14 replies to this topic

[accousticguitar]

I see a lot of computer games for sale on ebay that are from England. Will they play on an american Atari 800xl computer? Thanks,

Al

[deathtrappomegranate]

Yes, with very few exceptions.

Are you thinking of any particular game?

[NightSprinter]

Another question to add to that: outside of possible timing issues (y'know, the whole NTSC/PAL thing), will there be any color discrepancies (like what we see in Atari800Win+)?

[deathtrappomegranate]

That depends on the game.

The vast majority of cartridge games were primarily designed for the US market, and were not sold in different PAL versions.

Some games released by European companies, usually on disk or cassette, were designed with PAL systems in mind. Some of these will have colour discrepancies on NTSC systems.

[ijor]

Most "classic" games were originally developed and published in the US. And in most cases no "conversion" to PAL was made, at least not at that time. Then it doesn't matter if you get the euro or US version, the software is usually exactly the same. The software might still perform different depending on your machine, but not depending on where the disk was published.

In a few cases the protection was locally implemented in Europe. And in some of these cases the protection breaks when run in an NTSC computer.

The issue is, of course, different for later games that were actually developed and originally published in Europe.

[accousticguitar]

deathtrappomegranate, on Fri May 12, 2006 11:14 AM, said:

Yes, with very few exceptions.

Are you thinking of any particular game?

Yeah, I was thinking of "Eastern Front."

Al

[deathtrappomegranate]

accousticguitar, on Fri May 12, 2006 8:06 PM, said:

deathtrappomegranate, on Fri May 12, 2006 11:14 AM, said:

Yes, with very few exceptions.

Are you thinking of any particular game?

Yeah, I was thinking of "Eastern Front."

Al

That is a US produced game. It was originally released by APX (Atari Program Exchange) on cassette and disk, and Atari later released it on cartridge.

All versions of this game will work perfectly on US systems.

[accousticguitar]

Thanks for the info!

Al

[Guitarman]

I recently purchased about 3 boxes of Atari software that was suppose to be mostly PAL. There were a lot of European magazine disks in the lot I bought along with games and apps. I'd say only 10-15% of the disks would not work right on my US 800XL. It was a very good purchase!!

[deathtrappomegranate]

It's one of the joys of collecting for the Atari 8-bit computers that, for the vast majority of software, there are no NTSC/PAL discrepancies.

I've only ever dabbled in 2600 stuff, but it seems that PAL 2600 games are often unjustly ignored by NTSC-only collectors.

[NightSprinter]

Well, apparently according to this auction: Atari XE Millipede Auction the cartridges will not work on an NTSC system. Explanations?

[Rybags]

His other auctions state the same (Rescue on Fractalus, Desert Falcon etc).

Millipede will be fine - the only games that really have issues tend to be ones developed in Europe, and even then they are mainly modern homebrews.

[NightSprinter]

Ah, so the games will be fine even if I plugged it into my NTSC version XEGS? That's good to know.

[deathtrappomegranate]

That guy is a good seller. I've dealt with him before.

I think that he probably just has a boatload of stock for various machines, and maybe doesn't know the situation with Atari 8-bit computers. He uses the same text in his 2600 auctions, where it is more appropriate.

Those games will work just fine on NTSC hardware.

[ApolloBoy]

NightSprinter, on Fri May 12, 2006 9:03 PM, said:

Ah, so the games will be fine even if I plugged it into my NTSC version XEGS? That's good to know.

Yep, I got my copy of Thunderfox from Scotland and it works just fine on my NTSC 800XL.