As far as Retro Gaming is concerned, and personally as an European,
pretty much every time that a conversation opens about these games
from gone by decades, there's always the higher-than-high chance
that the conversation leads to a very specific subject, even more if,
as I said, you live in Europe (I'm Spanish after all), or other places,
like Oceania or Africa.
And that's because while as of today, there are some standards that
we could point as globally accepted, it hasn't been always like that.
Decades ago, video games from one part of the world could work
very differently, sometimes becoming incompatible with devices
of other parts of the planet, rendering them useless.
That's why I'm going to expose some general information here,
so we all can understand several aspects that will help us with
these games and systems from old days, like the different Video
formats, the importance of knowing from where a game comes from...
Or why that expensive "Complete In Box" Nintendo 64 game you just
got your hands on has little to no real value because it's a PAL copy,
making your look like a dork when bragging about your purchase,
unless of course, you wanted a paperweight to look nice and not
a functional game you can, you know, actually enjoy.
...
But whatever, let's get into the matter.
pretty much every time that a conversation opens about these games
from gone by decades, there's always the higher-than-high chance
that the conversation leads to a very specific subject, even more if,
as I said, you live in Europe (I'm Spanish after all), or other places,
like Oceania or Africa.
And that's because while as of today, there are some standards that
we could point as globally accepted, it hasn't been always like that.
Decades ago, video games from one part of the world could work
very differently, sometimes becoming incompatible with devices
of other parts of the planet, rendering them useless.
That's why I'm going to expose some general information here,
so we all can understand several aspects that will help us with
these games and systems from old days, like the different Video
formats, the importance of knowing from where a game comes from...
Or why that expensive "Complete In Box" Nintendo 64 game you just
got your hands on has little to no real value because it's a PAL copy,
making your look like a dork when bragging about your purchase,
unless of course, you wanted a paperweight to look nice and not
a functional game you can, you know, actually enjoy.
...
But whatever, let's get into the matter.
Let's get ready because this is going to be a bit long. Also, please have in mind, I'm not an expert in this stuff, but in any case, here we go:
To understand all of this, we need to begin from the most important point: Televisions (or Monitors, although back then there were big and clear differences between each one) and Video Formats of those times.
In the past of this mostly sad and pathetic planet called Earth, we used TVs that, depending on the part of the world they'd be designed for, they would use one of the two Video Formats standardized, these two being PAL and NTSC. There was a third format, if you're a nitpicker, called SECAM, but not only is of little importance for this subject, but also SECAM was basically PAL as far as resolution and speed goes.
PAL, which stands for Phase Alternate Line, was the format used for the biggest part of the planet, counting Europe, Oceania, Africa, a big chunk of Asia and certain parts of South America.
NTSC, which stands for National Television System Committee, was the format used by North America, part of South America, and several Asian countries, among them, Japan.
The differences don't stop at the places in which they were used. Three vital elements that separate PAL and NTSC are their Resolution (which I think it's easy to understand for most people), the Hertz (Hz is an universal unit system used for counting Cycles per Second, in this area related to the amount of images show), and connected to the second, the Rate of Frames Per Second. If we make a superficial comparison, things would be like tis:
PAL has a Resolution of 576, works at 50Hz, and has a Frame Rate of 50 o 25.
NTSC has a resolution de 480, works at 60Hz, and has a Frame Rate of 60 o 30.
If you're not into this tech stuff at all, I'll try to explain it like this:
PAL has a resolution of about 20% higher, but it has a frequency around a 20% lower than NTSC.
And it's right there where problems start to brew. Because each format has considerable differences, the content that each one reproduces should need to be converted to work "as correctly as possible".
An easy example to use is Cinema. Movies have 24 Frames per Second, which is lower than both, NTSC and PAL. NTSC doesn't have much problems with converting movies for it, although it causes a bit of degradation in image quality.
