Identifying PAL vs. NTSC games

[trip6]

I am trying to sort my game collection into PAL and NTSC games. I am finding some difficulty. Some games are hard to ID as PAL or NTSC versions, others are marked specifically as PAL or NTSC (like Psygnosis titles). Is there any definitive lists out there that identify PAL only or NTSC only titles? Are there any lists that identify titles that work universally on both PAL & NTSC? Are there specific publishers whose games work universally on PAL and NTSC? Are there any definitive lists or resources out there? Some of the stuff I just can't remember if I had to use a PAL boot disk when I played it... I have almost 400 titles, so I can't re-play them all... Don't have the time right now. Any help or hints are greatly appreciated...

[Lorraine]

/

[trip6]

Yes but how can I identy which games are all region? Are they the ones that have multiple international flags on the back. They usually don't have the US flag but the UK flag representing the english language... Thanks.

[trip6]

Anyone know?

[bloodline]

Really simple, if you are running a PAL Amiga in PAL, an NTSC game will only have 200 vertical lines so will have a black bar at the bottom of the screen, a PAL game would use 256 vertical lines and so have no black bar.

[Everblue]

What about PAL games that fill the entire screen?

[trip6]

Does anyone have a list of game manufacturers and whether they had PAL , NTSC or universally compatible titles?

[brianb]

I'm struggling with this now myself...  Recently acquired a stack of games and demos.   I found that it's not always just a "black bar" or the screen fit.  Some PAL games I tried appeared ok but would just crash after the title screen.  

I actually didn't know it was a PAL/NTSC issue until I experimented with WinUAE.  Now I just need to experiment with getting my physical hardware (A500) into PAL mode...

If anyone has any tips I would also certainly appreciate it...

[SamuraiCrow]

@brianb

The A500 will only do PAL mode if you have an ECS Fat Agnus chip.  The OCS is stuck with whatever scan rate you have now.

@thread

I'm at a loss to find any games that run acceptably well on NTSC because even the ones that were designed for NTSC generally run 20% faster.  There are so many PAL ones that it's just not worth it to try to hook my A1200 up to an NTSC TV.

[adolescent]

Lorraine wrote:
All region games will work on all Amigas

Except for the ones that don't. :crazy:

Really, there isn't a good way to tell without booting the game.  You can tell pretty quickly if it's either not compatible, or if it changes the screenmode.  Other than that you can check the distributor, but unfortunately that's not very accurate.  It would probably be best to assume they are all PAL to begin with.

[trip6]

Arghhh... This is madening. There has to be a way to ID them easier than that... I am suprised no resources exist in the Hall of Light Database or Lemon Amiga Database that identify the game as having either a PAL or NTSC version or a single version that works universally... This would be useful information.....

[trip6]

Any thoughts?

[Thematic]

I'm sceptical about any commercial title having NTSC and PAL versions, however RTG games could work equally well on both.

Another issue that I'm surprised wasn't mentioned is the aspect ratio: often games ported from the PC have 200 lines and so will look better in a real NTSC mode, and hopefully play better, too. Whereas original Amiga titles are more likely to exceed 200 lines and look funny in NTSC even if there's nothing missing at the bottom/top. So a part of the question is, in what environment did the artist, or whoever made the end result graphics, work in?

[trip6]

What I ended up doing to sort my games into PAL \ NTSC was any game that had a US address printed on the box or warranty card, I deemed to be NTSC. Any game that had a UK or Europe address printed on the box or warranty card I deemed to be PAL. This seemed like the only hard\fast rule that I could follow to sort my games into PAL \ NTSC...