BattleZone NTSC vs. PAL

[Herbarius]

I think you all know the arcade game BattleZone and its 2600 conversion.

 

So, I saw the Classic Game Room video of BattleZone and immediately I found the graphics very impressing for a 2600 game. I thought "Wow, I've got to get that game!"...

(actually I first thought "Oh, what's that, I wouldn't have thought BattleZone has been released for the VCS too... However, it can't be good, the 2600 isn't really capable of this vector-based 3D perspective... oh, what's that? It's in color? it looks nice? Wow, of course, why didn't I think of that, all they had to do is alter the style of the graphics to get it on the 2600.)

 

So, but now I found out, by surfing on Atarimania, that the PAL version of the game has less colors than the NTSC version. It still looks good, but its just a little bit less impressive. Given that I live in Germany and most likely can only get my hands on the PAL version, its kinda sad, that definitely pushed the priority of River Raid on my whishlist (had been a tie between River Raid and BattleZone before I found out)

 

 

Now, I wonder why is there this difference between the NTSC and PAL version? Here on AtariAge there is a website which states NTSC games run fine in PAL systems (but not the other way round)... but if that is true, why did they change it? Why didn't they just publish the same version? Is there any technical reason for this change?

 

Is that a singular phenomenon or are other games which have been altered in similar ways when they made their way from NTSC to PAL?

Edited April 12, 2009 by Herbarius

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Now, I wonder why is there this difference between the NTSC and PAL version?

There is no reason, just a lazy conversion. Check this.

 

Is that a singular phenomenon or are other games which have been altered in similar ways when they made their way from NTSC to PAL?

The quality of NTSC to PAL conversions differs. While Atarii and Imagic are usually doing pretty good conversions, Activision used a different coding style, which made adjusting the speed difference (~18%) between NTSC and PAL very difficult. Therefore PAL Activison games are usually that much slower than their NTSC counterparts.

[BSA Starfire]

PAL Empire strikes back is missing it's music.

NTSC Battlezone doesn't play well on my PAL setup, the colours are screwed and it flickers into black & white.

Chris