In PAL's case, though, we had to do something more convoluted. The course of action was to accelerate the movie by around 4%, which not only caused to shorten the movie, but also the pitch of the sound would be higher. Doesn't sound that great, does it?
Well, that's not even close to the atrocities that PAL Conversion could produce on Video Games.
To understand why, we only need to think:
From where most video games for consoles developed during the 80's, the 90's, and a good chunk of the 2000's?
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| This is the famous Japanese shop known as Super Potato. No, really, that's the name. Super Famicom boxes are cool, don't you think? |
That's right, Japan! Even if they didn't originate from the country of the rising sun, Japan became quickly the biggest exponent of software (and if we're talking consoles, also hardware), leading the industry and gaining more and more importance globally. Just so you can have an idea, back in 2002 Japan made for 50% of the global video game market. But of course, they were not the only ones, and in a second place there would be the United States.
And what both of those regions have in common?
That both of them make use of the NTSC Format.
That both of them make use of the NTSC Format.
Which means that the vast majority of video games created for consoles needed to be modified in places that used the PAL format so they could be reproduced by the televisions of those parts of the world, opening the door to all kinds of monstrosities, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
To illustrate well the differences between a game working and its intended speed and resolution, and a PAL Conversion, I'm going to make use of one of the best examples ever known because of how easy is to see, Sonic The Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive, or for you, United States folks, the Sega Genesis.
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| European cover on the left, American on the Right. I never really liked the American redesign. Did you? |
This classic Platformer from the Mega Drive, that would spearhead a long saga, and would make Sega's popularity skyrocket, it's a fantastic example because it's PAL Conversion suffers pretty much from every possible problem that can occur when converting a game.
Let's start with the Resolution. Take a look at the image below:
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| The borders could be simply awful, and these are not even the worst ones you can find. |
One of the most usual aspects of PAL versions, is their squashed image output, adding big borders on the top and bottom of the screen, or sometimes extending them, if they were there originally. The image above is what would be seen if we played on a real TV using a real console. Some conversions even added borders to the side (a problem that can also happen on more modern games with bad panoramic modes, but for 80's and 90's games that didn't really exist).
This happens because, as I said before, PAL has a higher Resolution, which means a larger amount of vertical lines of pixels to show on screen, and you also have to take into account that TVs all around the world had the same screen sizes, so a game created for NTSC pretty much always suffered this fate. Some systems had the ability to show games in full PAL resolution, but most of then didn't have the capacity as they were not designed for that in mind, as they were created in places where NTSC was the standard, and even then, those could still look pretty bad.
Simply put, games were designed to be shown at a specific resolution, and hack jobs were made to adapt them. This is bad enough in most cases, but things go further into the ground.
Along Resolution, another aspect mentioned earlier were the Hertz. Just as I said, a Hertz is a unit of frequency used to count Cycles per Second, with 1Hz being one cycle, 2Hz being to cycles, and so and so forth. Basically, Hertz are there to mark at which speed a device works, and as far as games go, it affects on pretty much everything a console does.
To see this well, we need to se a game in movement. Take a look at this quick video made by David Antunez Gonzalez:
The game feels slower and heavier, the timer works incorrectly, the controls feel less precise (although it's not something you can appreciate by just watching). And then we have the sound, which is not only slower, but that it also has a lower pitch, because of the overall lower speed at which the game is running.
Just as I said, it affects pretty much everything. When you play with a PAL 50Hz game, you are doing it with constant reduced speed, as if the machine you're playing the game on wasn't capable enough to run it correctly. In that short video the player needs around 7 seconds more to reach the same place on the PAL version in comparison to the time it took to reach it on the NTSC version. And the more time both games run, the bigger and bigger the difference will be. Early on there might be only a few seconds of difference, but little by little you could see the NTSC version being several stages ahead of the PAL version.
And that's absolutely terrible, but that's not even the end of this. Pal Conversions can bring all sorts of problems, bugs and glitches, that didn't exist on NTSC versions, because in the majority of cases, these conversions were made quickly and with little care.
