ManaByte
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Sony’s classic PlayStation games on PS Plus appear to be 50hz – even in non-PAL regions
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
- Retro Platform
$120 US Dollars A Year
Europe will never escape the PAL curse 
In theory PAL is a superior broadcast standard compared to NTSC, but many games were developed with NTSC in mind which means the PAL version suffers. Apart from the 50Hz slowdown, developers would often port the games with a letterbox (black bars top & bottom) effect. Still, games developed in Europe usually had good PAL adaptions, Wip3out is one example.
Sony could enable 50Hz output when playing these titles (Not sure if the PS4 did this but I know the PS3 did), as this is still a thing in the HD era. Your DVB cable or satellite box will output 50Hz since the EU television broadcast standards use it even with a HD resolution (BBC One is 1080/50)
PAL games often have a language section for the common Europe languages (English/Spanish/German/French/Italian) which makes sense, although I reckon a lot of gamers would be happy for an 'NTSC version' option in the setting menu when they download the game.
In theory PAL is a superior broadcast standard compared to NTSC, but many games were developed with NTSC in mind which means the PAL version suffers. Apart from the 50Hz slowdown, developers would often port the games with a letterbox (black bars top & bottom) effect. Still, games developed in Europe usually had good PAL adaptions, Wip3out is one example.
Sony could enable 50Hz output when playing these titles (Not sure if the PS4 did this but I know the PS3 did), as this is still a thing in the HD era. Your DVB cable or satellite box will output 50Hz since the EU television broadcast standards use it even with a HD resolution (BBC One is 1080/50)
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MoreJRPG
Suffers from extreme PDS
Not sure why anyone is surprised after Jim Ryan made those comments about backwards compatibility. It’s obvious this feature was going to be half-baked from the start and they buried it at the highest tier because they know only the most hardcore PlayStation fans would considering buying it so he wanted to milk them as much as he could.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I don't understand their thinking of why they went this route as it does seem like a half assed attempt
azertydu91
Hard to Kill
OOOOOhhhh that's why when I played with a foreign friend when I was younger the colors seemed off!!!I always thought it was the TV.
cireza
Member
This was true only if using true RGB SCART cable, which were included by SEGA with all consoles, but not with Sony and Nintendo consoles (had to buy them separately).
azertydu91
Hard to Kill
We had most of the consoles but my brother bought them,so I am not sure but I think he bought true rgb scart with them.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Would it be that hard to do NTSC and PAL releases if it makes that big of a difference in modern day? (I dont know if this NTSC/PAL thing is still an issue like decades ago)
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Fess
Member
I guess it was okay when games ran at the full screen refresh (50), with correct game speed. But half the refresh (25fps) was more common and that was no fun.
Personally I want NTSC versions. I can’t remember a single PAL version that was better.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Switch can run Retroarch as well.
It's a real damn shame that the latest Sony console itself is the worst way to play PS1 and PS2 classics right now.
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And they got blasted for it at the time (plus it sold badly). They don't learn.
cireza
Member
On CRT it was okay in my opinion, 25 vs 30 is not a huge difference. People are satisfied with 40fps instead of 60fps on modern TVs (and the horrible movement blur they have)...
ParaSeoul
Member
No the 40fps option is for 120hz displays. Also OLEDs don't have that issue.
cireza
Member
This is simply to avoid stuttering, this is still 40fps. OLED also have movement blur, but people don't understand this because they don't have access to a CRT anymore and they forgot/never saw the motion clarity of a CRT in real life.
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Fess
Member
Haven’t tried 40fps but for me it looked a lot smoother when a game ran at 30 vs 25 fps. 25fps in fast games like Wipeout looked really bad, eventually I started buying NTSC versions for all racing games.
But the bigger issue was the slow motion in many games, looked like characters were running in water.
Imru’ al-Qays
Member
Lol wtf. PS1 classics on PS3/PSP/Vita were region appropriate, why take this step back?
cireza
Member
Of course. Games that weren't optimized had to be switched to 60hz for proper gameplay.
Belthazar
Member
The person in charge of a decision like this probably doesn't even play games anyway.
ParaSeoul
Member
Nope. I don't think you actually understand what you're talking about or why 40fps modes exist.
EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.1
Respect to Sony for the classics.
