Tuesday, December 05, 2006
PAL Wii warning - [some] Virtual Console games are 50hz only with borders
I need to point out from the start of this post that I am in no way making fun of gamers who were unable to get imported Wii consoles. That would just be plain cruel. I'm poking fun at Nintendo of Europe for once again letting us down.
Yes, you read that right. An NTSC-UK forum member, who previously had a US Wii but was unlucky enough to find it faulty - has posted info on the PAL Wii he's managed to bag:
"PAL was a second choice for me. Sonic had huge borders and ran at 50hz. I switched the console to 60hz, but it made no difference to the speed or borders. F-zero only had slight borders. Again, it only ran in 50hz."
If this doesn't make any sense to you, then a brief history lesson. Back in the late 80s and up until around 1995, TV sets in Europe could only show 50hz/625-line pictures (the same way most TV sets in America can still only show 60hz/525-line ones). This meant that all of the games that had been developed in Japan or America for 60hz/525 TV sets played back on European ones with a squashed video display, due to the extra 100 lines of Europe's TV system being an afterthought to the American or Japanese game designers - they had never filled them up with anything. The slower scan rate of the European system also meant that some games ran, well, slower.
In 2006, most games consoles in Europe allow the player to select 60hz (now that TVs here can handle both the 50 and 60hz systems) to get the same game experience as US and Japanese gamers. We assumed that Nintendo would allow the same to happen with the Virtual Console feature - after all, you're paying fairly large amounts of money for old games, so you'd think quality would be a concern - but obviously not. Rather than the technical limitations of the past being worked around, European gamers will be treated to a back catalogue of many generations worth of games featuring a distorted video display.
Once again, importing has been proven as the way to go for the best value, best availability, best timing of release dates, and astonishingly enough for 2006, best speed and video display. Well done Nintendo of Europe for making your domestic console the firmly inferior choice for what now must be the fifth generation running. Idiots.
Update (6:31pm): Another forum member who has the PAL console has reported that he's "Just downloaded Super Star Soldier for my PAL Wii. It runs in 480i. So maybe PC Engine games all run in 60 Hz?". Hopefully Nintendo of Europe can allow ALL of the games to run in their original 60hz through a system update, but I'm not crossing my fingers.
Posted at 6:18 PM
