Fess
Member
OoT was something else. I bought it because of all the top scores, started playing it, then refused to play it because of that framerate. Did my first ever playthrough on 3DS where it was 30fps. Good game not worth the praise
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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
Team Andromeda
Member
Sony just treat their fans like mugs with crap like this
Shifty1897
Member
Sony can fuck right off if the PAL versions come to America. I'll buy a Series S and emulate my PS1 Classics on that just to spite them.
azertydu91
Hard to Kill
dotnotbot
Member
NA has to feel that PAL pain too. It's a revenge.
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Dream-Knife
Banned
We won from it though. They sold them for $40 then $20 6 months later. Hacking it consisted of just inserting a fat32 usb drive titled "SONY". Plays everything weaker than a ps1 great. N64 has slow down though, but the 64 was a more powerful machine.
That's because it had AA built in and the resolution was low. CRTs are also better displays than what we have now.
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Portugeezer
Member
PAL regions don't want PAL versions either.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Eh, the framerate was still extremely low. Has nothing to do with resolution or AA really.
Dream-Knife
Banned
Idk, the frame rate in OoT never bothered me. Most of the N64 catalog didn't bother me in fact. Perfect Dark and Battletanx Global Assault are really the two games where I notice it.
coffinbirth
Member
Paired with the PSN stacking debacle, today is not the best day...
After my PS1 and PS2 Classics purchases not rolling over, +$10 for PS5 games and controllers, and the orphaning of my beloved PSP, then Vita...not sure why I still give these assholes my money. At this point, I just kinda hope all of their 1st party titles end up on PC so I can just fucking walk away for good.
After my PS1 and PS2 Classics purchases not rolling over, +$10 for PS5 games and controllers, and the orphaning of my beloved PSP, then Vita...not sure why I still give these assholes my money. At this point, I just kinda hope all of their 1st party titles end up on PC so I can just fucking walk away for good.
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Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
Because Europeans know what is right.
Probably because the PAL/SECAM version has multiple languages including English and Spanish for the NTSC regions.
ParaSeoul
Member
they do?
ShirAhava
Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
Yes
dotnotbot
Member
Varteras
Member
Maybe
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
alabtrosMyster
Banned
ManaByte
Gold Member
The PS2 classics bought on the PS3 do not.
yurinka
Member
NTSC had the benefit of 60hz instead of 50hz, which meant games being 16.67% less smooth and (depending if the specific game was a bad adaptation of an originally NTSC game) slower or in PAL.
PAL had the benefit of many games featuring localization to additional languages other than English and higher resolution.
Some emulators (or unlicensed software or hardware for the original consoles) patch PAL games/consoles/emulators to run at 60hz, meaning you get the benefits of both versions without needing to modify the original game.
One of the improvements of this emulation in PS4 and PS5 is improved framerates, and all modern PAL tvs support 60hz (and some of newest ones 120Hz), so problably they thought the best option was to use PAL games and patch them to run at 60hz or 120hz.
Regarding the extra resolution, some NTSC games were badly adapted to PAL not adapting them to take advantage of it, meaning the game had horizontal black bars in the top and bottom of the screen and the image looked stretched down. This is also fixable via unofficial software patches both in the original consoles or emulators without needing to modify the game code.
anthony2690
Member
Thank you for the in depth response, greatly appreciated and insightful
Fess
Member
How difficult is it to implement these fixes that makes PAL versions run at 60fps and at the full screen size? And does it come with any downsides? i.e bad frame pacing, pixel crawl, etc
Can this be done in Retroarch?
I’ve used emulators a lot but unfortunately I have zero experience in this.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
If all this NTSC and PAL are such an issue then just release the suitable version for each region.
Game makers have been able to figure out how to release physical copies in their own cover art and language. How hard can it be to give gamers downloadable copies that fit their region?
Game makers have been able to figure out how to release physical copies in their own cover art and language. How hard can it be to give gamers downloadable copies that fit their region?
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yurinka
Member
You're welcome. The TLDR version is that both NTSC and PAL had pros and cons but the PAL cons are easily fixable in an emuator if they put some minimal effort.Thank you for the in depth response, greatly appreciated and insightful
Some emulators have an option in its settings to force 60hz for PAL games. I assume internally it simply "overclocks" the emulation or display to update 60 times per second instead of 50.
So for games that were slower in PAL compared to their original NTSC version (typical from games made in Japan or USA and had a bad PAL conversion) this patch would fix it.
For games that are properly programmed to work at the same speed indpendently of the refresh rate or resolution (but moving smoother at 60hz than in 50hz) to apply this patch would mean the PAL game would run as smooth as the NTSC one.
I don't know if there is some case but there is a possibility of a another type of bad implementation: an European game designed to run well at the speed of the 50Hz but not designed to adapt to other framerates or refresh rates. In this case to have the 60Hz patch activated would show all -or maybe some- things running faster than usual which probably could even break the game. For these games the patch should be disabled. Not only to keep an optimal experience, but also to keep the intended one.
Retroach isn't a single emulator: it's let's say a collection of different emulators (cores). To change its options, it has two level of settings: one from retroarch that are common to all cores and are applied to all cores. And then core specific settings, that only apply to that specific core and are different for each core. Some cores (can't remember which ones) of old home consoles have this core specific option to force 60Hz. When saving the core specific settings, as I remember you can save it for the core, only for a roms folder or only for a specific game.
Regarging the letterbox black bars in the top and bottom of the screen of some PAL games: some retroarch cores have core specific options to "hide" (or not render) more or less portion of the top and bottom. So playing with this setting you can fix it. Retroarch also has in the retroarch level settings video optioins to zoom and stretch the image in many ways, automatically adapt it to different aspect ratios etc. So stretching the image vertically enough to keep the black bars outside the screen for that game would fix it and look like the ntsc version. The PS5 emulator also has stretching and zoom options so they could solve the black bars letterbox issue too.
