Xl/XE carts : PAL/NTSC differences ?

[Lord-Chaos]

Everytime I offer my ATARI XEGS games on ebay , people think that they only work on PAL TVs since I come from a PAL country.

 

But AFAIK , all the XEGS games were made for the North American market.ATARI did not produce European manuals , only English.Games that use artifacting were not changed and are black/white on PAL TVs (Lode Runner and David´s Midnight Magic).

 

Most of the old ATARI XL cart also had only English manuals , some also French/German/Spanish/Italian , but the carts should be the same worldwide.

 

Same with disk-based games : All NTSC games seem to work on PAl systems - only problems may be timing of copy protection and the artifacting problem.

All PAL games should work on NTSC machines , only problems may be timing of copy-protection / the enhanced vertical resolution.

 

Anyone ever had problems with carts from PAL countries on NTSC machines ?

 

Thimo

[walter_J64bit]

Ive lived In the UK back in the 80's (old fart) but Ive have UK games on disk, I have one UK cart I have a NTSC 1200XL they run just fine so ATARI XEGS games should run any system! Problems with copying the game Ive dont have any problems! But I have NOT tryed to copy ATARI XEGS games, most of them are on disk any way.

[Gunstar]

There ARE problems with Atari Pal/NTSC games, I have TONS that won't work properly! There are a LOT that work perfectly fine, some only have minor problems and glitches and some won't work AT ALL. There is no way of telling but by trying. I have just ordered a PAL Antic chip to install in my NTSC computer, which will fix the problem and allow ALL PAL/NTSC games to work right. It may be that over there PAL systems have less problem with NTSC games, I don't know. I wonder if an NTSC Antic chip is installed in a PAL system, if it will work like what I'm doing with mine? Although, maybe you European/United Kindom peole don't need to worry?

[t.skid]

Maybe it's too easy, but I own PAL and NTSC XEs, so I could run almost everything

[Lord-Chaos]

There ARE problems with Atari Pal/NTSC games, I have TONS that won't work properly! There are a LOT that work perfectly fine, some only have minor problems and glitches and some won't work AT ALL. There is no way of telling but by trying. I have just ordered a PAL Antic chip to install in my NTSC computer, which will fix the problem and allow ALL PAL/NTSC games to work right. It may be that over there PAL systems have less problem with NTSC games, I don't know. I wonder if an NTSC Antic chip is installed in a PAL system, if it will work like what I'm doing with mine? Although, maybe you European/United Kindom peole don't need to worry?

 

Maybe problems with disk-based games , since some of them (UK ,german,polish) games use the higher resolution or need the 50Hz timing.

 

Some demos/games may need the exact 50Hz timing.But that can only be newer Polish demos/games.

 

But I think all the CARTRIDGE games are US versions.I don´t think that ATARI or other companies like Parker or Activision made extra PAL versions because :

 

ATARI´s Loderunner and David´s MM use artifacting = black/white on PAL TVs

 

Choplifter uses artifacting = black&white on PAL TVs

 

Most cart games were not common in Europe , Activision/Parker games were more common on disk or tape.

 

Known PAL-NTSC problems of other systems :

 

On the C64 some of the old NTSC Electronic Arts games did not work on PAL systems because of the copy-protection.Some games by other companies , too.But later , this problem was fixed.

 

On the AMIGA , some NTSC games won´t work at all , but the AMIGA (at least the A1200) can be switched to NTSC and then all games work.

 

No known ATARI ST NTSC problems , since the ST had no TV-out.Always 60Hz RGB with a monitor.Only problem on later STs/STE with TV out , some 60Hz games "rolled" on PAL systems.But a lot of PAL games had 60Hz mode,too.But there were not too many NTSC ST games ...

 

AFAIK there´s also no or almost no NTSC-PAL problem on the Colecovision.All the NTSC games work fine on my system.

 

NTSC Genesis games always worked on PAL systems until SEGA put some extra chip or something like that in the carts.

Nintendo NTSC games never worked without an adaptor and even with that some games did not work (NES or SNES)

 

Don´t know about the Intellivision , but Vectrex has no NTSC/PAL (own monitor) , Lynx and other handhelds ,too.

 

Thimo