There's a misunderstanding regarding Hz and fps. 50 Hz does not necessarily give you 25fps, and it certainly didn't do it with older consoles. Those consoles altered the signals sent to the TV, causing it to redraw the same set of lines with each refresh, thus displaying 50 or 60 fps, but at half the resolution (240p/288p). That's why every other line stayed blank, giving the picture that scanlined look. Super Mario Kart for example runs at 50 (or 60) fps for sure. With N64 games it was essentially the same, though the N64 couldn't render 50 or 60 3D images per second, so they used a fraction of that. Zelda Ocarina of Time for example runs at 20fps, which is exactly 1/3 of 60, thus preventing stutter due to hz/fps not being synchronized. PAL-OOT resulted in about 17fps due to the slowdown. For other games it's probably similar.
Hey just to expand on this - the n64 was physically capable of displaying games at 60fps - it’s just that most games were too graphically intense for the system to run at more than 30. Seems like a very few select games ran at 60 (F-zero X and Smash 64 are the only ones I know)
Americans playing Zelda at 20FPS claiming us in Europe had slower games as we blasted combos at 60 frames and haven't seen a single scanline before emulators added their crappy filters. Yeah, we absolutely played Japanese 60 FPS PS1 games on 50Hz TVs, most PS1 fighters had full speed: Tekken, Bloody Roar, Dead or Alive, Fighters' Impact, Kensei, Tobal, Street Fighter EX... Tomb Raider was limited to 30FPS on PAL, but again, not 25! You can check it, the European original version of Tomb Raider 2, 3, 4 and 5 have correct aspect ratio and 30 frames and look the same as PC games, while NTSC are stretched vertically with stickman Lara and are limited by the same speed. Only TR1 PAL is slowed. By PS2 era, many PAL games let you switch between 50 and 60Hz, I remember buying a new flat CRT as a kid so Tekken 5 can run in full color without slowdowns. No visible scanline gaps either.
I remember being like 5 and my dad bringing home like 6 Disney VHS tapes he got from the US and I was so excited, popped them in the Siemens player and they didn't quite work right thankfully, he was tech savy had a spare Toshiba VHS player that could swap between NTSC and PAL. I live in Nigeria by the way.
Good save! Yeah cheap video players weren't region free. They also couldn't record in 'long-play'. I found this out when I brought a movie to my mates house that was taped in long-play and the playback was ridiculously fast.
One Addendum: Despite Brazil using PAL, our PAL-M is a kind of hybrid of both PAL-N (used in Europe) and NTSC, so we had 60hz versions because of simple NTSC-PAL-M conversions/transcodifications
@@cabbagewater playing pirated PS1 games with PAL/NTSC selectors for multi-language ports* were hell because of screen flickering on 50hz and the patched 60hz were still not that right fitting on screen *as there wasn't native PTBR releases, a part of playerbase prefered playing on euro version because of spanish (nearest language)
that reminds me back in school my friend's copy of Gran Turismo 2 displayed only in black & white. Back then we assumed someone messed up the copying process! (Cabbage Water does not condone the pirating of games)
Tried PAL-60 once on a flatscreen I had lying around, and the image quality was *slightly* worse than NTSC. Still, at least you're getting the intended experience.
“Avoid PAL versions at all costs” lol dude, I’ve got NTSC and PAL consoles for most of my retro consoles. Connected to the same Sony Trinitron TV. The difference is barely noticeable most of the time and if anything, the PAL versions look slightly better and games usually don’t have bugs present like in their NTSC counterparts. Just look into rom revisions and you’ll see that PAL regions usually always had the latest revision rom in comparison. In addition to this, the option for multiple languages. PAL regions also received a heap of exclusive games on many consoles and when it came to the SNES in particular, the PAL version console and controller look far better than the US NTSC version.
Thanks for commenting. Those are some very valid points. Not sure i'd sacrifice gameplay speed for any of the PAL benefits you mentioned, but admittedly I've not done a proper visual comparison of PAL and NTSC games on a crt tv. I'm keen to give it a test and see how it compares.
@@cabbagewater yeah the only real difference is the black bars on the top and bottom but most of the games only have small bars which quickly become unnoticeable during gameplay. Then you have games such as Super Street Fighter 2 on the Snes which has large black bars for some reason. Regarding the speed, there’s not much difference at all and if anything, it makes some games easier to play due to the games running at a speed that our older brains can keep up with so to speak lol
so many misinformations here. the 60hz ntsc version is still superior to the pal 50hz version. the only valid point to stay on pal would be the "higher" resolution in pixels. But play for example any sonic game on a mega drive, megaman 2 on NES, tekken 3 on ps1 or tekken tag tournament on ps2 50vs60hz. Huge difference in gamespeed and music. Pal feels just sluggish and slow.
Don't equate refresh rate with FPS! In SECAM region we used all of those standards, I remember there was a PAL/Secam switcher on VHS (movies are 24 FPS so NTSC means worse resolution and bad timings), and we grew up with Japanese NTSC games, both on Famiclones and on PlayStation. We had American Crash at 30 FPS, UK version of Tomb Raider that had correct aspect ratio also at 30, plus Tekken & other fighters from Japan at 60. You made me want to connect old TV and check if my Contra is the Japanese version with wind moving trees. 1:38 I had that when I connected a PS2 Tekken 4 and set it to 60Hz, and 5 outright didn't show color, so I asked mum to buy a then-modern PAL CRT, and everything worked on 60. But before PS2 there were no problems running NTSC games on PAL/SECAM television sets. We mostly used SCARTs, but sometimes composite cables too. With every cartridge being a Chinese bootleg, I highly doubt they PAL-converted games that had Japanese text in them.
