Homebrew PAL

[mjd280]

Hi. Sorry for such a “dumb” newbie question, but I ask you to please indulge me. Despite trying to research the topic everywhere, I am still left with an unanswered question (which is probably my fault): Is there any disadvantage (framerate/motion/etc) to using PAL based roms/images on an NTSC based console & tv?

Thanks!

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Yeah definitely. Pal is 50Hz, NTSC is 60Hz.
try to play sonic 1 for megadrive and then for genesis. you'll see for yourself

 

[Ryccardo]

First, remember that PAL is only a color encoding standard, not a resolution/framerate (while NTSC can refer to both a color encoding standard and the 565/"60"Hz format... )

If you run a 50Hz-only game on an emulator (or original console) that runs at 60Hz, the game may be sped up (it will, given we're talking about the Megadrive and most consoles from that age), may lag/screwup/crash (more vertical interrupts per second = less time for code tied to the vsync interrupt to do its job), and may be cut off (576 vs 480 nominal visible lines)

If the game is correctly run at 50Hz but the video output is rescaled to 565/60Hz, there will similiarly be graphics issues (some lines missing or software scaling taking place) and frame rate conversions which can be done in 69 different ways that may or may not be objectionable