PAL region

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Television system by country.

The PAL region is a video game publication territory which covers Australia, New Zealand, and varying European countries. The majority of games designated as part of the region will not play on NTSC-U/C or NTSC-J region consoles because of regional lockout. While this is the most common occurrence, some Xbox and Xbox 360 games are region-free encoded, since Microsoft's policy is for publishers to decide. Nintendo handhelds are region-free, but their consoles are not.

1 Release area
2 60Hz operation
3 Criticism of PAL region video games
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Release area

The scope of the PAL region varies with systems and publishers. The following countries are normally included in a PAL region release:

United Kingdom
Germany
France (despite using SECAM for TV and VHS)
Italy
Spain
Netherlands
Australia & New Zealand

However, the region can include Scandinavian, Middle Eastern, African and other European territories.

[edit] 60Hz operation

During the mid-90s the practice of modifying consoles such as the SNES and Mega Drive to allow 60Hz operation became somewhat common among PAL gamers, due to the rise in NTSC/60Hz capable PAL TVs and the relatively simple nature of the modifications.[1] Beginning with the fifth generation of consoles, which introduced more powerful hardware and 3D graphics, developers had the ability to output at full PAL resolution without borders or stretching, although games still typically ran slower and all ran at 50Hz. Beginning with the Dreamcast and continuing through the sixth generation of consoles, developers began including PAL60 modes in their games. Games that run at PAL60 are produced with the same colour encoding system as 50Hz PAL signals, but with the NTSC resolution and field rate of 60Hz, providing an identical gaming experience to their NTSC counterparts.

[edit] Criticism of PAL region video games

Games ported to PAL have historically been known for having game speed and framerates inferior to their NTSC counterparts. Since the NTSC standard is 60 fields a second but PAL is 50 fields a second, games were typically slowed down by approximately 17.5% in order to avoid timing problems or unfeasible code changes. In addition to this, PAL's increased resolution was not utilized during conversion, creating a pseudo letterbox effect with borders top and bottom, leaving the graphics with a slightly squashed look due to an incorrect aspect ratio caused by the borders. This was especially prevalent during previous generations when 2D graphics were used almost exclusively. The gameplay of many games with an emphasis on speed, such as the original Sonic The Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive, suffered in their PAL incarnations.[2]

Despite the possibility and popularity of 60Hz PAL games, many high profile games, particularly for the PS2 console, were released in 50Hz-only versions. Square Enix have long been criticized by PAL gamers for their poor PAL conversions. Final Fantasy X runs in 50Hz mode only, and 17.5% slower and bordered that while prevalent in previous generations was considered inexcusable at the time of release.[3] In stark contrast, the Xbox featured a system-wide PAL60 option in the Dashboard and the overwhelming majority of PAL games offered 50 and 60Hz modes with no slowdown. Current generation PAL consoles such as the Xbox 360 and Wii also feature system-wide 60Hz support.

Nintendo's Wii Virtual Console service has been criticised due to PAL games running in 50Hz only, despite the ability to run in 60Hz mode.[4]

In recent times, several PAL releases have lacked the standard PAL mode and offered 60Hz only, including Metroid Prime 2 for the Nintendo Gamecube and Dead or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360.