I remember as a kid in the 90s who is from Saudi Arabia we had games coming from USA, EU and Japan plus the voltage in here in Saudi always been both! so we have a 110v 60 Hertz and 110v 50 hertz and 220v 50Hertz and 220v 60 Hertz and in each house there is different plugs for each voltage so our TVs had the options to switch between PAL and NTSC and when we got in late 90s early 2000s there's TVs that choose automatically depending on the source either if it's PAL or NTSC and in Asia the only countries that uses 60 hertz are only 5 countries in the whole of Asia which includes Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea etc. and it makes sense seeing these countries are places for western to work/live and most of our models and imported stuff are American mostly and being an American known allies and having so much trade and people living in both countries for work or study etc. it makes sense to have common things like voltage and being able to plug it and be good to go either in those Asian countries or in America and Saudi has Pal too because it's so common in the region and because of UK influence in the region too so it makes sense for us having both because a lot of Europeans and mostly UK/France people living in here too
Very interesting. If retailers supplied both versions it must have been confusing for some folks to know which versions to choose. I imagine there were lots of returns/swaps.
@@cabbagewater Not as far as I know and it wasn't a thing in here I think most TVs either been edited on or were made for the demand in here because all TVs in here work on 110v either 50 Hertz or 60, my mom from Kuwait and I used to travel there more than I could count and they only use 220v 50 Hertz only which seems odd to me because in Saudi putting a TV on 220 is very rare we just put it on a 110v but recently we moved from 50 Hertz totally into 60 Hertz only so they unified it but for my whole life over 30 years and way before it used to be both but I have no Idea if it effects the lights or only it's optional in the wall plugs! I love stuff like this and how the world uses different stuff even plug shapes etc. and tech is an amazing thing to know and see how each country adapt it or mix it. the stuff we only use on a 110v for example are TVs, desk lamps, gaming consoles, TV receivers, VHS player back then, DVD player. the stuff that works only on 220 are ACs, refrigerators, freezers, PC, and any stuff that needs a lot of power and that's the norm in here since ever so when you design a home you gotta make sure to put both plugs and in the right places for the needed appliances like a fridge. Hope this was intersting or helpful and I appreciate your reply and the effort you put in this channel
I'm in the UK, and whilst all PS1 and PS2 games released over here were PAL, on a British PlayStation Classic console, 9 of the games are PAL and the rest of the games are NTSC
1:54 - but, is it just me or does Tael (the dark-coloured fairy) look different on NTSC? Playing on PAL I always saw that he was purple with red around the outside, but the NTSC | 50Hz Display makes him look almost indigo. Is that just me? I love stuff like this, though - it’s like seeing how people got to experience games around the world. ^^;
Nah what's going on in this footage is that i'm demonstrating what occurs when you force the ntsc 60Hz version of the game to run on pal 50Hz hardware - so the distorted colours are a result of that. Besides the frame rate the game looked the same in all regions 🙂
This is why all my pre-XBOX 360 (and Wii) games are NTSC. It's more expensive but the difference in the experience is absolutely worth it. This was even going on with the Wii. Games like Mario Party Wii and Madworld have no 60Hz option and are slower in PAL. And PAL PS3 games only run at 50Hz when outputting an SD resolution. I'm glad that we've left these issues behind and that it never affected PC (aside from home computers like the MSX) or handhelds.
Thats really interesting about PAL PS3 only supporting 50hz when outputting SD resolution. I remember playing my first playthrough of GTA4 on a CRT tv and didn't notice any problem at the time.
@@cabbagewater While PAL PS3 games output at 50Hz in SD, it at least is fully optimised 50Hz, or at least it is in the games I've tried out including GTA IV. I did a test a few months ago with my PS3 games outputted in 4:3 576i 50Hz via RGB scart. The speed was optimised in every one and there were no PAL borders, so that's probably why you didn't notice it, we got the full benefit of the extra resolution at the cost of frame rate, which is what playing in 50Hz should be. I'm the same, I played PS3 on a CRT back then too. Of course, this doesn't mean that every game is fully optimised, just the ones I tried. Also, even though there were no PAL borders in the games I played, some games force 16:9, so those games will be heavily bordered in both PAL and NTSC if outputting in 4:3. But at least you get the full 16:9 picture as a tradeoff, and the picture isn't squashed like what PAL borders give you, it's just small. I didn't have an XBOX 360 back then, but it was the exact opposite. Microsoft made 480i/p 60Hz support mandatory for PAL games, such that many don't even support 50Hz due to a lack of disc space. It really puts Sony's lack of caring in perspective. There's no reason they couldn't have done the same.
@@tvsonicserbia5140 It does, and thankfully most PAL Wii games support both 60Hz and 480p. The ones I mentioned were notable exceptions to this. It wasn't a major issue on Wii, but it can still happen, and not just with shovelware.
Thats funny. I've not tried SCART signal so I'm curious how much better it is than AV signal. Going from PS5 to anything pre PS2 era is enough to make the eyes bleed
I only knew about PAL and NTSC video games when I found out about the changes that Rockstar made to GTA 3 on the eleventh hour before its release due to 9/11. I know it’s a very unpleasant way to find out about these differences to say the least, but anyway, some of the changes implemented in the NTSC version hadn’t been implemented in the earlier PAL versions.
if you want to get into C64 and Amiga games, get a PAL system if you can get a TV to display a PAL signal as well. NTSC C64 isn't terrible, but NTSC Amiga will leave you missing a lot of classics.
pal gamer here, and ill keep on collecting and playing pal for the simple reason availability. theres just no ntsc in europe, and the prices for ntsc games are stupid high compared to pal
That's interesting you find PAL games to be cheaper over in Europe. In Australia most old games are marked up ridiculously high that I found it considerably cheaper to just import NTSC carts from the States.
