which consoles are the best/worst on PAL area

[emwearz]

It is usually a country thing not a PAL/NTSC thing. Like Left 4 Dead 2 was just given a R18 rating in Australia, meaning it can not be sold in stores. Generally speaking they will go back and remove what they need to make it able to sell in stores and release it in AUS. It does not mean the european version will be censored even though they are both PAL.

On the SNES I wasnt aware of games that were only censored in PAL, what games? I know of games being censored on the SNES (Like Wolf3d), but not any region specific censorship.

[Limewater]

On the SNES I wasnt aware of games that were only censored in PAL, what games? I know of games being censored on the SNES (Like Wolf3d), but not any region specific censorship.

Well, Contra III springs to mind.

I don't know about others, though. And they may have just done it to Contra to maintain brand continuity.

[emwearz]

Ahh, I forgot about the Probotector/Contra series, which is stupid as i own the first one.

[MaliceValentine]

Yeah we just get the cream of the crop squashed screens, 20% slower and dont get me started about censoring Australias the worst offender in this we just got Left 4 Dead 2 banned and Madworld wasnt allowed here till they changed the way you kill Jude the Dude.

Nintendo are the worst offenders in PAL regions i mean how long has it been and now we get chrono trigger for 90 bucks on a handheld!? GODDAMMNIT!

NO Wii price drop wii games are 80 bucks brand new and dont get me started about PS3 and XBOX360 games they are 120 brand new for FFFFFF sake.

[Ack]

dont get me started about censoring Australias the worst offender

Actually, I'd say New Zealand is worse. It's actually a crime to own a copy of Manhunt there.

[BoringSupreez]

I'd say Sega systems in general are better in PAL regions than they are in NTSC regions.

They just run 17% slower and have squashed graphics.......

I wasn't talking technically, I meant that PAL got many Sega games that NTSC didn't.

[jfrost]

Doom and Counter-Strike are banned in Brazil. No kidding. Also, Bully, EverQuest, Postal, Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem 3D, Grand Theft Auto, Carmageddon... The list goes on. Nobody gives a shit. Those who want play them anyway with no problems whatsoever.

[BoringSupreez]

Doom and Counter-Strike are banned in Brazil. No kidding. Also, Bully, EverQuest, Postal, Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem 3D, Grand Theft Auto, Carmageddon... The list goes on. Nobody gives a shit. Those who want play them anyway with no problems whatsoever.

If you ask me, there is no point to banning something if you're not going to enforce it.

[elvis]

Is this still true with the new consoles? I would say that 60hz is pretty much the platform base so I see no need for the games to be any slower

You need to know some background about TV signals and limits on 15KHz displays to get the big picture.

Basically PAL sacrificed refresh rate for more lines of resolution. PAL resolution is much more pleasing to watch TV/movies than NTSC, as it had more lines. 288 progressive lines for PAL, versus 240 for NTSC. (or 576 lines interlaced for PAL, 480 lines interlaced for NTSC). When converting from film to DVD, PAL DVDs look much nicer.

25FPS (the per-frame refresh of interlaced PAL, with two fields per frame running at 50 FPS) is also fine for movies (remember that even today, most films are running at 24FPS). The 30FPS interlaced refresh of NTSC adds no great benefit for film or TV to the viewer.

With 2D games running in progressive scan mode on synced hardware, there's not much you can do. Hardware designed to run at 60Hz (60 vertical refreshes per second, or 60FPS) can only be slowed down to run on a 50Hz TV. Likewise, something designed to run at 240 lines NTSC, when displayed on a 288 line PAL display (24 lines of "blank" at the top and bottom of the screen, with the other 240 lines squashed in).

3D games on modern hardware is a different kettle of fish. The internally drawn images no longer get pushed straight out to a hardware drawing system. There's all sorts of buffers and scaling hardware between the final image and the screen, and modern consoles can happily rescale things to use the full realestate of a PAL screen (even in 2D). Similarly a 3D game can render internally at much higher than 60FPS, and the screen simply draws what it needs to at a capped, synced rate. The "wall clock" speed of the game is the same, it's merely the draw speed that differs. And unlike older 2D consoles, the draw speed doesn't control the game speed on modern consoles.

That's all on standard def CRT TVs of course, which are limited to the resolution and picture format of their region. Although some newer TVs will do both PAL and NTSC, but if your old console is hard capped to PAL (and not modded for NTSC) then that doesn't help you.

With the advent of all these hi def flat panels (and as mentioned by another poster already), 1080p is 1080p everywhere in the world, and the problem goes away because finally people found a clue. Sadly however, we're still stuck with the concept of "regions", because game publishers (not developers) suck balls.

[Haoie]

We get screwed out of so many RPGs!