Both the letterbox and 60Hz patch would be needed for some PAL games but not for other ones. Which means that before releasing each PS1 game they should test to know if each game needs to have them activated or not. Or well, even if they want save money on testing they could simply add them to the emulator settings and let the players decide if want to activate it or not with the warning that it can make the game look bad or even break it.
Please notice these aren't a PS1 specific issues. It applies to all home consoles designed to run on CRT tvs and their retroarch cores, so from the PS3 gen to back to 8 bits released both in Europe and America/Japan and from devs from both sides. So basically everything from NES to PS3.
There were also other differences between PAL and NTSC or with the different cables you were using to connect them to the tv that resulting in having more or less blurriness or artifacts, or more importantly a slightly different color palette. Some retroarch cores/emulators also have options to change between them, or there are retroarch shaders (let's call them visual filters) to simulate each one. But well, most people don't care about them.
When they use the same version for the whole world is to cut costs from testing: in the case of Sony when you submitted a game to be published, you sent each version to the different Sony teams for each countries/regions. Each one had a different testing and certification team an required to verify different things.
By having a single version reduces the amount of bugs and testing and certification required.
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Fess
Member
PAL 50hz versions fit the european region but the problem is that few want that in 2022, we’ve played in 60hz since the Dreamcast days.
The language in NTSC versions might be a problem for some but I still think that should be the standard download. They can have PAL versions as a secondary choice for those who really don’t speak english.
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Oh, this is pretty insightful (as an American and therefore having no care for intricacies of PAL standard). Sony did also say that there would be framerate and resolution boosts for classic games in the service, so I guess they are doing something similar to what you describe here in increasing the framerate of the PAL versions while keeping the aforementioned benefits.
If the PAL releases don't have 60/120 Hz support right now I'd like to think they add them as soon as possible. Plus this seems to be an issue only affecting the 1P PS1 games ATM; either the 3P games (like Tekken 2) are using the NTSC versions, or running the PAL versions but hacked to run 60 Hz.
01011001
Banned
that's great and all but the games don't run at 60hz, the pal games actually run at 50fps in a 69hz container, meaning they have bad framepacing with stutters
yurinka
Member
I'd wait for a proper Digital Foundry analysis. People say they are running at 50Hz bacause found that some urls feature the PS1 PAL product code and turns out that the only 60fps game -Tekken 2- doesn't has any code in the url.
Most games in PS did run at 25fps (in PAL) or 30fps (in NTSC). So maybe the non Tekken 2 games look choppy not because they are running at the refresh rate, framerate and speed that had the original PS1 PAL game, but because they are running at 60Hz but at this refresh rate the games ran at 30fps. And maybe they can't boost the framerate of some of these games because it would break the game.
In fact, very likely your tv runs them at 60Hz even if it's emulating PAL games, but at that low framerate (either targeting 25, 30, 50 of 60 fps).
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MacReady13
Member
I can tell you this much- you are not wrong. I purchased so many PS1 and PS2 classics on PS3 and now I have to subscribe to this bullshit service to play the games I have already paid for! Let us purchase these games individually and give us access to games we have already paid for! I'm just about ready to sell my fucking PS5 and just stay PC gaming only. This is anti consumer bullshit.
Fess
Member
Thanks for that detailed reply!
Sounds like all hope aren’t lost yet. I’ve just been burned so many times on this over the years, the cut goes deep.
Rocco Schiavone
Member
Jimbo already told you that nobody wants to play old shitty games.
yurinka
Member
They said that PS1 and PSP games you bought digitally previously (I assume in PSP, Vita and PSP) that are released for PS4 and PS5 will be able to be downloaded and played for free as happened between PSP, Vita and PS3. You won't need to buy them again or to have any game sub.
It isn't the case for PS2 games, because they were different ones (in PS4 they had extra stuff like trophies).
You're welcome. We'll have to wait and see first exactly what they did.Thanks for that detailed reply!
Sounds like all hope aren’t lost yet. I’ve just been burned so many times on this over the years, the cut goes deep.
And if needed, we can ask Sony to add to the settings an option in the PS1 emulator to remove black bars and another one to force 60Hz.
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ManaByte
Gold Member
They never said anything about Vita games. Just PSP. Many Vita games have a compatibility issue due to the rear touch pad.
Dr.Morris79
Member
He doesnt like old games though?Jim should know about this stuff by now. What are you doing Jim?
Dr.Morris79
Member
Rear touch pad? Out of the many Vita games I own I honestly couldnt tell you one I used the touch pad for
Thats a lame duck excuse. A fair few even run on the Vita TV.
01011001
Banned
I have quite literally no idea what you are trying to say here to be honest
what I'm saying is, 50hz PS1 PAL games are being run at original speed and then output at 60hz, which means the games will stutter because 50hz doesn't look nice when stretched to 60hz no matter the framerate the game runs at, be it 25 or 50fps.
they aren't doing anything to fix the 50hz issue, that's my point.
they could most likely run most of these games without much issue at 60hz, like many emulators already allow, but they aren't doing that. that is the whole issue.
so as they currently are on PS+, these games run slow and stutter due to being 50hz games in a 60hz container.
furthermore the PS5 also doesn't support 50hz, neither does the PS4...
even further, these games seem to be PS4 native apps that run through backwards compatibility on PS5, meaning VRR is not working, so the possibility of utilizing VRR in order to at least run these games at their proper refresh is also not there.
so that's basically what I wanted to make clear. and like I said, not sure what you wanted to really tell me with the comment I quoted
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