@@cabbagewater yeah i paid around 15ish for a budokai tenkaichi 3 which is around 150 on ntsc. same thing with majoras mask, paid a very cheap price compared to ntsc. its just that they were available here so there are still some left in people's closets.
@@cabbagewater interesting. Yeah it's the opposite here in the UK for example final fantasy 7 goes for £24 the NTSC version goes for around £60 but then with High shipping costs you're looking at £80 this is eBay btw It's crazy Personally as a good middle ground I collect PAL games but play the NTSC versions using a X station installed in the original system hooked up to a Sony CRT TV
I don't collect games and have only bought US replacement versions of some of my favourites. But as a collector I imagine that price difference does play quite a deciding factor of whether to go PAL of NTSC. I had to look up what this X-Staton was. The first appealing thing that came to mind was the fact I would no longer need to have hoards of games in storage!
What part of Europe? In Ukraine we had NTSC-J, NTSC-U or Euro PAL games mixed in, you can easily tell on PS1 when loading screen says Sony Computer Entertainment America/Europe/Japan.
It's also worth adding for the original Xbox, NTSC is the best option too, when paired with a component cable. 720p and 1080i cannot be used on Pal region OG Xboxes. NTSC has allot of advantages over PAL on older generation consoles. My OG xbox was converted to NTSC, and many games look amazing when taking advantage of the HD resolution.
This is a good comparison of PAL vs NTSC with all the game videos. Is it just me or does the picture looks clearer on NTSC than on PAL? On Pal it looks a bit blurry and lettering is a bit harder to read.
Thanks, glad you found this video useful. The Super Nintendo NTSC samples were captured using my Mini SNES, so that does have an unfair advantage over the PAL SNES footage. However all the other NTSC and PAL examples were captured on original hardware, and I agree the NTSC versions appear clearer.
@@cabbagewater ahhh ok this could explain the difference, thanks for claryfing it, I was already wondering :) , looks like they also improved a bit the picture with the mini SNES. With what would you go? PAL with higher resolution but 50hz or NTSC with lesser resolution but 60hz?
Do ntsc games work on all ps1s and ps2s? (Depending on what version of PlayStation the games are of course). I just bought a bunch of ntsc ps1 games that my ps2 slim isn’t reading yet the ps2 slim successfully reads one of my already owned ps1 games which is pal
So Brazil is the third counry that actually had Nintendo 64? Mostly it was USA console with also some sales in Japan. I wondered where else because looking up, 50% of its sales were in North America.
at 05:27 did you said pal gamers got a much better version? you meant ntsc gamers got a better version? as far as I know nintendo didn't bother to optimize their games to account for the increased pal resolution. rareware games starting with their snes games took full advantage of the pal format.
Sorry the audio quality isn't very good. I actually said "fatter version of their favorite plumber" ... a joke at the fact that the screen was squished with black bars for us PAL gamers. Thanks for watching!
What happens when you use an everdrive on a pal nes, snes and mega drive to play ntsc games? Will it now be 60hz or no? Im looking into getting a few everdrives to use on pal consoles. If this is a problem i may consider importing north American consoles first
I can't say for sure about the Everdrive, however I used to have one of those region free cartridge adaptors, and can confirm that when playing an NTSC game on my PAL Super Nintendo console, the game was slowed down to 50Hz. Same goes the other way, when running a PAL game on an NTSC console, the game is sped up to 60Hz. Playing games of different regions caused all sorts of issues, as for example when running the PAL version of A Link to the Past on my USA console Link moved really fast as Nintendo actually optimised Link's speed in the PAL version to match the NTSC version (although the rest of the game still ran slow). I wish I kept my converter as that would make a great comparison video.
Depends on the system, got a mod chipped PS1 that runs NTSC games perfectly, same goes for the PS2 when using FreeDVDBoot. I suspect you won't have much luck with earlier consoles though.
But things started to change in the early 2000s when all consoles (except the ps2) started to support pal60. 50hz only games kept existing even when the wii was popular (there weren't many of them tho).
@@gianmarcofilipponi2673 yeah but that's different. I was talking about official 60hz support in Europe. Forgot to mention that the pal PS2 supports 60hz for some games. Also were you playing imported copies or modified pal copies (with a tool that forced them to run at 60hz)??? Because I also heard that a lot of people in pal territories imported games.
Yeah my bad. The SNES NTSC gameplay footage was captured using my Mini SNES, which I had set to 'Pixel Perfect' mode instead of '4:3'. The N64, GameCube and PlayStation footage was all captured on the original hardware.
from my experience as someone who live in europe, avoid PAL games mostly if they are 8/16 bit. because most games from 32bit onward thankfully were converted way better trust me
Other than Rare titles, i still can't bring myself to play the pal versions of the N64 and PSX era. If you're curious I did do a video comparing the US and European versions of a select few Nintendo 64 games using the Switch Online service. th-cam.com/video/NcaY-8EjmsA/w-d-xo.html
@@cabbagewater im not a native english speaker so i writed It wrong, i mean: you are good to go in playing PAL versions of the games, but avoid N64 titles and 8/16 bit one
@@cabbagewater Core's Tomb Raider is a major exception with fast and larger PAL, I wonder what other games native to Pal region had botched vertically stretched NTSC versions.
