Pal Slowdown?

[IntellivisionDude]

Ok so i did a trade with a friend who lives in Australia and i sent him Thunder Castle, AD&D tot, and B-17 Bomber. I noticed when he showed some footage all the games sounded off, they seem to be going slower than they should. What is causing this? I have heard of Pal Speed Up in Dvd's. But this is going the opposite way. lol

 

For comparison here is me playing Thunder Castle, and below that will be him playing it. And at first i thought it could of just been the video, but his voice isn't slowed down.

 

 

Me

 

 

Friend in Australia (Fast Forward to 4:43)

[pimpmaul69]

ntsc games run slower on a pal system. here is an example: http://www.spiceware.org/atari_ntsc_pal_secam.html

[IntellivisionDude]

But i thought the Intellivision was the same in all regions. I guess not.

[pimpmaul69]

But i thought the Intellivision was the same in all regions. I guess not.

could still be the same. maybe all are "ntsc" which could always cause this for pal users.(i dont know) maybe he has bad-ish ram or cpu or not enough voltage. also it might be a video recording issue if the (refresh rate?) of his camera and tv are a huge difference

[+thegoldenband]

I'm not surprised that the game plays slower, since it's synced to 25fps PAL rather than 29.97fps NTSC. What's more surprising is the fact that the pitch of the music is actually 10% higher, raising the melodies from their original key by two semitones (the equivalent of two frets on a guitar).

 

But yeah, I think all Intellivision development was US- and NTSC-centric, and the PAL consoles just play 'em differently. The only possible exception I can imagine might be Super Cobra and Tutankham, but I doubt those were developed specifically for PAL.

[pimpmaul69]

I'm not surprised that the game plays slower, since it's synced to 25fps PAL rather than 29.97fps NTSC. What's more surprising is the fact that the pitch of the music is actually 10% higher, raising the melodies from their original key by two semitones (the equivalent of two frets on a guitar).

 

But yeah, I think all Intellivision development was US- and NTSC-centric, and the PAL consoles just play 'em differently. The only possible exception I can imagine might be Super Cobra and Tutankham, but I doubt those were developed specifically for PAL.

This might be why they made a sped up armor battle and space battle. They were so slow they were not playable on pal systems?? Just guessing.

[+thegoldenband]

Naaah, I think it was customer feedback. There was a whole thing about Space Battle, at least, on one of the websites...ah, here we go:

 

When the game was finished, Dale Lynn, who tested it, said it was too easy. APh cranked up the difficulty, but Dale told them it was still too easy. "Maybe for you," he was told, "but not for the general public." Wrong again. Consumers found the game too easy when it was released.

A more difficult version was released soon after as part of the new Space Action Network. This version, in a blue box with a blue label, is the more familiar.

 

As for Armor Battle, I can't find a comparable cite, but the turning in the original is just so glacial that it's easy to imagine somebody saying "Whoa, we can do better than that."

[pimpmaul69]

Naaah, I think it was customer feedback. There was a whole thing about Space Battle, at least, on one of the websites...ah, here we go:

 

When the game was finished, Dale Lynn, who tested it, said it was too easy. APh cranked up the difficulty, but Dale told them it was still too easy. "Maybe for you," he was told, "but not for the general public." Wrong again. Consumers found the game too easy when it was released.

A more difficult version was released soon after as part of the new Space Action Network. This version, in a blue box with a blue label, is the more familiar.

 

As for Armor Battle, I can't find a comparable cite, but the turning in the original is just so glacial that it's easy to imagine somebody saying "Whoa, we can do better than that."

I was just throwing a guess out

[+thegoldenband]

Understood, but -- at least in the case of Space Battle -- I think the real story is interesting!

[cparsley]

If you really want to know the terrible draw a PAL console can do to a NTSC game, take a NTSC Sonic the hedgehog and put it in a PAL MegaDrive... watch the real speed move... (sarcastic here)...

[+DZ-Jay]

Since the STIC (video chip) used in the Intellivision needs to periodically and very regularly read graphics data in order to maintain a stable signal to the television, this makes it ideal as a timing governor for games. Therefore, games are coded in a way that leverage the regular STIC clock signal to time events, such as regular enemy AI logic or player movements--and it is especially convenient to control the interval of music notes and sound effects timing. This is a standard technique used in many old game consoles, including early PC games.

 

As you may know, the TV signals in the USA and Europe are different. The NTSC video standard used in television sets in America runs at 60 frames per second, while the PAL standard used in Europe, runs at 50 frames per second. The impact of this difference on Intellivision games is that timers will run slower in PAL consoles, since the "heartbeat" of the game is running at a slower speed.

 

Moreover, there is an even bigger, but more subtle, impact: for technical reasons a clock circuit of the PSG sound chip in the Intellivision is also synchronized with the STIC clock in a special way. In order to lower the frequency of the clock in the STIC to support the PAL 50 fps timing, the internal clock of the PSG needs to be lowered too. This causes the PSG to generate tones at slightly lower frequencies on PAL machines. This shouldn't be a problem, after all you just need to tell the PSG which frequencies to use to generate tones and they will be at the same pitch in any case.

