!" even though it didn't really feel that fast, hahaha!
VC games have the same shit, only if you have an HDTV, the game will just stutter like crazy as well. There's a "fix" button combo for it, but it's just retardedly lame. Games played through an xbox1 with emulators work perfect though.
It may have been worth it anyway when not gaming. Wasn't NTSC mocked with the 'Never Twice The Same Colour' tag when watching TV itself as, if you had even a slight reception problem the changing skin tones made people look like inhuman chameleons and the whole picture in general damaged the old eyesight? If no-ones old enough to know the answer, I'll just slink off to my lumber off to my tar pit again.
It may be emulated, but it is 100% accurate. I have a unmodded PAL Mega Drive right here and this is how it plays. The reason the gameplay is the same in both examples is of course that it's the demo sequence of the game.
The music is in fact slower too (they fixed that in later Sonic games, even if the games themselves were still slower and sqashed).
my parents cursed me with a Tatung Einstein. we had to drive 3 hours to the one shop that did software for it...
And most of the time, they can't even be bothred fixing the music in Sonic 1.
Litterly, I think it's Sonic Jam, Sonic Mega Collection GC and Sega MegaDrive Collection out of the so many compilations they have.
Of course, why they didn't say, THROW the pal roms away is anyone's guess.
[makes sucking-in-between-teeth-noise]That, and the Oric 1 (Forth? Forth!) a mate of mine got has to be cruellest thing a parent can do without leaving a mark on you. Well, a physical one anyway.
(smiley face on its side composed of punctuation marks)
My apologies, Forth was the Jupiter Ace. I don't know anyone who had to deal with one of those. I miss having lots of different 'puters sround sometimes, though.
But FFX... Gawd, Tidus runs like an old hag...
Square sold PAL FFX partially on the phony premise of it being a special 'widescreen' version. Amazing.
There's a particularly weak argument for the state of European VC releases; that we are essentially getting exactly what we had before, and that's good because it's how people remember them.
+
Mod your PS2 (you can spend way less than 100$).
+
Buy wanted PAL games which offer the NTSC output options.
+
Also buy wanted PAL games which do not offer such option, then download the NTSC version and play that.
=
Be happy and feel righteous. ;)
By the way, it's crazy to buy a PAL PS2 today and not enable it to play NTSC games somehow.
also, sonic was indeed THAT slow on PAL. Super Metroid too... PAL is bad in general.
Great write up man, you feel all of the PAL gamers hatred and we support you.