games - PAL or NTSC?

[gizmomelb]

Something that I was just thinking about - there are PAL and NTSC versions of the Amiga hardware, now I do recall seeing various bootblocks/utilities that would allow NTSC screens to 'stretch' to full PAL resolution, but were there different PAL or NTSC versions of some games?

Otherwise if you had a native PAL game that used the full PAL screen resolution, you'd end up with the bottom of the screen not being displayed on an NTSC Amiga. Also there'd be timing issues between them.. the game would run faster on the NTSC Amiga than it would on the PAL version (if it were synced to the verticial refresh).

So were there seperate PAL/NTSC versions for some games, or did the PAL game authors code their games to also work on NTSC machines so PAL users were 'robbed' of the extra resolution at the bottom of their teles?

Just curious as it's been so long my memory on this has faded.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by gizmomelb

Something that I was just thinking about - there are PAL and NTSC versions of the Amiga hardware, now I do recall seeing various bootblocks/utilities that would allow NTSC screens to 'stretch' to full PAL resolution, but were there different PAL or NTSC versions of some games?

I can't think of any off the top of my head - there probably were a few but basically if the game was meant for NTSC users the coder would make the game 320 x 200.

So were there seperate PAL/NTSC versions for some games, or did the PAL game authors code their games to also work on NTSC machines so PAL users were 'robbed' of the extra resolution at the bottom of their teles?

Unfortunately the latter is what the majority of coders did. By coding the game for 320 x 200 screen resolution it meant they had more spare DMA time available (less to draw per frame = less time = more free time to do other stuff like AI and keeping the speed up etc) and the game would be compatible with both PAL and NTSC users.

[IFW]

Only a few amiga games have "real" ntsc versions, the majority was either written for the pal territory, marketed in the pal territory or at least worked in pal properly.

[gary]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Unfortunately the latter is what the majority of coders did. By coding the game for 320 x 200 screen resolution it meant they had more spare DMA time available (less to draw per frame = less time = more free time to do other stuff like AI and keeping the speed up etc) and the game would be compatible with both PAL and NTSC users.

Yeah and it looked ugly on PAL. The least they could have done would be to center the area vertically so that there was a black area above and below the palying area (giving it a widescreen style view). Not many games did that.

Its sad that while on the '64 they were using all sorts of tricks to reduce screen limits (sprites in the border) but on the Amiga they hardly ever made use of the nice overscan video modes and stuck to the lowest common denominator.

@gizmomelb: BattleSquadron had a PAL version which was much nicer than stretching an NTSC screen to fill up a PAL display.