Then there's Tekken 3, what are you going to do in Tekken 3 in single player, beat the game with each character once and Force mode, then what? That's basically the game, is faster speed going to make that much difference as you go through the stupid AI in a couple of hours? If you are playing multiplayer on the other hand, the slower speed makes it almost unplayable. Second, is how fast paced the game itself is, does it really matter if you play Final Fantasy VII at 16.7% faster speed? Is a very slow turned based game.īut on the other side of the coin, Final Fantasy IX, is slower than molasses to begin with, for a slow paced turn based game that is, because Square really pushed the system graphically with that game, adding the slower framerate on top of that doesn't help, and never mind the whole Excalibur II debacle. How much it matters is based on two things, first whether the game is PAL optimized, in which case it either runs marginally slower (like 1-2%) or even marginally faster than the NTSC version, as the game is literally programmed to run faster, it doesn't necessarily always land exactly down to the frame of the NTSC version. The rest of the series on the PS1 however, is PAL optimized. Tomb Raider 1 for example is not PAL optimized (you think a British Developer and Publisher would have accounted for that) and is quite noticeable, well, it wasn't noticeable for most of us Europeans back in 1996 because we didn't know any better, but it sure is now. In the same vein, the 16.7% speed advantage from the higher NTSC framerate is not always accounted for, what we call 'PAL optimized'. The problem is, that PAL's superior resolution was not actually utilized most of the time, that's what the black borders on the top and bottom of the screen were for, some games would mitigate that better than others (for example GTA III is barely noticeable while in Onimusha is almost like a letterbox), but you rarely got the full 576i from any game. It supports PAL resolutions as well, but none of its higher resolution options are whole-number multiples of 256p, which means no integer scaling for PAL games. Real-world example of why this matters: The ps1digital can scale to 1200p (5x 240p) or 1080p (4x 240p = 960p padded with black borders to reach 1080). Scaling the resolution using whole-number integers ensures that you get the highest quality image without unnecessary blurring or pixel shimmering. Integer scaling is an important factor if you're upscaling the resolution on a newer display. So it may not be possible to get a completely smooth PAL framerate depending on your setup. Many modern displays don't even have an option for 50hz output, and only have options that are multiples of 30 or 60hz. So in most cases, the higher resolution in PAL games is only giving you 16 more lines of vertical resolution.Īnother consideration to be made is whether or not you care about duplicate/skipped frames or integer scaling. Some games ran at mixed resolutions - 480i/576i certain assets like menus, with the rest of the game being 240p/256p. For example Vib-Ribbom was only released in Japan (NTSC) and Europe (PAL), so I went with the PAL version for the English translation and because I know that the developers went out of their way to pitch-correct the audio so it would sound the same as the Japanese version.Īlso the vast majority of ps1 titles in general ran at half of the full NTSC/PAL resolution - 240p for NTSC and 256p for PAL. But many others were not treated as well, and the result is many games with slowdown such as Tekken 3, as well as the audio being noticeably sped up in order match the 50hz framerate.Īs a rule, I avoid PAL games unless I know it's a high quality conversion or if the game is a PAL-exclusive. Some PAL games received high quality conversions that are perfectly fine and nearly indistinguishable from NTSC. Japan and North America both used NTSC, so many PS1 games were developed for NTSC and then simply ported to PAL as an afterthought.
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