I imported since 1994. Telling folk to avoid pal at all costs lol. Like that's going to happen. Your video, like others doesn't say why pal games were necessary. Arcade games were 60hz since space invaders in 1978. The reason they were necessary is because 100 percent of tvs used a rf broadcast antenna cable which required to tune in like a TV channel. If 100 percent of tvs had scart, composite or svideo this would never have happened. It's because tv manufacturers were cheap.
@@cabbagewaterrf is for broadcast, broadcast in pal land is 50hz only. This required you tune in the console at RF frequency like a TV channel which had to be 50hz. Around 40 percent of tvs had scart, svideo and composite which could use hard wiring into the TV bypassing the tuner completely. Around 5 percent of gamers imported ntsc consoles and played them on pal tvs via those connections. The only reason console manufacturers made the consoles and games 50hz compliant is to reach 100 percent compatibility with pal tvs. In 1995 Sega tried to be clever with the saturn and released the console with a scart lead only. Folk got home and didn't know what to do with it. Stores had 3 rf modulators sold separately in stock and they sold straight away. Everyone else was upset as they had a 400 quid console with no connection to their tv. All pc monitors worldwide were 60hz, all arcade monitors were 60hz, all cinemas were 24hz. The idea here is, if you have a dedicated screen for the purpose it was designed it would run optimally for that purpose. The rf connector was the bottleneck for game consoles. It meant the rf modulator was 50hz compliant for pal land, if you connected 60hz into rf it flickered and rolled and in black and white. . In ntsc countries the rf connector was still used but the TV was ntsc compliant, even on the rf bandwidth because it's an ntsc console going into an rf tuner on the TV. The weird thing is 99 percent of Americans used shite connections whilst UK importers were connecting ntsc consoles via rgb scart. We were buying their kit and getting better results on the screen. Rf is shite, it has blurry image and has radio interference on the screen. Rgb was clear and beautiful.
@@atomiswave1971 great explanation. Very interesting. You should do a video on the topic. I recall the first time I brought my Dreamcast to my mates house that despite it using the RGB cables, the game would flicker and display back and white. Took us a while to work we had to set the game to 50hz. I suppose in that scenario the tv supported the RGB input, but was still only compatible with displaying 50hz. My tv in the 90's had no issue with PAL60hz
@@cabbagewater I'm not sure most people notice pal vs ntsc. Some things to mention, borders were created by the 8x8 pixel structure on 2d games. 1 line 1 pixel. Hence 100 lines blank top and bottom. In 3d they optimized geometry to fix it. The reason most games were not optimized is because the games were signed off and devs moved on to other projects. Apart from sonic, the worst offenders I've seen are galaxian on load for ridge racer, tekken and tekken 2, bust a move 2. All are squished, slow and bordered. If only all tv manufacturers put the right connections on our tvs we could have just got the ntsc version. Have you noticed mini consoles only have usa versions of the games?
I unknowingly discovered this on the Ocarina of Time bonus disk which came with Wind Waker. At the time I was wondering why Link was running so fast and just put it down to the emulation on GameCube.🤣
You can using one of those region-free third party adaptors, however it does come with some limitations. For example, not all games work with the adaptor (e.g. Mario All-Stars and the Donkey Kong games), and for the very few games that were optimised to run faster on PAL (to match the speed of the original NTSC versions), these run really fast on an NTSC console.
Can't say i've noticed the colours being an issue for PAL games, but as some of the games were squished vertically I suppose this does give a fuzzy appearance to the picture.
There's a misunderstanding regarding Hz and fps. 50 Hz does not necessarily give you 25fps, and it certainly didn't do it with older consoles.
Those consoles altered the signals sent to the TV, causing it to redraw the same set of lines with each refresh, thus displaying 50 or 60 fps, but at half the resolution (240p/288p). That's why every other line stayed blank, giving the picture that scanlined look. Super Mario Kart for example runs at 50 (or 60) fps for sure.
With N64 games it was essentially the same, though the N64 couldn't render 50 or 60 3D images per second, so they used a fraction of that. Zelda Ocarina of Time for example runs at 20fps, which is exactly 1/3 of 60, thus preventing stutter due to hz/fps not being synchronized. PAL-OOT resulted in about 17fps due to the slowdown. For other games it's probably similar.
Great, thanks for the explanation. Very interesting.
Hey just to expand on this - the n64 was physically capable of displaying games at 60fps - it’s just that most games were too graphically intense for the system to run at more than 30. Seems like a very few select games ran at 60 (F-zero X and Smash 64 are the only ones I know)
@@MS_GOOB Right, I completely forgot about F-Zero X.
Americans playing Zelda at 20FPS claiming us in Europe had slower games as we blasted combos at 60 frames and haven't seen a single scanline before emulators added their crappy filters. Yeah, we absolutely played Japanese 60 FPS PS1 games on 50Hz TVs, most PS1 fighters had full speed: Tekken, Bloody Roar, Dead or Alive, Fighters' Impact, Kensei, Tobal, Street Fighter EX... Tomb Raider was limited to 30FPS on PAL, but again, not 25!
You can check it, the European original version of Tomb Raider 2, 3, 4 and 5 have correct aspect ratio and 30 frames and look the same as PC games, while NTSC are stretched vertically with stickman Lara and are limited by the same speed. Only TR1 PAL is slowed. By PS2 era, many PAL games let you switch between 50 and 60Hz, I remember buying a new flat CRT as a kid so Tekken 5 can run in full color without slowdowns. No visible scanline gaps either.
