lazzeri Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 Hi, Total noob question (my main focus is A2600 actually) so please be nice. :-) I´ve seen quite a difference on prices regarding boxed (and MIB) A7800 USA vs UK games -specially the slightest rarer ones. Some games can cost 100 USD in USA and 30 EUR in UK. Looking at the pictures I truly cannot see a difference - event the address printed on the manual is the Sunnyvale one. So I have to ask: Are they exactly the same? Box, manual, cart, the whole thing? Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 (edited) The US carts would be in NTSC television format and the UK in PAL of course, but I *think* all of the packaging etc. was identical. The UK ones might have had multilingual instructions, but one of the experts will know for sure. That's just talking about the Atari-released stuff though. 3rd party releases often (always?) had better cartridge labels outside of the US, it was the same as the box art, as opposed to the plain jane labels we got here. (Compare the US and UK Activision releases, for example.) Edited June 23, 2018 by King Atari 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 While externally the carts typically will appear identical, some PAL 7800 cartridges may have a small "P" sticker on the back of them. Internally is a different story. NTSC 7800 consoles require an encryption key that is checked for when the cartridge is first started up during the 'Fuji with Atari logo' screen. NTSC 7800 Atari cartridges contain that key. PAL 7800 consoles do not have an encryption check, and in turn, PAL 7800 cartridges lack an encryption key. Of course, there is the difference accounting for the video format too. Regardless, unmodified NTSC consoles cannot run PAL Atari cartridges at all. NTSC cartridges running on a PAL console is another story. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazzeri Posted June 23, 2018 Author Share Posted June 23, 2018 Thank you gentlemen, that was really helpfull. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayhem Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 Yes, all the boxes and manuals are the same between US and Europe. So you have NO way to determine if a game is NTSC or PAL until you open her up and try the cartridge out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazzeri Posted June 24, 2018 Author Share Posted June 24, 2018 Yes, all the boxes and manuals are the same between US and Europe. So you have NO way to determine if a game is NTSC or PAL until you open her up and try the cartridge out. Now THAT´s awful. :-( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sixersfan105 Posted June 27, 2018 Share Posted June 27, 2018 Yes, all the boxes and manuals are the same between US and Europe. So you have NO way to determine if a game is NTSC or PAL until you open her up and try the cartridge out.That is not entirely the case. Some PAL games sold in certain countries have a flimsy text-only German or French language manual between the outside of the box and the shrink wrap. I have noticed that those exceptions also typically contain a gold sticker on the side of the box, overlapping the front of the box a bit, too, that says Serie ORO - which means gold series, according to Google Translate, in both Spanish and Italian. Those gold stickers are also sometimes present without the additional language manual on the back. They are certainly not present on all PAL sealed games, but whenever you see the sticker and/or the additional language manual on the back, you know - without fail - that the enclosed game is PAL format. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sixersfan105 Posted June 27, 2018 Share Posted June 27, 2018 Here is an example of the aforementioned gold sticker... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayhem Posted June 27, 2018 Share Posted June 27, 2018 Fair enough... but of course, that never happened in the UK heh... I just took it as read that any 7800 game I bought here was actually PAL. Thankfully they are were. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sixersfan105 Posted June 27, 2018 Share Posted June 27, 2018 Fair enough... but of course, that never happened in the UK heh... I just took it as read that any 7800 game I bought here was actually PAL. Thankfully they are were. Yeah totally fair. I think the OP meant NTSC vs. PAL when he said USA vs. UK, so I thought I would add that wrinkle. You would be amazed just how many PAL copies make their way stateside! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayhem Posted June 28, 2018 Share Posted June 28, 2018 Probably people not realising, trying to find the harder games that are easier to locate here (Planet Smashers, Ninja Golf, Alien Brigade, Mean 18 etc). Or coming up through South America perhaps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sixersfan105 Posted June 28, 2018 Share Posted June 28, 2018 Without a doubt! South America is NTSC, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayhem Posted June 29, 2018 Share Posted June 29, 2018 Actually the system in Brazil and Argentina is closer to standard PAL than NTSC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazzeri Posted June 29, 2018 Author Share Posted June 29, 2018 Not really. Brazils system was called PAL-M and its basically NTSC with a different color carrier. Its 60hz too. If you connect a PAL-M device on a NTSC TV (or vice-versa) youll have a perfect B&W picture. Argentina indeed is closer to european PAL and wont work at all on NTSC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sixersfan105 Posted June 29, 2018 Share Posted June 29, 2018 Interesting...guess I am just thinking of Venezuela, where a million pallets of NTSC games were discovered a few years back...plus the majority of South American countries Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazzeri Posted June 29, 2018 Author Share Posted June 29, 2018 USA NTSC A2600 games work perfectly on unmodified, stock Brazilian Ataris. I still have my Coleco Donkey Kong I got when I was a kid. :-) PAL-M is indeed a very, very bizarre protocol. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toiletunes Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 Some boxes might say NTSC (or PAL?). It doesn't hurt to check, but don't count on it. Here's from the back of my Crossbow box: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayhem Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Not going to help, all the boxes released in Europe are the US boxes. The only way to find out is to plug the cart in. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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