Let's see a few quick examples, Okay?
In the PAL version of Super Mario Bros. for NES, because of the 50Hz's lower speed, Mario had it's running speed improved to try to "dissimulate" it, but it really didn't do much because the game still was slower than normal; and instead of fixing anything, it introduced more glitches, like one quite famous involving the Flags at the end of the stages. The Timer works wrong and goes faster than it should, so you have less time. Oh, and the music was sped up and sounded weird.
Another awful example is Digimon World, a monster raising simulator. In certain PAL versions (depending on the language included in the release), a game-breaking problem would always happen and would block you from advancing the game. This glitch was about an Agumon, one of the monsters from this franchie, with which you cannot talk. Because you cannot talk, you cannot fight, and without defeating him, it will forever block your path. The story cannot be completed, the several areas can't be accessed, and basically you have a broken game. The spanish version, which is the one we had here, had that bug too. It was never fixed.
One interesting example is Final Fantasy IX. This is a fantastic game, created as a great Good Bye and celebration towards Final Fantasy, as it was the last game for several of the long-time developers, such as Hironobu Sakaguchi. And just like previous games in this series, the game had all kinds of secrets.
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| Good luck trying to play the PAL version while also wanting a 100% completed file. |
One of those secrets, it's a unique weapon, inside a special chest. To open this chest, you must reach the place where it is hidden, before your save file goes beyond the 12 Hours played. After that, the chest will be forever closed, wasting your chance to obtain it. It's one of those things that you won't ever do on your first playthrough.
It's situated in a pretty advanced point into the game, so it's not an easy feat, but in the NTSC versions, working at the intended speed, you could get it without sacrificing all the "one time only" items and moments. With effort and a good strategy, you could get everything if you wanted.
That does not happen on the PAL version. Between the slower speed, and the timer not adapting to said lower speed, it's impossible to obtain that weapon without having to leave behind other things. Each battle, each misstep will be a bigger punishment at this lower speed, and when you add that text scrolls slower too, things get worse. Nothing of this was thought of when converting the game, so you're pretty much screwed up in this regard, and it's pretty sad, because the Spanish translation of this game is lovely and one of the best of that generation.
Another infamous example is Devil May Cry for PS2, with big borders and the usual drop in frame rate, making this fast and action-paced game feel sluggish. Final Fantasy X was also notorious for it's slowness here, and Tidus walking speed and movement was even a bit of a joke in certain circles, after all, originally the game worked at 30 FPS, so in PAL it was 25 FPS. The games of the Legend of Zelda series on N64 worked at less than 20 FPS in PAL too, so they were pretty damn hard to enjoy back then, imagine today.
What abomination...
And the sad part is, this is not even the end of this barrel of embarrasement. Not only we got terrible versions of games and we had to deal with them, but these versions also arrived much later and they were more expensive in comparison to places like North America and Japan, places were games could run as they were intended.
If a game had a price of, let's say, 60 U.S. Dollars, we would never had an honest money conversion, automatically becoming 60 Euros (once those turned around, for example 60 U.S. Dollars were 52 Euros on 2003). And that's here, in Europe, other places had it even worse, just as Australia among other places. Funniest part is that this garbage is still happening to this day, although at the very least were past the 50Hz awfulness.
To sum it all, the vast majority of PAL games has no real value or usefulness in today's world. They're a waste of money, effort, time and space. Video Games in PAL regions, as far as these old games go, were an absolute joke on consumers. The only redeeming thing the can offer were translations to certain european countries, like Spanish, French, Italian or German, which are not included in NTSC versions for the most part. But even then, I have to ask, would you even enjoy playing in your language when the game runs worse, it's going to be less fun to play, and if you care about old games, you must probably know enough English to consider you probably could enjoy the better versions?
