50-60hz Sonic the Hedgehog Comparison Using a Mod Switch

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showing the difference between the European 50hz version of the first Sonic game with the original Japanese and American version

when a game is moved from tha American television format to the European format without extra optimisation coding, a loss of speed occurs as well as screen squashing, this problem has been defeated in recent years, but most consoles up until the N64 are plagued by it (so yes, most of those NES/Megadrive/PSone games you played in your youth were inferior versions that ran too slow with squashed screens, and Chun LI is not actually the chubby midget she always appeared to be!)

Sorry about the poor quality but this is on a real modded Megadrive, I have added a switch to allow it to output in 60hz as well as 50hz, i think it still shows the differences quite well, you'll notice me switching the Megadrive to PAL speed by the appearance of blue borders at the top and bottom of the screen (as well as the sound speed dropping)

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Sonic
• Hedgehog
• PAL
• NTSC
• European
• American
• Megadrive
• Genesis
• Comparison
• 50hz
• 60hz
• mod

[VaderPad]

Haha, you finally checked it out yourself. Good.

I don't know where you got the 0.4% from though. It is definitely more than that. Too bad I don't have an EUR system around.

No, not the difficulty in Outrun (although that is also a point). The fact the in-game timer isn't congruent with real world time anymore.

Also another point is that technically the music in games such as Sonic is still too slow.

Why delete it? Let people read it and be informed. That's why I posted anyway.

[jesusarnold]

I thought about deleting it cos the posts look a bit like the bickering of 2 people with obsessive compulsive disorder :) but if people find it interesting then I'm fine with leaving it up, tbh I don't think many people actually watch this vid anyway, I decided to try to be more accurate with my estimations, the actual time that the first second is lost is ~ 2 minutes 40 seconds, so the actual speed loss is somewhere between 0.6% and 0.7% (unless i've mucked up my calculations somewhere)

[VaderPad]

Well, they say the third time's the charm.

If you want to check out the weird output signal (recommended) you can hook it up using composite to a NTSC capable TV. The image will not be in colour.

Also, did you add the appropriate capacitors and resistors to the RGB cable (if you made it yourself)? Otherwise the colour is off.

These are needed at the end of the output of the used videochip. The datasheet mentions it, but Sega failed to add them (probably to save costs).

[jesusarnold]

At the end of the day whether it's .4% or .7% it's all the same to me, I knew it was going to be a tiny difference just from experience, but it turned out to be a much smaller speed loss than your posts hinted at.

Mega Drive games were designed for Composite output, so using RGB cables will never show the image as it was supposed to be seen whether you muck about with the cables or not, all games with dithering will look wrong, notice the waterfall effects in Sonic the Hedgehog as an example.

[TheStolken]

Those pal folks are missing some BLAST PROCESSING.

[MaidenFan24568]

just bought a megadeive 2day with no cables or controllers for £2

[SebiStudios2]

I noticed that the screen flickered more on 50 hz.

[Adam060756]

NTSC 60Hz sucks! Too damn fast, slow your ass down. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Nice comparison though.

[lyris1]

Sorry, but there is a word for people who knew about this and knowingly bought (and STILL buy) gimped 50hz video games:

suckers.

[TheDiffinator502]

Were they just trying to piss off us PAL pals?

[ranpo677]

So you're saying that the PAL versions of retro games aren't as good as NTSC?

[Madt001]

I noticed this when i bought a megadrive now im older and played it after having played sonic on some emulators I saw how much slower the megadrive was. But back then when i was 5 years old it never felt that slow, probably cause i was used to it. It's such a shame that a lot of the older consoles are ruined by this.

[profanumlit]

But if the console can handle with all processament in 60Hz in 1 frame, of course is more quick then 50Hz in 1 frame too.

[profanumlit]

Just to continue explanation...

You can see that diference in gens (sega emutator). Just start sonic 2 in PAL mode play a bit and switch to NTSC mode. You will see the delay. In other games have less diference becouse have more tiny tiles. Anyway, nice video dude, try post it in better quality for us. :)

[profanumlit]

okay, in sega megadrive have other important thing. Hardware is too mutch limited, the processor, M68K, works only in 7.61MHz.

Some games run more faster in PAL (50hz) versions becouse have 20% more time bettewen two frames to calculations, drawling tiles, sprites, etc. In NTSC (60hz) sometimes need 2 frames to do same.

Sonic is a great example becouse use a HEAVY tiles 256x256, its TOO HUGE for mega drive resources, and waste more than half memory with drawing (but improve speed).