Do You Still Buy Old Games? Probably Not a Great Idea if You Play Them.
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Collectors are in to own them regardless of performance, but if you buy games to play then you ought to know video games released in the U.K. were slowed down due to being in PAL format.
Consoles affected:
NES, Master System, SNES, Mega Drive, N64, PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox, and Wii.
Handhelds affected:
In terms of Nintendo handhelds, they didn't seem to have the PAL issue, but rather their PAL versions were the same as NTSC-U with the addition of more languages.
Comparison of PAL vs NTSC
And yes, there were a few PAL games optimized but.. they were few. Here's one of them:
In conclusion, I'd not buy PAL games to play as they're effectively slower than the U.S. version and it'd feel sluggish.
I wonder how many old games would be considered as "offensive" nowadays, seeing as some people nowadays find anything to get offended over.
That's just how people are nowadays, absurd if you ask me. A bit off-topic — Now, there's even those who think when someone brings up the Coronavirus means "you're being mildly racist and xenophobic."
It would be funny if it was a joke, but there's folks out there who somehow make that connection. I mean, how can someone be anti-China when they produce nearly everything in the world? That's just silly.
I remember in the past fitting a 50/60hz and region switch to my megadrive so I could play games at different speeds. I used a RGB scart cable to get the best image. I still used 50Hz sometimes though as I found I could get higher scores in some games but the music difference was annoying.
I am sure you know what you are talking about Rockman but do you think you could cite your sources for this? I could be wrong but, until I have evidence of it - and a pic isn't good, then I havent seen a difference.
PAL 50 Hz
NTSC 60 Hz
I also included two video comparisons.
And also, DVDs were affected too by the PAL system. That is, they had a resolution (still do) of 720x576 (older releases in 16:9 were at 1024x576) while the audio was sped-up.
Taken just from Wikipedia: "Games ported to PAL have historically been known for having game speed and frame rates inferior to their NTSC counterparts."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL_region
Do you remember playing SONIC on SEGA MD? Well, you played a really bad port of it.
That about it covers it. I received a PS2 (fat) console I bought from eBay for £7.50 and it was well worth it. Good condition and I'll just play USA / JPN games on it if I feel like it. Unfortunately, there were some EUR exclusive games that didn't get a release in USA / JPN so those are technically inferior.
Australia/NZ were pretty unlucky that the system for games and media was PAL too.
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