I remember being like 5 and my dad bringing home like 6 Disney VHS tapes he got from the US and I was so excited, popped them in the Siemens player and they didn't quite work right thankfully, he was tech savy had a spare Toshiba VHS player that could swap between NTSC and PAL. I live in Nigeria by the way.
Good save! Yeah cheap video players weren't region free.
They also couldn't record in 'long-play'. I found this out when I brought a movie to my mates house that was taped in long-play and the playback was ridiculously fast.
I grew up with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Those games were optimized really well!
I haven't played Crash in many years. Might have to dust off my PS1 to see how it holds up.
One Addendum:
Despite Brazil using PAL, our PAL-M is a kind of hybrid of both PAL-N (used in Europe) and NTSC, so we had 60hz versions because of simple NTSC-PAL-M conversions/transcodifications
Wow. I didn't know that. Happy to hear that you folks weren't screwed over like the rest of us PAL territories.
@@cabbagewater playing pirated PS1 games with PAL/NTSC selectors for multi-language ports* were hell because of screen flickering on 50hz and the patched 60hz were still not that right fitting on screen
*as there wasn't native PTBR releases, a part of playerbase prefered playing on euro version because of spanish (nearest language)
that reminds me back in school my friend's copy of Gran Turismo 2 displayed only in black & white. Back then we assumed someone messed up the copying process! (Cabbage Water does not condone the pirating of games)
And we also had the benefits of using modchips, like PS2 Matrix, that fix PAL colors.
Tried PAL-60 once on a flatscreen I had lying around, and the image quality was *slightly* worse than NTSC. Still, at least you're getting the intended experience.
“Avoid PAL versions at all costs” lol dude, I’ve got NTSC and PAL consoles for most of my retro consoles. Connected to the same Sony Trinitron TV. The difference is barely noticeable most of the time and if anything, the PAL versions look slightly better and games usually don’t have bugs present like in their NTSC counterparts. Just look into rom revisions and you’ll see that PAL regions usually always had the latest revision rom in comparison. In addition to this, the option for multiple languages. PAL regions also received a heap of exclusive games on many consoles and when it came to the SNES in particular, the PAL version console and controller look far better than the US NTSC version.
Thanks for commenting. Those are some very valid points.
Not sure i'd sacrifice gameplay speed for any of the PAL benefits you mentioned, but admittedly I've not done a proper visual comparison of PAL and NTSC games on a crt tv. I'm keen to give it a test and see how it compares.
@@cabbagewater yeah the only real difference is the black bars on the top and bottom but most of the games only have small bars which quickly become unnoticeable during gameplay. Then you have games such as Super Street Fighter 2 on the Snes which has large black bars for some reason. Regarding the speed, there’s not much difference at all and if anything, it makes some games easier to play due to the games running at a speed that our older brains can keep up with so to speak lol
so many misinformations here.
the 60hz ntsc version is still superior to the pal 50hz version.
the only valid point to stay on pal would be the "higher" resolution in pixels.
But play for example any sonic game on a mega drive, megaman 2 on NES, tekken 3 on ps1 or tekken tag tournament on ps2 50vs60hz.
Huge difference in gamespeed and music. Pal feels just sluggish and slow.
@@AB_883 small black bars LMAO, HUGE black bars and playing with fucking wrong aspect ratio, PAL is WORSE 99% of the time. or u are blind as fuck.
The PAL SFC design was also used in japan
Don't equate refresh rate with FPS! In SECAM region we used all of those standards, I remember there was a PAL/Secam switcher on VHS (movies are 24 FPS so NTSC means worse resolution and bad timings), and we grew up with Japanese NTSC games, both on Famiclones and on PlayStation. We had American Crash at 30 FPS, UK version of Tomb Raider that had correct aspect ratio also at 30, plus Tekken & other fighters from Japan at 60.
You made me want to connect old TV and check if my Contra is the Japanese version with wind moving trees.
1:38 I had that when I connected a PS2 Tekken 4 and set it to 60Hz, and 5 outright didn't show color, so I asked mum to buy a then-modern PAL CRT, and everything worked on 60. But before PS2 there were no problems running NTSC games on PAL/SECAM television sets. We mostly used SCARTs, but sometimes composite cables too. With every cartridge being a Chinese bootleg, I highly doubt they PAL-converted games that had Japanese text in them.
Best selection of simpsons memes. Fits perfectly.
I remember as a kid in the 90s who is from Saudi Arabia we had games coming from USA, EU and Japan plus the voltage in here in Saudi always been both!
so we have a 110v 60 Hertz and 110v 50 hertz and 220v 50Hertz and 220v 60 Hertz and in each house there is different plugs for each voltage so our TVs had the options to switch
between PAL and NTSC and when we got in late 90s early 2000s there's TVs that choose automatically depending on the source either if it's PAL or NTSC and in Asia the only countries
that uses 60 hertz are only 5 countries in the whole of Asia which includes Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea etc. and it makes sense seeing these countries are places for western to work/live
and most of our models and imported stuff are American mostly and being an American known allies and having so much trade and people living in both countries for work or study etc.
it makes sense to have common things like voltage and being able to plug it and be good to go either in those Asian countries or in America and Saudi has Pal too because it's so common in
the region and because of UK influence in the region too so it makes sense for us having both because a lot of Europeans and mostly UK/France people living in here too
Very interesting. If retailers supplied both versions it must have been confusing for some folks to know which versions to choose. I imagine there were lots of returns/swaps.
