PAL with NTSC resolutions - how did people deal with it back in the day?

[rhester72]

As a US primarily NTSC user way back when (though I was blessed with a 1084S that did NTSC/PAL autoswitching, which was very handy for badass PAL demos!), I had absolutely no idea what the primarily-PAL world was like.

It fascinates me (though makes some sense) that so many PAL games (even the ones from UK houses) used NTSC resolution...clearly the intent was to avoid having to redo graphic assets for later likely ports for the US/Canada. How did people in the UK/EU deal with this on a practical day-to-day basis? Deal with the huge empty black area at the bottom and just get used to it? Change the vertical scaling on their CRT to compensate and stretch it to the entire screen (then scale it back for the rare native PAL titles like Pinball Dreams/Fantasies)?

The thing that boggles my mind the most are the 'hybrid' games (I'm looking at you, Psygnosis). You've got Agony...full-screen PAL art, NTSC play area. Then there's Air Support...NTSC art, full-screen PAL play area. WTF is up with those? It's maddening and makes me prefer the NTSC conversions of some UK originals just for the consistency. I'm guessing PAL players just dealt with it, but I cannot fathom why any software house would have mixed content in a single title like that.

Just curious about feedback from the native-PAL community from the older years...never having really experienced this, it's pretty interesting to me. Any feedback on how you perceived/handled it would be most welcome. =)

[musashi5150]

I'd imagine most folk just pretended the bottom border wasn't there. That's what I did

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by musashi5150

I'd imagine most folk just pretended the bottom border wasn't there. That's what I did

Same here.

Nowadays it really irks me when I see a PAL/NTSC mismatch Ignorance truly is bliss, I guess.

[gimbal]

Oh, is this why Wonderboy has weirdly horizontally stretched out graphics compared to other versions of it?

[grond]

I never even noticed. I am not sure I'd do now...

[dreadnought]

Back then I absolutely had no clue about any of that. I was just a simple kid who graduated from ZX/C64 displayed on an old beat up B/W CRT via RF, and was also used to borders on these micros. On Amiga I started with a green monitor than managed to beg my way to a 14" colour TV via composite. Here in Poland the concept of an NTSC world did not exist for youngsters like me, and besides I was only too happy to be able to display Amiga in colour at all to worry about some black gaps.

From what I know, nobody around here would ever bother messing with CRT TV sets, the idea of going into service menu and adjusting stuff was completely unknown. People with monitors probably could stretch things, but around here nobody could afford one.

These days, after my return to Amiga world few years ago and now being somewhat infected with modern OCD regarding CRT displays, I had mulled this issue over for some time, and even did think about making some sort of database to play games in their "correct" display format, but quickly gave up on that. Now I mostly use MiSTer where it's dead easy to switch between formats, but I do it only occasionally, mostly remaining in the PAL space. There are too many possible issues stemming from this kind of switching so I mostly don't bother. The "correctness" is a bit of a rabbit hole too, so...

Originally Posted by rhester72

The thing that boggles my mind the most are the 'hybrid' games (I'm looking at you, Psygnosis). You've got Agony...full-screen PAL art, NTSC play area. Then there's Air Support...NTSC art, full-screen PAL play area. WTF is up with those? =)

I'm not sure this is actually a case of PAL/NTSC art, or using different resolutions in the same game.

[Amigajay]

As has been said you just get on with it, no internet to moan on back then thank god!

If you have fun with a game, it matters not a jot if it runs better or faster on something else.

Borders have been common-place from 8-bit computers moving onto 16-bit computers, and of course PAL consoles upto the Dreamcast also had borders and slower game-play, so everyone was in the same boat in PAL land.

That was of course until publishers like Team 17 came along and showed PAL owners we deserved better and some others slowly followed suit.

[rhester72]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I'm not sure this is actually a case of PAL/NTSC art, or using different resolutions in the same game.

Well, perhaps I expressed it poorly - it confuses my brain when some assets take up the entire screen but others don't. LOL

Many, many Psygnosis games are guilty of this. Lemmings is a classic example - consider the centering on the initial company screens. It's perfect on a PAL display. The intro animation (while considerably smaller in height) is also properly centered...but the gameplay itself is back to the notorious black bottom border. Ugh. LOL

Team 17 definitely got it right, as did Digital Illusions. I absolutely get the whole we-don't-want-to-do-entirely-new-assets-for-NTSC-conversion thing - development costs are high! - but it makes SUCH a difference in presentation. Especially for vertical titles like pinball, full PAL resolution makes all the difference compared to the stretched/distorted view-limiting results of NTSC.