And even then, depends on the language. French and German had more translations (as games were forced to have them in most cases in those countries); but very few games had translations for Spanish, Italian, and other languages on the Third and Fourth Generations, and only a handful them on the Fifth Generation, and even when we got a translation, chances were they were incredibly poor and not recommended, such as Final Fantasy VII, Digimon World or Suikoden 2 on PS1. Spanish translations of those are bad to the point they became jokes among fans of video games, even back in the no-internet days, specially Final Fantasy VII.
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| It's not precisely sweet, but it's the truth. |
I hope I made my point clear up to this moment. As of today, nobody should be forced to play or waste their time with objectively inferior versions of games, even more, with how easy can be having access to those good versions in actuality, and also how much easier importing games can be today compared to decades ago, as long as you have the means to play those imported games in your consoles correctly.
And with all that said, I'd like to put an end to that part of this entry, and point to the positive parts, because fortunately, there are a few. Mostly two, which are Handheld Consoles and the Sixth Generation of Home consoles
Even if I'll always try to advice to avoid buying or playing old games in PAL format on Home Consoles (unless, for some reason you really, really want something for a specific reason, or it is a PAL exclusive game), my opinion on video games on portable consoles is pretty much the opposite.
If you ask why, the answer is already there, in all what I commented earlier:
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| It's kinda sad to think that these little thingies were the only way to play console games at the intended speed for a long while in certain places of the world. |
A Home Console requires power to function and a Television to send the image and sound to be used, and that's why in places where PAL was the standard we suffered. But when the machine doesn't require a plug to work, and the screen is part of the hardware itself, these two problems stop existing.
Handheld Video Games did not suffer of any of the problems shown earlier in this entry, because they didn't need to adapt to different standards for each region, because the machines already had what they needed in them. A Game Boy bought in Japan would work just the same in Tokio than Brazil, and a Game Boy Advance from Canada would have no issues to work on Greece.
Because there were no conversion or alterations, beyond transalting them, of course. We could enjoy them in the same way as people in America and Japan, and that made portable gaming really liberating for a lot of people in PAL markets. It wasn't only a chance to play away from TVs, on the bus, or anywhere; for us it was also a way to not endure the myriad of problems that games suffered on Home Consoles. That's also why, the systems pictured above, or the Nintendo DS, among other pocket systems, did not have regional block.
In fact, in a plot twist, I would recommend European versions of handheld games over American or Japanese versions of those same games in most cases.
Why?
Well, to begin with, when video game companies started to take seriously translating games (after all, PAL regions were an after-thought for most of them), European versions started to include those multiple translations in a single cartridge, so you could enjoy the game, for example in my case, both Spanish and English, or you could even learn a bit of other languages by messing around with them.
American versions in general only had English included, so they were less complete; although sometimes they could include French or Spanish, if they were intended to be sold in Canada, or South America.
On the other hand, while games took longer to reach our PAL regions, that sometimes could work into our advantage. As games released first elsewhere, sometimes problems and glitches would arise, and with our versions coming later, they often would come with those issues fixed, or even adding content to our PAL releases in the meantime!
For example, Final Fantasy IV Advance had several annoying glitches in the American and Japanese releases, but the European release not only had them fixed, but it also contained five different languages, making that version the best one by far. Another example would be Adventures of Lolo for Game Boy, while the American release had 50 levels, the European had 130 levels, with new stories and a very complete tutorial, making it a fantastic GB game and a much better game!
It's because of this that, as far as portable games go, European releases should be checked before playing or buying, and I tend to recommend them, but on the other hand, you can enjoy any version of the game as long as you understand it.
Lastly, and before I sum the entire thing, the Home Consoles started to change their 50Hz tendencies during the Sixth Generation.
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| I really appreciate this generation for spearheading this change, and while it wasn't perfect, it was for the better. |
By the time these consoles started to appear, 60 Hertz also started to be used in areas than previously used only PAL, and PAL versions of games started to miraculously start showing special screens at the start of the game, asking if you want to play the game at 50Hz or 60Hz.
