PAL / NTSC on consolles

Anyone knows why there's no difference
between PAL and NTSC version of a game on consolles like SNES and GENS ?

I see no borders or different speed for all games i tried

[Retro-Nerd]

Emulation? There is surely a difference in speed. PAL games run in 50 FPS and NTSC games in 60 FPS. Of course you need to set it to a proper refreshrate if you use the vsync, e.g. 50/100 Hz for PAL games and 60 Hz/120 Hz for NTSC games.

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Emulation? There is surely a difference in speed. PAL games run in 50 FPS and NTSC games in 60 FPS. Of course you need to set it to a proper refreshrate if you use the vsync, e.g. 50/100 Hz for PAL games and 60 Hz/120 Hz for NTSC games.

Sorry, you are right .... i noticed a difference in speed

However still no borders in any of games i tried

[switchblade]

Difference between PAL and NTSC on something like the SNES and Megadrive would be a decrease in speed in games, as well as the black borders in PAL games since PAL uses a higher resolution than NTSC.

I don't always notice the black borders, cause I never usually compare PAL vs. NTSC between consoles, but I do notice how slow or fast a game can be if not coded properly for whatever region.

Take Shadow of the Beast on the Megadrive. The NTSC version runs faster than the PAL version due to improper coding, making the game very difficult to play. Watch laffer's SOTB platform comparison to see what I mean.

Another example is Sonic the Hedgehog on the Megadrive, and the PAL version is slower than the NTSC version because of, you-know-what, bad coding.

Here's the difference between NTSC and PAL of Sonic on Megadrive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0llsb77Esc

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The term PAL is often used informally to refer to a 625-line/50 Hz (576i), television system, and to differentiate from a 525-line/60 Hz (480i) NTSC system.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL
So the maximum height (linewise) of the screen was different in PAL and NTSC. The MegaDrive had a 224 and a 240 line mode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaDrive#Video). As you can see the 240 mode was only used for PAL games.

[PowerPie5000]

You will not notice any difference in speed with PAL optimized games vs NTSC games. Older PAL games had borders and *some* were a tiny bit slower but not enough to put me off from playing

Anyway older PAL consoles had superior picture quality using RGB through a scart connection.... NTSC models did not have this and got stuck with the slightly inferior S-video output. I dont mind sacrificing a small amount of speed on some games for crystal clear images and sound