 

However, the games were traditionally developed primarily for the US market, by US-centric programmers. So, look up tables that specify which PSG codes translate into which actual musical tones, were designed from an NTSC perspective. The result is that the wrong codes are used on PAL machines causing the PSG to play slightly different tones than intended.

 

These differences were caused not only by oversight at first, but also by technical and business reasons. Supporting exactly equal NTSC and PAL game versions requires the maintenance of two separate codes, separate testing of the two, and separate production of cartridges. It would also necessarily result in different cartridges that would only play well on their specific target market, and inventory overhead to keep track of them individually.

 

When confronted with these additional efforts and costs, and balanced against the actual practical downside of not applying them, the decision becomes clearer: so the games in Europe play a bit slower and sound a bit off-key; they still play fine and are enjoyable. It's not optimal, but it doesn't critically impact the game.

 

It is not impossible to build a single game that works exactly the same on both standards, it just takes some effort and some clever programming. I believe Arnauld Chevallier's games are a good example of this.

 

dZ.

Edited January 22, 2012 by DZ-Jay

[IntellivisionDude]

Thanks for clearing that up. Now i know.

[+thegoldenband]

DZ-Jay, thanks for that. The only thing I didn't follow is why the music on PAL systems is played at a higher pitch (higher frequency), rather than a lower pitch as one would expect. I assume it has something to do with the way that the master clock signal is being divided?

[intvnut]

DZ-Jay, thanks for that. The only thing I didn't follow is why the music on PAL systems is played at a higher pitch (higher frequency), rather than a lower pitch as one would expect. I assume it has something to do with the way that the master clock signal is being divided?

 

The STIC, video modulation, sound and CPU clocks on NTSC systems are both derived from a single 3.579545MHz NTSC colorburst clock.

 

On PAL/SECAM systems, the STIC, sound and CPU are driven by a 4.0MHz clock. That's why the CPU itself goes slightly faster and the audio pitch is slightly higher. (That is also the reason the 1200 baud serial out on the ECS becomes 1341 baud in Europe.) There's a separate crystal for the video modulation circuitry. In fact, there's an entire extra daughtercard in the PAL unit I have, and I imagine that SECAM systems just replace this daughtercard.

 

Make sense?

[pimpmaul69]

that is all good technical information. enjoyed reading it. i still go with my lamens term of the carts being ntsc. although from the technical side is it just more that the pal/secam systems werent designed properly to begin with?

[+thegoldenband]

Make sense?

 

Absolutely, thanks! And interesting that the CPU is faster on PAL systems...that makes me wonder whether someday we'll see some PAL-only demoscene ROMs for Intellivision that take advantage of the extra CPU cycles. On other systems that's the case, but I don't know whether it's applicable to the Inty.

 

BTW, total tangent, but I found myself imagining "UHF: The Game" for Intellivision recently, and wondering what it would take to get a license from Weird Al.

[+DZ-Jay]

that is all good technical information. enjoyed reading it. i still go with my lamens term of the carts being ntsc. although from the technical side is it just more that the pal/secam systems werent designed properly to begin with?

 

Pimp,

In layman's terms you are right, most carts are produced for NTSC systems and to heck with the PAL quirks.

 

I wouldn't say that the PAL/SECAM systems were not designed properly. I would just say that the programmers didn't make the effort to make their games work with PAL/SECAM systems as intended. Remember, most were American enterprises, with American programmers, thinking (as is unfortunately common) in an American-centric way.

 

dZ.

[intvnut]

Make sense?

Absolutely, thanks! And interesting that the CPU is faster on PAL systems...that makes me wonder whether someday we'll see some PAL-only demoscene ROMs for Intellivision that take advantage of the extra CPU cycles. On other systems that's the case, but I don't know whether it's applicable to the Inty. BTW, total tangent, but I found myself imagining "UHF: The Game" for Intellivision recently, and wondering what it would take to get a license from Weird Al.

 

Hmmm... that'd be an interesting question. Didn't Orion, the movie house that made the movie (and which likely owns the rights) go out of business? I imagine the IP hunt would be complicated 25 years later...

 

That said, if the game concept was sufficiently funny, Al seems like the kind of guy that would be reasonable about it. After all, he's made his entire living off of others being reasonable about his parodies, and hasn't so far allowed himself to get dragged into nasty IP fights. The worst that's happened is some miscommunications, and Al's answer has been to donate proceeds to charity when conflict does arise. The man is truly a class act. Of course, video games aren't really his domain, and he might not want his name plastered over a home brew video game. Who knows? If you kept his name out of it and just mentioned UHF, though, it might work.

 

Story board up a game concept and get a hold of Way Moby? (I think that's his current label / management company.)