@@cabbagewater Not as far as I know and it wasn't a thing in here I think most TVs either been edited on or were made for the demand in here because all TVs in here work on 110v either 50 Hertz or 60, my mom from Kuwait and I used to travel there more than I could count and they only use 220v 50 Hertz only which seems odd to me because in Saudi putting a TV on 220 is very rare we just put it on a 110v but recently we moved from 50 Hertz totally into 60 Hertz only so they unified it but for my whole life over 30 years and way before it used to be both but I have no Idea if it effects the lights or only it's optional in the wall plugs! I love stuff like this and how the world uses different stuff even plug shapes etc. and tech is an amazing thing to know and see how each country adapt it or mix it. the stuff we only use on a 110v for example are TVs, desk lamps, gaming consoles, TV receivers, VHS player back then, DVD player. the stuff that works only on 220 are ACs, refrigerators, freezers, PC, and any stuff that needs a lot of power and that's the norm in here since ever so when you design a home you gotta make sure to put both plugs and in the right places for the needed appliances like a fridge. Hope this was intersting or helpful and I appreciate your reply and the effort you put in this channel
Thanks for sharing. Its very interesting, you should do a video on this stuff.
Super informative
Glad you think so!
I remmember playing Gran Turismo ntsc-j on my pal ps1 back in 97 discs were unlicensed without protection and ran perfectly fine
I'm in the UK, and whilst all PS1 and PS2 games released over here were PAL, on a British PlayStation Classic console, 9 of the games are PAL and the rest of the games are NTSC
Pretty sure the PS Classic was the same across all regions (excluding Japan), so even US gamers got a taste of PAL.
1:54 - but, is it just me or does Tael (the dark-coloured fairy) look different on NTSC? Playing on PAL I always saw that he was purple with red around the outside, but the NTSC | 50Hz Display makes him look almost indigo. Is that just me?
I love stuff like this, though - it’s like seeing how people got to experience games around the world. ^^;
Nah what's going on in this footage is that i'm demonstrating what occurs when you force the ntsc 60Hz version of the game to run on pal 50Hz hardware - so the distorted colours are a result of that. Besides the frame rate the game looked the same in all regions 🙂
This is why all my pre-XBOX 360 (and Wii) games are NTSC. It's more expensive but the difference in the experience is absolutely worth it. This was even going on with the Wii. Games like Mario Party Wii and Madworld have no 60Hz option and are slower in PAL. And PAL PS3 games only run at 50Hz when outputting an SD resolution. I'm glad that we've left these issues behind and that it never affected PC (aside from home computers like the MSX) or handhelds.
Thats really interesting about PAL PS3 only supporting 50hz when outputting SD resolution. I remember playing my first playthrough of GTA4 on a CRT tv and didn't notice any problem at the time.
@@cabbagewater While PAL PS3 games output at 50Hz in SD, it at least is fully optimised 50Hz, or at least it is in the games I've tried out including GTA IV. I did a test a few months ago with my PS3 games outputted in 4:3 576i 50Hz via RGB scart. The speed was optimised in every one and there were no PAL borders, so that's probably why you didn't notice it, we got the full benefit of the extra resolution at the cost of frame rate, which is what playing in 50Hz should be. I'm the same, I played PS3 on a CRT back then too.
Of course, this doesn't mean that every game is fully optimised, just the ones I tried. Also, even though there were no PAL borders in the games I played, some games force 16:9, so those games will be heavily bordered in both PAL and NTSC if outputting in 4:3. But at least you get the full 16:9 picture as a tradeoff, and the picture isn't squashed like what PAL borders give you, it's just small.
I didn't have an XBOX 360 back then, but it was the exact opposite. Microsoft made 480i/p 60Hz support mandatory for PAL games, such that many don't even support 50Hz due to a lack of disc space. It really puts Sony's lack of caring in perspective. There's no reason they couldn't have done the same.
Wii does 60hz PAL
@@tvsonicserbia5140 It does, and thankfully most PAL Wii games support both 60Hz and 480p. The ones I mentioned were notable exceptions to this. It wasn't a major issue on Wii, but it can still happen, and not just with shovelware.
Imagine using those crappy componment cables when SCART exists
Thats funny. I've not tried SCART signal so I'm curious how much better it is than AV signal.
Going from PS5 to anything pre PS2 era is enough to make the eyes bleed
@@cabbagewater it’s nicer AV cables break easily and are flimsy so I prefer SCART
@@Roverpiggy2435 SCART cables seem to be relatively cheap on ebay. I might give it a try.
Conversely, I dislike hearing the music from games developed in Europe in the 90's playing sped up on youtube videos.
I only knew about PAL and NTSC video games when I found out about the changes that Rockstar made to GTA 3 on the eleventh hour before its release due to 9/11. I know it’s a very unpleasant way to find out about these differences to say the least, but anyway, some of the changes implemented in the NTSC version hadn’t been implemented in the earlier PAL versions.
if you want to get into C64 and Amiga games, get a PAL system if you can get a TV to display a PAL signal as well. NTSC C64 isn't terrible, but NTSC Amiga will leave you missing a lot of classics.
Thanks for the tip. I'm very unfamiliar with that era of gaming. Quite interesting to read up on.
pal gamer here, and ill keep on collecting and playing pal for the simple reason
availability.
theres just no ntsc in europe, and the prices for ntsc games are stupid high compared to pal
That's interesting you find PAL games to be cheaper over in Europe. In Australia most old games are marked up ridiculously high that I found it considerably cheaper to just import NTSC carts from the States.
