How much difference is there between a NTSC and PAL console release?

[Kouen Hasuki]

How much difference is there between a NTSC and PAL console release?

Ever wondered if there was anything changed from another region copy of your game? Well it had not occurred to me that much other than the TV Standard and languages I would have thought that the game would have been the same one,

Today I Received my PAL Copy of a Playstation Game "Jersey Devil" which I had been playing an NTSC Copy I Imported from the USA many years ago, Unfortunately my other half's kids got hold of the disc and it wouldn't read in my Playstation any more (Couldn't load into the level) So I Made a CD-R backup and bought on eBay another copy a PAL version.

I Was surprised to find many changes from the NTSC version including Developer / Publisher, HUD, Boxes, Default Controls, Colours and Brightness, Collectable Letter Design, Tutorials (Or lack of) and In Game Intro.

Here is a Video comparing them both. Video was taken on a Real Playstation 1 (Bulky one) through my PC's Capture card. Apologies for the NTSC one its been swap disc'd in to work for the purpose of this video which I have now thrown out since I have my Retail PAL copy (although I now have to start again

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Does anyone else know a game that varies a lot from one region release to the next?

 

[emigre]

PAL versions of games run at 70% of speed and are covered in dog shit as a general rule.

 

[Armadillo]

PAL version of Ninja Gaiden is censored. Pal version of final fantasy X has extra stuff. No more heroes PAL version lacks blood, like the Japanese version.

PAL versions normally get added black bars and run slow, that's a pretty big and unforgivable variation.

, Emigre puts it much better than me.

 

[Rydian]

Analog-TV stuff (NES/SNES) sees games reduced to 50Hz or whatever which means the whole game runs a bit slower, as emigre said. Does NOT apply to non-analog things though, like the PS3 and shit, where rendering speed is unlocked from logic speed.

http://tcrf.net/Category:Games
Many entries there will list differences made during localization.

 

[Eerpow]

Unoptimized old pal games suck, thank god I grew up with NTSC gaming. Yeah 70% slower but many pal games were also optimized so there's no noticeable difference in speed.

 

[Qtis]

No possibility of getting ultimate weapons in some older PSX era FF games if you want to get all items and thus 100%. This was due to a shitty port from 60 Hz to 50 Hz without compensating with real time changes (time still runs at 60 Hz while movement is at 50 Hz (the mentioned slowness in previous posts)).

PAL releases tend to have more language options, but other than that, most releases for this generation have no bigger differences. Old consoles did have them due to different screen resolutions and frequencies..

 

[Kouen Hasuki]

I'm more meaning gameplay and actual game changes rather than speed, if you will check out my video you will see what I mean

 

[FAST6191]

As others said it varies a bit between consoles you are dealing with. By and large PAL got dicked over hard and the increased resolution of PAL meant black bars were added and the frequency difference meant a drop in frame rate and not the good render drop but actual slowdown. There were a handful of exceptions to this and it even cut the other way on occasion with cropped and sped up games appearing in NTSC country.
As time went on it changed and as PAL countries have had TVs that support 60Hz for decades by this point you also got 60Hz PAL, a handful of games even worked in 60Hz only in PAL regions (metroid prime 2 probably being the most notable around here).

Europe is a collective of countries all with different rules and developers were often inclined to treat it as one large mass which meant some of the more extreme cases of censorship happened here (such things usually being laid at Germany's feet though far from always here), on the flip side some of the censorship varied quite a bit and where violence was dropped the religious and sexual stuff which was utterly erased for North America might have stayed in. Nowadays Europe is treated as less of a single entity (assuming you are in a multi5 country- UK + ROI+Australia*, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) and all sorts of odd things happen from translation and sideways (for my money the European versions of handheld games are often better, this goes double if your main language is not English as the N.A. Spanish and French is often not so hot even if you speak the variations used over there).
This sometimes also goes for the undub crowd and several times the Japanese audio track will be lost from EU releases for "space" reasons even if it stuck around for North America.

*Australia is probably a case study in and of itself, it has some fairly well documented censorship issues.

It dealt more with different consoles than different regions but http://www.retro-sanctuary.com/Comparisons Main.html mentioned a few differences.

On controls- I have seen the Japanese Playstation crowd not using the circle cancel, x accept thing used elsewhere but not much otherwise. Given most games allow a measure of remapping these days I tend to ignore it but I might be prepared to see a difference in the default between "one stick move, one stick camera" and "one stick forward - back and turn and the other look up and down and strafe" (I think Halo calls it legacy and default in the later games).

Publishers- I always thought that was a given. Developers is a different one but localisation of games sometimes falls to an actual developer or a company might have an in house development wing that is better known so I can still see it.

Brightness/colours.... NTSC is traditionally terrible for colour replication and I have seen an aesthetic difference between locations creep in (North America tending to shift far more towards saturation or even oversaturation). This definitely applies to boxart- I see it all the time when posting the often region free 360 releases where I will pull up NA and European releases to see about some sales patter to copy in though other differences tend to be more violent imagery and tits.

PAL regions tend to never get any addons- the PS1 PocketStation never appeared here (though that also skipped North America), it never got the 64DD (though again that also skipped N.A.), it never got the e-Reader for the GBA, component cables of various forms rarely appeared in the EU (the original xbox was an odd one, the gamecube never saw it and going further back it gets very odd with what goes).

Anyway that was long on speculation and my saying things but short on links so I will tie it off there for the moment.

 

[RPG Hacker]

• Super Probotectors/Contra 3:
  Robots instead of humans in the PAL version
• Mega Man Battle Network series:
  Most PAL versions have a different title screen and title font from the NTSC counterparts (although no other details have changed, not even the language)
• Mega Man ZX Advent (I think, maybe it was another game):
  No voice acting in PAL version (at least not in German version)
• Pokemon Platinum:
  No slot machines in PAL version
• Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise/Rhythm Heaven Fever:
  Option to switch between Japanese and English soundtrack in PAL version
• Many SNES games (Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past...):
  Included complete game guides with the actual games in the PAL region
• Dragon Ball Origins & Dragon Ball Origins 2:
  PAL version includes the original Japanese version of the opening

These are just the ones I could think of right now.