Fess
Member
Probably someone who don’t actually play the games. Nintendo did the same thing but eventually started selling NTSC versions with an import label after listening to too much complaints.
dotnotbot
Member
cireza
means perceived blur due to how our eyes work with sample and hold displays like OLED.Going from 30 to 40 FPS on OLED will minimize the judder caused by low framerate but motion clarity will still be off compared to CRT and look blurry in our eyes despite OLED's near perfect response times.
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yurinka
Member
How I feel about Sony today.
The VGC folk is wrong, they PAL games but are patched to run at 60Hz. Seems it's already fixed, the PSOne running on PS5 are PAL but are running at 60Hz, not 50Hz.
There is a video comparing Tekken 2 in PS3 vs in PS5 and runs faster in PS5. See 2:21:
The speed difference between 50Hz and 60Hz is 16.67% and I'd bet this is the speed difference we're seeing in the comparision video. Meaning that both PS3 and PS5 were running the PAL version but the PS5 emulator patched it to run at 60Hz as if it was a NTSC game so the game has the original speed of its Japanese version.
By patching PAL games to run at 60Hz they perform like the NTSC in terms of performance, but in many games the PAL versions have the benefit of an higher resolution and including the localization for additional languages instead of featuring English only.
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Calling 911 Melts Beams
Banned
i hope they get their shit together when they port over the extensive atari jaguar cd catalog
Neff
Member
What a giant fucking waste of time and effort.
This is almost certainly the main reason this has happened. It's cheaper to license one SKU per game rather than multiple SKUs, so they've gone with the versions which have the most localisation options for games which require the user to understand text, and those are more often than not PAL versions.
For real. I remember seeing SFII on a friend's US SNES via RGB (I had it running on a PAL SNES via composite). It looked like different hardware, straight up. I was insulted that someone could sell something so inferior to me despite it being essentially the same technology for the same price.
It became a problem if you liked videogames and movies, which either got slower or faster respectively.
Yeah I saw this too. It's definitely running fractionally slower than the original hardware even though it's the NTSC version. Not a disaster, but it's there and noticeable in the side-by-side comparison.
I suspect this will be the case based on the information we have so far.
PS3 was the generation of Sony throwing money at customers to entice them away from the threat of 360, to their nearly fatal cost. PS4 and PS5 are the generations of Sony tightening their purse strings so as to avoid circling the drain once more.
This is almost certainly the main reason this has happened. It's cheaper to license one SKU per game rather than multiple SKUs, so they've gone with the versions which have the most localisation options for games which require the user to understand text, and those are more often than not PAL versions.
For real. I remember seeing SFII on a friend's US SNES via RGB (I had it running on a PAL SNES via composite). It looked like different hardware, straight up. I was insulted that someone could sell something so inferior to me despite it being essentially the same technology for the same price.
It became a problem if you liked videogames and movies, which either got slower or faster respectively.
Yeah I saw this too. It's definitely running fractionally slower than the original hardware even though it's the NTSC version. Not a disaster, but it's there and noticeable in the side-by-side comparison.
I suspect this will be the case based on the information we have so far.
PS3 was the generation of Sony throwing money at customers to entice them away from the threat of 360, to their nearly fatal cost. PS4 and PS5 are the generations of Sony tightening their purse strings so as to avoid circling the drain once more.
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MrTroubleMaker
Member
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
I not all games are PAL. Tekken 2 is NTSC on PS5. It's mostly first games believe it or not, lmao.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
they should ask for help to Phill Spencer
01011001
Banned
True, the Xbox already has a better PS1 emulator
ChorizoPicozo
Member
yikesTrue, the Xbox already has a better PS1 emulator
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Not like this, Sony. Not like this 
....
EDIT: Didn't Sony also say that these games have improved framerate options? Maybe there are options for these games to run at higher framerate and therefore it was just "easier" to use the PAL region versions as the default?
....EDIT: Didn't Sony also say that these games have improved framerate options? Maybe there are options for these games to run at higher framerate and therefore it was just "easier" to use the PAL region versions as the default?
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Not everything happens every single refresh. "PAL Slowdown" occurs primarily as a result of timings not being adjusted to compensate for lower screen refresh rates. And once again PAL60 was supported on many games, giving all the benefits to frame-rate and latency whilst keeping the superior resolution and colour fidelity of PAL.
PAL60 is superior to NTSC.
CamHostage
Member
They did that on PS1 classic partly because Sony Europe developed the PS1 Classic product and they managed the handling and licensing of the ROMs for the hardware for international release. It was a bone-headed decision to not pay attention to the performance differences between territories, but it makes sense how they could make that simplification mistake once.