@@cabbagewater yeah i paid around 15ish for a budokai tenkaichi 3 which is around 150 on ntsc. same thing with majoras mask, paid a very cheap price compared to ntsc. its just that they were available here so there are still some left in people's closets.
@@cabbagewater interesting. Yeah it's the opposite here in the UK for example final fantasy 7 goes for £24 the NTSC version goes for around £60 but then with High shipping costs you're looking at £80 this is eBay btw
It's crazy
Personally as a good middle ground I collect PAL games but play the NTSC versions using a X station installed in the original system hooked up to a Sony CRT TV
I don't collect games and have only bought US replacement versions of some of my favourites. But as a collector I imagine that price difference does play quite a deciding factor of whether to go PAL of NTSC.
I had to look up what this X-Staton was. The first appealing thing that came to mind was the fact I would no longer need to have hoards of games in storage!
What part of Europe? In Ukraine we had NTSC-J, NTSC-U or Euro PAL games mixed in, you can easily tell on PS1 when loading screen says Sony Computer Entertainment America/Europe/Japan.
It's also worth adding for the original Xbox, NTSC is the best option too, when paired with a component cable. 720p and 1080i cannot be used on Pal region OG Xboxes. NTSC has allot of advantages over PAL on older generation consoles. My OG xbox was converted to NTSC, and many games look amazing when taking advantage of the HD resolution.
Thats an impressive resolution boost! I had no idea the original Xbox was capable of that.
Will an NTSC Xbox with RGB scart support those resolutions?
Yeah, but we had rgb scart crt's.
This is a good comparison of PAL vs NTSC with all the game videos. Is it just me or does the picture looks clearer on NTSC than on PAL? On Pal it looks a bit blurry and lettering is a bit harder to read.
Thanks, glad you found this video useful.
The Super Nintendo NTSC samples were captured using my Mini SNES, so that does have an unfair advantage over the PAL SNES footage. However all the other NTSC and PAL examples were captured on original hardware, and I agree the NTSC versions appear clearer.
@@cabbagewater ahhh ok this could explain the difference, thanks for claryfing it, I was already wondering :) , looks like they also improved a bit the picture with the mini SNES. With what would you go? PAL with higher resolution but 50hz or NTSC with lesser resolution but 60hz?
@@Afura33 NTSC without doubt
@@cabbagewater sounds good, I am still torn between both, I like the language option of some of the games though.
Do ntsc games work on all ps1s and ps2s? (Depending on what version of PlayStation the games are of course). I just bought a bunch of ntsc ps1 games that my ps2 slim isn’t reading yet the ps2 slim successfully reads one of my already owned ps1 games which is pal
No. There are 3 regions. Console and disc must match.
Chipped consoles are region free, and PS2 or PS3 emulating PS1 should be region agnostic too.
@@KasumiRINA Have you tried this on an unmodified console? For example NTSC-J PS1 game on a PAL PS2 console? I don't think it would work.
Brazilian Nintendo 64 do a funny thing, they run NTSC games but display them in PAL
Because PAL-M, which is what Brazil uses, is more like a hybrid of NTSC and PAL. 60hz, but with PAL style color and video encoding
So Brazil is the third counry that actually had Nintendo 64? Mostly it was USA console with also some sales in Japan. I wondered where else because looking up, 50% of its sales were in North America.
@@KasumiRINA there was a partnership between Nintendo and Gradiente Electronics called "Playtronic" that lasted from the NES until the Wii
at 05:27 did you said pal gamers got a much better version? you meant ntsc gamers got a better version? as far as I know nintendo didn't bother to optimize their games to account for the increased pal resolution. rareware games starting with their snes games took full advantage of the pal format.
Sorry the audio quality isn't very good. I actually said "fatter version of their favorite plumber" ... a joke at the fact that the screen was squished with black bars for us PAL gamers. Thanks for watching!
What happens when you use an everdrive on a pal nes, snes and mega drive to play ntsc games?
Will it now be 60hz or no?
Im looking into getting a few everdrives to use on pal consoles.
If this is a problem i may consider importing north American consoles first
I can't say for sure about the Everdrive, however I used to have one of those region free cartridge adaptors, and can confirm that when playing an NTSC game on my PAL Super Nintendo console, the game was slowed down to 50Hz.
Same goes the other way, when running a PAL game on an NTSC console, the game is sped up to 60Hz.
Playing games of different regions caused all sorts of issues, as for example when running the PAL version of A Link to the Past on my USA console Link moved really fast as Nintendo actually optimised Link's speed in the PAL version to match the NTSC version (although the rest of the game still ran slow).
I wish I kept my converter as that would make a great comparison video.
Depends on the system, got a mod chipped PS1 that runs NTSC games perfectly, same goes for the PS2 when using FreeDVDBoot.
I suspect you won't have much luck with earlier consoles though.
Thankfully the n64 ever drive will play both pal and ntsc correctly so long as your tv accepts both. So nice to get rid of the boarders.
But things started to change in the early 2000s when all consoles (except the ps2) started to support pal60.
50hz only games kept existing even when the wii was popular (there weren't many of them tho).
Glad those days are long behind us
In Italy we ever had PS1 and PS2 modded consoles with RGB scart connection, so we have ever player games at 60hz.
@@gianmarcofilipponi2673 yeah but that's different.
I was talking about official 60hz support in Europe.
Forgot to mention that the pal PS2 supports 60hz for some games.
Also were you playing imported copies or modified pal copies (with a tool that forced them to run at 60hz)???
Because I also heard that a lot of people in pal territories imported games.
