Usa, Europe, Jap Roms

[Steve-O]

Whats the main difference???

 

[Phil]

well nothing really except if your talking carts, and EU you can get in french+spanish etc, japanse carts are in japanese

 

[diablo2]

the region

 

[craigix]

Its sometimes more, for example sonic1 jap version is enhanced and has bug fixes.

-Craig

www.gbax.com

 

[Nebulous]

I think Eu roms sometimes runs about 17% slower.. or am i wrong?

 

[Phil]

i think thats only in modern games.

 

[damaki]

I think Eu roms sometimes runs about 17% slower.. or am i wrong?

It more complicated than that. In fact there are many differences
- current using 50 Hz / 220 V in some countries while 60/110 in others but that's not the real issue
- different standards of TVs (PAL, SECAM, NTSC, ...) which have different resolutions (625 or 525 lines). More lines are harder to generate so it's longer, that's why they're often replaced with black lines the prevent speed loss.
So here are the physical differences. Then there are others differences. Most games are released first in japan, so if there are bugs they're first discovered over there. These bugs are sometimes corrected then you get 1.1 or 1.2 versions in japan. And, later, these games are released in other countries. Of course they won't release the buggy version... so they go for the last one.
This delay in release issue also created some problems, because if you can have a game earlier by import then it would be cool, but the company won't get enough money of it. So they differenciate the hardware by regions to prevent this (that's stupid in fact, there are always adaptators, mod chips or whatever.
There is also the language issue...

 

[Steve-O]

Im meaning whats teh difference when using them in a Emulator on teh GP32 For Example Genesis Roms with FGen...

 

[Kop_007]

I haven't noticed much difference (apart from the obvious) in many emualtors, but for example, the PC Engine emulator seems to have much greater compatability with Japanese roms rather than the US version of the same game. Bonk Adventure for example.

 

[V3X]

Its sometimes more, for example sonic1 jap version is enhanced and has bug fixes.

realy? hows it enhanced?

off topic. YAY the Internet(I've been at my grandparents for the last week)

 

[Swiss_Cheesespam]

Its sometimes more, for example sonic1 jap version is enhanced and has bug fixes.

realy? hows it enhanced?

off topic. YAY the Internet(I've been at my grandparents for the last week)

Only a few small fixes and enhancements. The stupid spike bug was never fixed, however the clouds in Green Hill Zone now scroll across while standing still, in Labyrinth the graphics are all wavy under water, and the level select menu is now all in correct order. There are probably other small changes.

As said above, most of the time stuff is released in japan first, and then released overseas later, with bugfixes. Sonic, while being developed in Japan, was developed for a western audience, so it was released in Europe and North America before it was in Japan.

And generally, yeah, because of PAL/NTSC differences, PAL games run around 10% slower. We were used to it, so it didn't bother us. With games on later consoles (PS and N64) games were usually tweaked to run at the same speed, sometimes optimised so they no longer had borders. Games that were enhaced like that were usually high profile releases, and because of these enhancements, would actually be superior to the NTSC version, despite the lower framerate (PAL 50hz vs NTSC 60hz) although I prefer high resolution and better colour over framerate personally. A good example of a game enhanced for PAL is ICO for the PS2, which had many extra features.

I prefer PAL over NTSC always when it comes to watching movies though. The 10% speedup is easily preferred over jerky pans, low resolution, and shitty colour.

 

[damaki]

A good example of a game enhanced for PAL is ICO for the PS2, which had many extra features.

There's also the first Gran Turismo on PSX, the european version was actually tweaked to run faster than the other versions.

 

[johnnyskullhead]

i used to work in a games retailer around megadrive and snes era pal versions always stank

 

[finty]

But after MegaDrive/SNES most games were tweaked to run faster.