Doing it here, I don't get it. They didn't have this problem with PS Classics on PSN in the past (not sure if all ROMs were NTSC then or if each region had its own ROMs? Probably the latter?) It's not clear why this new PS+ backwards compatibility approach would change the legality of which ROMs it licenses, but maybe there are infuriating legal reasons why we cannot have nice things.
50Hz.
After all, NTSC = Never Twice the Same Colour vs. PAL = Perfection At Last.
That's the wiring and signal feed though, not the game code so much, correct? I don't think most developers changed their game code much between NTSC and PAL besides throttling the run speed to match the electrical Hertz, maybe a little Luma/Chroma bumping and also sometimes some localization changes such as subtitle options.
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ReBurn
Gold Member
PAL-60 is pretty much a hack to make NTSC content viewable on PAL receivers. It's a mapping of the NTSC color space to the PAL color space and an uptick in refresh rate to hit 60hz instead of 50hz. It really doesn't offer anything superior to NTSC. Sega leaned into it pretty hard in Dreamcast games, outputting a PAL-60 signal. GameCube and OG Xbox had pretty good support for it, too. But neither PS1 or PS2 officially supported it.
Fess
Member
There was nothing wrong with the PAL TV system per say, it worked great when devs in PAL land made the games. The Commodore computers were(are) awesome, there the norm is 50hz and the issues came at the other side of the pond where people suddenly had TVs running at weird 60hz.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Hold up...
Jump to around 40 minutes; that looks like NTSC Tekken 2.
This is Tekken 2 running on PS1 (maybe emulated?); NTSC version.
Compare Jun's throw on Heihachi in both versions (~ 42:32 first vid, ~ 5:16 second vid). It LOOKs the same in both, but if someone can frame count the throw in both videos at those spots that would be a lot more helpful.
So this 50 Hz/60 Hz issue for whatever reason isn't happening their third-party games, but Sony are choosing 50 Hz for their own versions in the same service? I really don't get that logic.
Marlon also showed off Jak 3 later in that stream; that looks like it's 60 Hz but I don't know. If so, then this 50 Hz issue would be limited to 1P PS1 titles which kind of sucks. I know a lot of 1P games were 30 FPS that generation but still. Also does refresh rate have a perceptible impact on framerate pacing (actual or perceived) when the framerate is less than 60? Genuinely asking here.
Jump to around 40 minutes; that looks like NTSC Tekken 2.
This is Tekken 2 running on PS1 (maybe emulated?); NTSC version.
Compare Jun's throw on Heihachi in both versions (~ 42:32 first vid, ~ 5:16 second vid). It LOOKs the same in both, but if someone can frame count the throw in both videos at those spots that would be a lot more helpful.
So this 50 Hz/60 Hz issue for whatever reason isn't happening their third-party games, but Sony are choosing 50 Hz for their own versions in the same service? I really don't get that logic.
Marlon also showed off Jak 3 later in that stream; that looks like it's 60 Hz but I don't know. If so, then this 50 Hz issue would be limited to 1P PS1 titles which kind of sucks. I know a lot of 1P games were 30 FPS that generation but still. Also does refresh rate have a perceptible impact on framerate pacing (actual or perceived) when the framerate is less than 60? Genuinely asking here.
Neff
Member
I think this is true for the most part, especially when the majority of European consoles featured RGB output and sold high quality official cables for that purpose. And NTSC was in its own right a terrible system, seeing modern filters faithfully render NTSC composite/component images is a real eye-opener as to how bad it was.
But again, there were too many publishers who didn't give one shit about going to the trouble of implementing PAL60. Sega will always deserve credit for initially blazing that trail, and Nintendo had the sense to soon follow suit even if Sony stubbornly didn't, since PS2 60hz games were uncommon, and most of them towards the tail end of the generation.
And also, it was by no means guaranteed that a European TV was going to be able to display a 60hz signal, even if it had SCART. With PAL60 and NTSC using the same RGB TV and appropriate cabling, the difference is almost unnoticeable.
NTSC hardware + NTSC games + a 50/60hz RGB-enabled TV was always the best plan to stick to until the HDMI generation in my experience.
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RoadHazard
Gold Member
Or Ocarina of Time (and so many other N64 games) at 17fps. Didn't really bother me back then though.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
There's a distinct difference in colour reproduction between PAL60 and NTSC, even though res/frame-buffer size and refresh rate are the same. Either could be worked around using RGB via fully-pinned SCART as that was far more common in European receivers than US-style component output.