@@gianmarcofilipponi2673si però zio non si é capito una sega di quello che hai scritto ahah
your aspect ration for NTSC is wrong. It's not 1x1
Yeah my bad. The SNES NTSC gameplay footage was captured using my Mini SNES, which I had set to 'Pixel Perfect' mode instead of '4:3'.
The N64, GameCube and PlayStation footage was all captured on the original hardware.
from my experience as someone who live in europe, avoid PAL games mostly if they are 8/16 bit. because most games from 32bit onward thankfully were converted way better trust me
(aside from N64, always play them in NTSC.)
Other than Rare titles, i still can't bring myself to play the pal versions of the N64 and PSX era.
If you're curious I did do a video comparing the US and European versions of a select few Nintendo 64 games using the Switch Online service.
th-cam.com/video/NcaY-8EjmsA/w-d-xo.html
@@cabbagewater im not a native english speaker so i writed It wrong, i mean: you are good to go in playing PAL versions of the games, but avoid N64 titles and 8/16 bit one
@@cabbagewater Core's Tomb Raider is a major exception with fast and larger PAL, I wonder what other games native to Pal region had botched vertically stretched NTSC versions.
I imported since 1994. Telling folk to avoid pal at all costs lol. Like that's going to happen. Your video, like others doesn't say why pal games were necessary. Arcade games were 60hz since space invaders in 1978. The reason they were necessary is because 100 percent of tvs used a rf broadcast antenna cable which required to tune in like a TV channel. If 100 percent of tvs had scart, composite or svideo this would never have happened. It's because tv manufacturers were cheap.
Thanks for watching. Not quite sure I understand the significance of the RF signal as the need to have PAL.
@@cabbagewaterrf is for broadcast, broadcast in pal land is 50hz only. This required you tune in the console at RF frequency like a TV channel which had to be 50hz. Around 40 percent of tvs had scart, svideo and composite which could use hard wiring into the TV bypassing the tuner completely. Around 5 percent of gamers imported ntsc consoles and played them on pal tvs via those connections. The only reason console manufacturers made the consoles and games 50hz compliant is to reach 100 percent compatibility with pal tvs. In 1995 Sega tried to be clever with the saturn and released the console with a scart lead only. Folk got home and didn't know what to do with it. Stores had 3 rf modulators sold separately in stock and they sold straight away. Everyone else was upset as they had a 400 quid console with no connection to their tv. All pc monitors worldwide were 60hz, all arcade monitors were 60hz, all cinemas were 24hz. The idea here is, if you have a dedicated screen for the purpose it was designed it would run optimally for that purpose. The rf connector was the bottleneck for game consoles. It meant the rf modulator was 50hz compliant for pal land, if you connected 60hz into rf it flickered and rolled and in black and white. . In ntsc countries the rf connector was still used but the TV was ntsc compliant, even on the rf bandwidth because it's an ntsc console going into an rf tuner on the TV. The weird thing is 99 percent of Americans used shite connections whilst UK importers were connecting ntsc consoles via rgb scart. We were buying their kit and getting better results on the screen. Rf is shite, it has blurry image and has radio interference on the screen. Rgb was clear and beautiful.
@@atomiswave1971 great explanation. Very interesting. You should do a video on the topic.
I recall the first time I brought my Dreamcast to my mates house that despite it using the RGB cables, the game would flicker and display back and white. Took us a while to work we had to set the game to 50hz. I suppose in that scenario the tv supported the RGB input, but was still only compatible with displaying 50hz. My tv in the 90's had no issue with PAL60hz
@@cabbagewater I'm not sure most people notice pal vs ntsc. Some things to mention, borders were created by the 8x8 pixel structure on 2d games. 1 line 1 pixel. Hence 100 lines blank top and bottom. In 3d they optimized geometry to fix it. The reason most games were not optimized is because the games were signed off and devs moved on to other projects. Apart from sonic, the worst offenders I've seen are galaxian on load for ridge racer, tekken and tekken 2, bust a move 2. All are squished, slow and bordered. If only all tv manufacturers put the right connections on our tvs we could have just got the ntsc version. Have you noticed mini consoles only have usa versions of the games?
I have just ntsc gaming on my ps2. I don't know if pal gaming can work either . What do you think?
if it's moded, of course it can
@@olevet75
I remember discovering this and being so sad that all of my retro collection is 17% slower than in freedomland
I unknowingly discovered this on the Ocarina of Time bonus disk which came with Wind Waker. At the time I was wondering why Link was running so fast and just put it down to the emulation on GameCube.🤣
Where can I buy a new and beautiful Nintendo 64 like yours please an answer that I would love to buy it
Bought mine from Target for $99 clearance back in 2001!
if your use to playing pal versions
then the ntsc versions will just feel like your speedhacking
so it just feels wrong
As a European I feel DISCRIMINATED ON
worst thing is at the time most of us didn't know any better and still forked out $100 a game.
❤
So i can't take a PAL SNES game and play it on my NTSC SNES console?
You can using one of those region-free third party adaptors, however it does come with some limitations. For example, not all games work with the adaptor (e.g. Mario All-Stars and the Donkey Kong games), and for the very few games that were optimised to run faster on PAL (to match the speed of the original NTSC versions), these run really fast on an NTSC console.
The Pal versions mostly looked fuzzier and the colors were wrong.
Was that also often the case?
Can't say i've noticed the colours being an issue for PAL games, but as some of the games were squished vertically I suppose this does give a fuzzy appearance to the picture.
the only good pal is the commodore 64 every thing else sucks slow lol