Gamers in Europe really got the short end of the stick in the 80’s and early 90’s. Fewer releases, sometimes more than a year after games were released in the US.
As a PAL NES owner and a cart collector the PAL vs. NTSC issue still plaques me.
European PAL games run in 50hz but US games run in 60hz. What this means is that the refresh rates on TV’s in their respective areas effect game speed on the consoles. PAL games run about 17% slower than the NTSC games and they have those ugly black boarders to fit the screen. This bugs the hell out of me but luckily they started fixing some games and “optimized” them for PAL play. What they did is they patched the games so they run faster and at a higher pitch, these games would play great on a PAL console but played on a NTSC console the game would be way too fast and glitch out.
As a NES collector in the PAL region I just wanted to make a list of all optimized PAL games released in Europe for the world to see, the list is not complete yet but I am still adding games to the list as I test more games.
Continue reading PAL optimized NES games – list in progress →