Talk:PAL region

PAL speed issues
I can't understad this issue. Presumable these games were not converted to run a the original speed because that would presumably have a cost that was somewhat significant. The strange thing is that I have never heard of any PC game that was dependent on the vertical refresh rate, even for games made in the 80s or the early 90s. However I have seen games made as late as 1997-ish that have been depdendent on the CPU speed so that they run to fast on modern PCs. But most games are not even dependent on the CPU speed. But anyway, if you can at last base the game speed on the CPU speed which is known with absolute certainty for console games, why not do that instead of basing it on the refresh rate? I can't imagine that it would be less conveniant in any way. It's very perplexing to me that console games far into the fifth generation and even the sixth generation still used the refresh rate to determine the game speed.

From the link in the article I read that they decided that the PAL verison of FFX for PS2 should not have a 60 Hz mode optino because then they would have had to store two copies of all movies on the disc. I assume they mean that they would have to add another movie saved with 5/6 frames per second compared to the NTSC version, for example adding a 25 fps movie in addition to the 30 fps NTSC movie. But why? That would never have been needed on a PC, if a movie is 30 fps the cpu would instruct the graphics card to draw a new picture to the screen buffer 30 times per second, based on the clock, or perhaps if it was a really old game based on the CPU speed, but that would be stupid. However for the PS2 you can even base it on the CPU speed and it would still work because the PAL cpu is identical to the NTSC cpu. Why would they still program the game speed and movie frame update speed on the refresh rate? It doesn't make any sense. -- JP


 * During the NES and SNES era, the CPU speeds on consoles were VERY tightly bound to the refresh rate - in fact, their CPUs actually ran at a slower clockspeed in the PAL hardware. The way they were programmed were also very tightly knit around the refresh rate - basically, you'd squeeze in the game logic in the gaps when the hardware wasn't busy drawing lines and this is were you would calculate everything what should be different in the next frame. I don't think any of this is true for PS1 and forward though, so I'm not sure what their excuse was, in particular FFX, which is a horrible PAL port indeed. Even if the video issues they mention are valid it doesn't explain how they couldn't correct the rest of the game from running letterboxed, at reduced speed, with destroyed lip sync, etc. (The sequel FFX-2, also for the PS2, has a near perfect PAL port, it doesn't have as many FMVs though if that has anything to do with it.) 31.209.1.103 (talk) 17:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The article states that PAL games run 17.5% slower compared to NTSC. This 17.5% statistic is not correct, and people have been mis-quoting it all over the Internet. There is no source cited for this value in the article either. This value needs to be changed to 16.7% The reason behind this is that most older consoles use framerate as the sole basis for the timing of game mechanics. NTSC standard calls for 59.96 (or 60) frames per second, and PAL standard calls for 50 frames per second. Because most games were developed primarily for Japan and NTSC regions, their timings assume a 60 fps framerate. Full-speed playback on a PAL console often required extensive reprogramming of the entire game engine, which is expensive, so developers often left much of the game code unchanged. Because the frame only advances 50 times per second instead of 60, this results in the game running at 5/6 of the normal speed, or 83.3% Subtracting the result from 100 yeilds a 16.7% slowdown of the game engine, NOT 17.5% as the article states. 98.67.222.50 (talk) 11:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

time difference
does anyone know the usual time difference between the release of a game in the North American region compared to the release date in the PAL region? We could put this in the article Kangaroosrule (talk) 03:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Edit: This is game related and more Country/Continent Related. Mostly games come out first in Europe/USA (most first US). A week later mostly follows the Australian Release. Japan, South-America, rest of Asia & Africa unknown.

External link
I have removed the external link as it blatantly violates example 2 of WP:EL. EconomicsGuy Return the fire! 06:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Nintendo Handhelds
"Nintendo handhelds are region-free" The new Nintendo DSi is region locked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.87.100.241 (talk) 07:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Added something about that. --Drabant (talk) 07:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

World Map
The colors in the world map are much worse than the ones used on the NTSC page. Could someone who knows what they are doing change out the images? Inoesomestuff (talk) 07:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit: I don't see difference in the map between NTSC & PAL page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.208.163.246 (talk) 16:09, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Languages
How many different languages are video games translated into? I have a hard time believing they would bother with Pashto or Icelandic versions. Brutannica (talk) 05:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That depends on the publisher and/or developer. For example, Nintendo of Europe commonly releases games in five languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian), while Ubisoft has also localized games for Scandinavian countries, Russia and Poland (but not always as far as I know). --Grandy02 (talk) 14:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

PAL in South America
The map is wrong. Paraguay also belongs to PAL region. Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay use PAL-N — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.46.117.162 (talk) 18:07, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

South America
While the lack of references makes the article in general questionable, I especially wonder about the inclusion of "most of South America." For example, at the Brazilian Nintendo website, I don't see any PAL versions, but the same releases as in North America, even though the PAL standard is used in the country according to the map. Most of the other South American countries besides Brazil and Argentina are green (NTSC), and the (unsourced) Release area section doesn't include any South American country. Does South America really belong to the PAL region? --Grandy02 (talk) 14:11, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
 * For the record, i entered this page in hopes of clearing that missunderstanding, i have no idea what other countries use in south america, but im from Argentina, and i have never even heard of anyone claim the norm was PAL in here until now, its ridiculous, it was always NTSC, if we ever had PAL tvs etc it was tvs that could display both NTSC and PAL as i have just learned in a forum post on an unrelated site, given if your testimony about the Brazilian nintendo website being true, that would mean the map is definitely wrong, and its NTSC. I only read once a mention of my region being PAL-N but everyone else made a rebuttal saying the adopted format is NTSC and has always been (at least for 2 decades from personal knowledge). 190.18.163.109 (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

It's televisions, right?
I've seen a lot of talk about PAL and NTSC Nintendo DSes... isn't that nonsense? I thought PAL and NTSC are TV formats, and nothing to do with handheld consoles. This page mentions the DS. 188.221.72.112 (talk) 15:29, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * PAL has nothing to actually do with anything but standard definition televisions, but it's still used as a term to describe the regions it covered.-- occono (talk) 00:05, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

What is "typically" meant to mean here?
I know what the word is supposed to mean, but it's so imprecise and vague like it was just thrown in without really having a clue. MOST good games on some consoles were PAL-optimized for speed and run at the same speed aas their NTSC counterparts. A lot of games got sped up in ways making them perform better, the raw conversion to exactly that quoted percentage slower was rare enough on major games (sometimes to improve framerates such as on games like OoT or MK64). It's all a bit of a shambles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.31.96.16 (talk) 21:24, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Manual of Style, Video Games
Since United Kingdom, no longer uses PAL. should video games not list as released in PAL anymore? EzeeWiki (talk) 02:48, 15 June 2021 (UTC)


 * While most places in the world now use digital broadcasting to transmit signals nowadays, it is still used historically as many games were region locked to PAL or NTSC regions. Even now, certain games are still region locked based on whether a country used PAL/SECAM or NTSC, so I think it is still a useful category. Jeuno  (talk) (contribs) 10:46, 16 November 2021 (UTC)