Sega Saturn Hertz/Region question

[Genesis Knight]

I live in the US, but I'm buying an NTSC-J Saturn with a modchip installed. I own a 5-in-1 Action Replay cart, however, so I guess there's no real need to patch NTSC-U ISOs to the JAP region.

My question, though, is about PAL ISOs. I guess these are 50HZ games...do I need to try to mod the Saturn with a Hertz switch as well? I've heard something about PAL games playing slower or something, but honestly I don't really get the whole 50/60HZ thing.

I guess my question is, will PAL images play fine on this console? Or do I need to do something else/find NTSC images?

[NebachadnezzaR]

Short answer: yes, they'll play fine

Long answer: PAL consoles run at 50 Hz, which means games running with black borders on top and bottom of the screen and at an approximately 17% slower speed. But, as I said, this is the system's fault, not the games. The games themselves have nothing to do with, so if you pick up a PAL game and run it on an american or japanese console it will play at 60 Hz.

However I don't know if there's any problem with "pal optimised" games. You see, a small number of games actually took the 50Hz issue into account and already run at full speed, full screen. I have no idea if there's any incompatibility with other region's systems, but in any case they're usually the more popular games, so you the worst case you just have to buy/download an american or japanese copy.

[cyborc]

The pal version of guardian heroes had messed up graphics on my saturn, while the ntsc version worked fine. that's the only pal game i've tried though.

[synapse]

There are incompatibilities.

Take Fighters Megamix. Not only works perfectly fine (original speed) at 50Hz, but also fixes the slowdown from the japanese version. If you play a PAL Fighters Megamix in a NTSC console it will move a bit too fast and feature graphical errors.

[NebachadnezzaR]

Maybe those are the pal optimised games?

[synapse]

Yes of course, that's what I meant. But then again, there's a long list of PAL games which will show graphical errors when played at 60Hz. Sad but true.