which consoles are the best/worst on PAL area

[boobie]

Many games dont get published here in europe, atleast in the old days. I just read trough the ps3 game list and they had almost every game published in all areas.. Ofcourse some games was dropped out on some areas (mostly sport titles).
So, my question would be that which console has the most classics still on them on the PAL area and which console has suffered the most being on PAL?

I know this is mostly for European/Australian people but i hope we get some discussion..

[Limewater]

SMS is definitely better in PAL areas. The Master System got a lot more PAL releases than we saw over here in the states.

[Hateshinai]

The SNES suffered terribly in PAL areas when it comes to RPGs. We never even got Chrono Trigger!

[Niode]

I think the best was probably DC since we got a lot of stuff that the US never saw, such as Headhunter and Shenmue 2.

Pretty much any system gets shafted in PAL territories by Nintendo, they are the worst offenders. Such as us getting the shaft on a price drop of the Wii console. The only thing we get is a reduction of the MSRP (the price stores buy the system at before selling them onto customers) back to it's original fucking price. Yes, you read that right, Nintendo put the price of the Wii UP about a year after launch.

So instead of getting the same $200 deal over here, we get to pay £180. WHICH IS THE SAME FUCKING PRICE IT ALWAYS WAS!! The only difference is we get Wii Sports Resort and a Motion plus. Considering that you can get that bundle from any supermarket with a half decent entertainment section (IE Asda or Tesco) AND still get Wii Sports as well just means Nintendo has just slapped us all in the face. Gee thanks Nintendo, I didn't know you cared...

[Curlypaul]

Yeah the 'price cut' was a joke wasnt it. Nintendo continue to release first party games to japan only - when will they get that I buy a japanese system cos I love japanese games, even the weird ones that they dont think will sell.

I think the Saturns library was also poorly represented but the US had that problem too.

[elvis]

SNES - western releases sucked big time, and PAL was even worse. Either we missed out (Final Fantasy series, and so many others), or got a hacked up versions (see Ranma 1/2 -> Street Combat [1]). That applied to the US as well, but the speed hit for PAL I think was a real killer for games like the original SF2 with no speed selection.

PC Engine: Non existent in most PAL regions all together.

XBox 360: where the fuck are my arcade shooters? Why do I need to buy a NTSC-J console just to get the games I want?

[1] http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ranma/ranma2.htm

[emwearz]

Before you worry about the fact Pal consoles are missing games, it sucks even harder that the games we do have generally run at a slower speed (around 20%) and with squashed graphics thanks to boarders. Meaning games we did actually have released here are crippled versions. The SNES is the least effected by this as Nintendo actually optimized a large amount of games so they don't appear to be running slower. So while we did get beat em ups and fighting games they suck. Our Street Fighter ... Sucks, Our Streets of Rage... Sucks and so on.

Anyway I think all retro consoles really lucked out in PAL zones in terms of RPGS. There was never a PAL release of Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy on the NES. PAL owners are missing close to every Square released game. No Final Fantasy 2&3 (4 and 6), no Chrono Trigger, no Earthbound, no Super Mario RPG. The Megadrive didnt have some Phantasy Star releases.

So while the import list is massive on 'classic' games on the system I think with Square not releasing many of there games on PAL Super Nintendo that the SNES is the most effected as Square created so many of the systems 'Must Haves'

[bacteria]

PC Engine: Non existent in most PAL regions all together.

Indeed, although there was a PAL version, which used a CTX chip to convert the NTSC games into PAL output on the video lines. It had to - there weren't PAL TurboGrafx games! The console was the massive one though, no idea why they didn't use the small PC-Engine type - under half the size!

no Super Mario RPG

Indeed, there is a way around this fact now though, if you get a RetroDuo (from the USA), you can play all/nearly all NTSC and PAL SNES and NES games via the same system. I have a couple of NES and SNES games that are NTSC, like Super Mario RPG, play fine on my large television (via A/V) with the RetroDuo. It isn't an official product though, but works!

[emwearz]

I was just talking about released in PAL zones. Even without Retro Duo you can still get Mario RPG to work, just takes some work.

[boobie]

anyone have any idea of the playstations? 1 and 2? did we miss some must haves? atm im especially interested in starting to build a collection for those systems?