30 replies to this topic

[ZylonBane]

sargie, on Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:50 PM, said:

I also had no idea that what Tep392 was describing would be the cause of the jerky scrolling as I am not that technical...

Oh god, the catch-all "I'm not a geek" excuse to not even try to understand things. Look:

tep392, on Mon Oct 10, 2011 7:04 AM, said:

This effectively pauses the game for 1/60 of a second after every 5 frames...

It's right there, plain as day.

[therealbountybob]

If you want a laugh go to Mr.Bane's profile and read all of his posts... you'll get the idea
(trbb braces for oncoming assault)

[Gunstar]

_The Doctor__, on Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:46 PM, said:

Dang I played the crap out of this game I thought the speed was the way the game was meant to be played... Never thought it was an oversight on the timing since I purchased the game. Now electraglide is one that needs a little timer adjustment.....

Yes, ElectraGlide! I remember playing the hell out of that game just to get absolutely perfect and barely make it to the first tunnel and second stage. Then I tried it a few years ago for the first time with a PAL ANTIC installed in my XL and I'm suddenly really good and have plenty of time to spare becuase the PAL Antic slows the NTSC Atari screen refresh rate down to 50Hz and the time in the game is based on 50Hz, not 60Hz as it plays on a straight NTSC machine. I think this is also true of The Last V-8.

[sargie]

Yes, playing already tricky PAL games on NTSC can be a recipe for disaster - which is why this version of DropZone is so cool!

Having grown up in the UK we had the other problem (especially with Japanese consoles) that the PAL version would run slower or displayed with big borders. When I came over here (to California) and picked up some old consoles it was quite a revelation playing some games I thought were easy when they were sped up by 17% or whatever it is...

[Gunstar]

The problem was when these games were released my Mastertronic in the U.S., I (and probably others) had no idea they weren't "fixed" for 60Hz NTSC! I know I often wondered why they would make such cool games like Electraglide and Last V-8 and then make them nearly impossible to play with the time limit! Learning (with the PAL Antic) that is not what was originally intended was a revelation to me and I now have a bunch of new favorite games instead of games I want to like but can't becuase they are too difficult.

This is not always the case of course, there are also some PAL games that are rather slow, and if they work on NTSC without too many glitches, it speeds them up and makes them better. There aren't many like that though.

But knowing what happens with the graphic garbage and glitches most of the time when trying to run PAL software on an NTSC leads me to believe, they had to do something to the Mastertronic games to make them run correctly on NTSC machines. But then too totally blow off rectifying the timing of the games is totally...unforgivable

Edited by Gunstar, Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:46 PM.

[sargie]

Yeah, fixing the art but not fixing the gameplay timing was uncool. Something like Dropzone deserved a proper NTSC conversion back in the day. Criminal really.