After years and years of enduring poor to terrible versions of games, at least we could start to enjoy games as they were intended. Although it wasn't perfect, at all, as not every game included that, far from that.
Dreamcast, for being the first of the generation, was the best one at supporting this, and most of the games sold in PAL regions had 60Hz support, although some important games, such as Skies of Arcadia did not have it, sadly. Gamecube would go in second place, offering 60Hz in quite a few games, although also failing in others, like the Mario Party games, four games released and not even one have 60Hz support, but on the other hand, Gamecube had the option to play some games in Progressive Scan, making them look great for the time, and the system also gave us some beautiful things, like ports of the Legend of Zelda N64 games at 60Hz at double resolution, and in the case of Majora's Mask, with all the languages too!
In fact, to this very day, the only legal, or I should say just official, way to play both original versions of the N64 The Legend of Zelda games at their correct speed in PAL territories is still through those discs. It's insane to think that, but it's how it is.
On the other hand, the 60Hz support on PS2 is pretty inconsistent, with many important games not having the option, and others having it hidden in the options menu, unlike asking when you start the game, which would have been much more useful.
With PAL games of this generation you must be cautious and check if what were' going to buy and play supports 60Hz, but that's a gigantic step forward in comparison to the absolutely nothing that we had before.
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| Good job reading up to this point! |
Reached this point, there's only left to make a summary of all this text. This is all my humble and complete opinion, if you want to enjoy video games from old days and pass generations, these are the general lines in which I move and I recommend:
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Home Console Games:If we're talking about Fifth Generation games or older, you should not waste your time and get an NTSC-US (So to say, American) version of everything (or I guess, japanese fan-translated games in case that game never left Japan), so they work correctly. Ignore any PAL version unless the game in question is PAL exclusive, and even then, check on the internet if there's any way to force or modify it to play at the correct speed; or if the PAL version has some fix or change that improves on the American release, like Digimon World 2003, that let's you play after the ending, while the American version does not.
If we're talking about Sixth Generation games, depends on the system. Most Dreamcast PAL games support 60Hz, so that leaves few problems, but for the most part I still think NTSC are a safer choice, unless that a PAL version has 60Hz suppot and I have interest to see the game in several languages, which I usually do on Gamecube. As I said I find PS2 too inconsistent so I ignore PAL versions when there's so little to gain. Again, if there are PAL exclusives, we obviously we'll have to endure it, but what are you going to do...
Oh, and by the way, it hasn't been mentioned, but you shouldn't have fear with the Nintendo Wii; the amount of games that do not support 60Hz (and 480P) is very small, and while there are a few good games, the NTSC versions of those games include the same languages, like Samurai Warriors 3, making the PAL release of that game absolutely unnecessary.
Don't waste time and money buying any PAL game you see, unless you're convinced of what you're doing, that it supports 60Hz, or that you're paying for an inferior product and probably paying more than it deserves, depending on what were' talking about.
Portable Games:
Whatever it is more comfortable to you, really, as there are no problems in their functionality depending on the region, and most of them are region free. That said, I recommend always to check if the European release has some changes for the better and if the extra languages are of your interest.
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And I think I'm finished with this.
This wall of text I wrote with the best intentions. It's a subject that I always wanted to point because each time this conversation appears, I realize that, even if years and years have passed, a lot of people still don't know the differences.
For example, a few acquaintances of mine started to develop an interest in old games, and one particular friend once asked me why the games he bought didn't feel like when he saw them on videos. When I explained and showed the differences to him first hand, the disappointing in his face made me feel bad. Fortunately, he learnt about it, and it increased his interest in these old games knowing what to look for and what to avoid.
This is why in this blog I'll pretty much always show the NTSC version of games, and I'll point out when a PAL version is recommendable.
And now, this is truly over. Be sure of what you're buying, and be sure you play things as they should work, or you'll have your enjoyment lessened!
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