[roondar]

It should probably be pointed out that PAL/NTSC conversion is only part of the story (though it's definitely part of it ).

There's also games that would release on both Atari ST and Amiga. The Atari ST had a 320x200 resolution, so games aimed at both tended to stick with 200 lines of screen area.

Then there's also the many PAL Amiga games that ran at a smaller resolution (for instance Agony) not because of porting considerations, but because making the screen smaller on the Amiga increases the amount of other stuff (Blitting, CPU use) that you can do in a frame. So making the screen a bit smaller would perhaps allow that extra object on screen or that neat parallax effect. Many developers made choices based on that.

A very common choice was to limit the horizontal size to 304 or 288 pixels, as doing so meant that all hardware Sprites were available while horizontally scrolling, while having a 320 pixel (or more) wide display meant that fewer sprites were available.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by roondar

It should probably be pointed out that PAL/NTSC conversion is only part of the story...

Yep, that's what I was kinda thinking about above...had a feeling you might pop in with the proper technical explanation

Overall, sure, I wish we had all the games in full screen - though the NTSC ones often still have some sort of border - but, it is what it is. Mostly it doesn't bother me for the aforementioned reasons, though I can understand it might look more jarring for somebody from NTSC land.

I force NTSC mostly in adventure games, because they often do look squished and mostly had been developed with either VGA or NTSC look in mind. Though it's not always the case - eg Benetah the Steel Sky: Euro studio, game developed probably mostly on PC, but somehow I prefer the PAL look. It really can be a rabbit hole...


One annoying thing about forcing NTSC (on CRTs at least) is that the image gets shifted somewhat towards bottom-right. Anybody knows why that might be?

[grond]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

One annoying thing about forcing NTSC (on CRTs at least) is that the image gets shifted somewhat towards bottom-right. Anybody knows why that might be?

Pixels are larger in NTSC. You have a large rectangle that is the whole frame with a smaller visible rectangle being, well, the visible screen centered within the whole frame. If everything gets larger, the centered visible screen moves relatively to the bottom-right.

That's what I assume is the reason.

[TCD]

It's been a long time, but I think the 1084 I had had a knob you could turn to adjust the vertical stretch. For games that didn't use PAL I remember using that to adjust the display.

[rhester72]

Very interesting and helpful, everyone - thank you! (I had no idea the ST didn't have the concept of PAL - how unfortunate!)

I also found (well after my ask) this legacy thread that (somewhat controversially) hits on some of the same topics for reference if it helps anyone:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=82793

[TjLaZer]

As an American getting my A1000 in the Bay Area in CA in the mid to late 80's, then in 1987 moving to Greece, I got to see this and it would drive me crazy seeing that large black gap at the bottom of the screen! They didn't seem to care about it one bit. Hahaha

[pipper]

Don’t forget, black borders on top and bottom make things look more cinematic :-)

Honestly, I never cared too much until later, when AGA came around. Some tools and patches allowed you to redirect games at an (Dbl)NTSC mode… suddenly the games looked bigger and the aspect ratio suddenly made sense. F1GP and Frontier are good examples. They may even run a bit smoother on fast machines as the page flipping can happen more often per second.

[Retro1234]

Running in NTSC is generally better as you get a full screen and more FPS. Back in the day no one really knew about such things. But games probably run at a cropped screen to save processing power and happens to be perfect resolution for the tiny US market as-well.

[Snoopy1234]

PAL 1081 and most games were full screen. NTSC ones were shorter but it didn't bother me at the time.

[Jope]

I had an OCS Amiga so no PAL/NTSC switching, even though my TV could display NTSC thanks to its RGB SCART.

I just had the big wasted 56 line bar when running USA based software. I think I've said everything I wanted to say about the subject in the thread linked to above. :-D

[dreadnought]

This thread is quite funny, what with the amount of people who absolutely know the right answers, about a topic as diverse as this one. Like I said earlier, this rabbit hole is very deep.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by Jope

I had an OCS Amiga so no PAL/NTSC switching, even though my TV could display NTSC thanks to its RGB SCART.

I just had the big wasted 56 line bar when running USA based software.

Same here. I don't understand why didn't they detect a PAL machine and centre the display vertically? (or at least have an option)