SmartSped Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 So I bought a copy of Laser Gates on eBay because I needed an NTSC copy and got it cheap and since it wasn't a white label I honestly didn't pay much attention to it. But when I got it and tested it the game was in Black and White which I've read could be an indication that it's a Pal game. So for sure, is this a Pal version of Laser Gates? Anyone seen it before? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 Could you take a screenshot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartSped Posted March 18, 2022 Author Share Posted March 18, 2022 1 minute ago, alex_79 said: Could you take a screenshot? Sure thing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 An NTSC game on a PAL console might be displayed in B/W, but not vice versa. And you seem to have an NTSC console, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartSped Posted March 18, 2022 Author Share Posted March 18, 2022 Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said: An NTSC game on a PAL console might be displayed in B/W, but not vice versa. And you seem to have an NTSC console, right? Correct Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 Your other games still display fine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartSped Posted March 18, 2022 Author Share Posted March 18, 2022 Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said: Your other games still display fine? Yep. All others seem fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 (edited) It's PAL. You can tell that by looking at the spacing between the bars in the "instrument panel" in the lower half of the screen. The NTSC version has them much closer together. The B&W thing is due to the modern multistandard TV: it sees that the picture is 50Hz and switches to PAL mode, but since the console is NTSC, the resulting image is in B&W. If you try on a old CRT, you'll see (wrong) colors and the image will most likely roll. Edited March 18, 2022 by alex_79 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 I am not aware that this game has a B/W mode, but nevertheless, have you tried changing the difficulty and color switches? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartSped Posted March 18, 2022 Author Share Posted March 18, 2022 Yes I'm playing it on a flat screen. I did fail to mention that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 (edited) 4 minutes ago, alex_79 said: but since the console is NTSC, the resulting image is in B&W But the console doesn't make the picture B&W in case of odd scanlines. It's the PAL TV who does that. Also all known Laser Gates dumps display an even scanline count. @SmartSped Your TV is a normal NTSC TV, right? Edited March 18, 2022 by Thomas Jentzsch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartSped Posted March 18, 2022 Author Share Posted March 18, 2022 Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said: But the console doesn't make the picture B&W in case of odd scanlines. It's the PAL TV who does that. Also all know Laser Gates dumps display an even scanline count. @SmartSped Your TV is a normal NTSC TV, right? It is. Bought and paid for at Walmart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 (edited) 13 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said: But the console doesn't make the picture B&W in case of odd scanlines. It's the PAL TV who does that. Also all known Laser Gates dumps display an even scanline count. This is a different issue: PAL color loss happens with an odd number of scanlines, with a PAL console connected to a PAL TV. Here instead we have a NTSC console connected to a modern TV, which appears to be multistandard. The software in the TV sees a 50Hz signal and switches to PAL mode. It's like having a NTSC console connected to a PAL TV: the color information is in the wrong format and so you only see the "luma" component of the signal. In other words, the TV software is the culprit, not the console. It's "confused" by the non standard NTSC-50 signal. Other TVs might behave differently. Edited March 18, 2022 by alex_79 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 Then it might be possible to change the mode detected by the TV, no? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 Maybe, but probably the software cannot handle NTSC-50 as, unlike PAL-60, I don't think it was ever used for anything. It really depends on the specific TV, I guess. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 Totally unrelated, but I find it interesting: The thin vertical stripes in the picture above are the color information. Normally, you'll see a solid color instead of those, but since the TV fails to to recognize the the color format, it considers them as part of the luma signal and just shows them as such The background of the instrument panel has no stripes, as it's grey, so there's no color in that area. If you look closely, you see that the stripes in different areas have the same frequency, but different horizontal offset (e.g. you can compare them with the starting position of the "score" and "energy" text, which are the same). Each offset is a different hue. The frequency is equal to the NTSC color carrier (~3.58 MHz, which is also the TIA clock, or the Atari 2600 pixel clock), and they're about half the width of a pixel. In consoles/computers with a pixel clock which is a multiple of the NTSC color carrier (so at least double the horizontal resolution of the 2600), it is possible to "fake" that color signal by alternating black and white pixels, and that's how "artifact colors" are obtained. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted March 20, 2022 Share Posted March 20, 2022 On 3/19/2022 at 3:10 AM, alex_79 said: Totally unrelated, but I find it interesting: Yes, very interesting. Reminds me of the colour reconstruction from B&W film footage taken off TVs in the 1970s. They used the dot-patterns on the film to automatically recover the colour from shows which had been lost/destroyed in colour form. http://www.insell.co.uk/colourisation/Recovery_of_Colour_Information_0-2.htm 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted March 20, 2022 Share Posted March 20, 2022 2 hours ago, Andrew Davie said: They used the dot-patterns on the film to automatically recover the colour from shows which had been lost/destroyed in colour form. Video about using chroma dots to restore color to episodes of Dad's Army. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supergun Posted March 24, 2022 Share Posted March 24, 2022 Everyone here has been massively overthinking this whole thing. There’s no mystery here! The cartridge shown in the picture of the first post is NOT an NTSC cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted March 24, 2022 Share Posted March 24, 2022 Maybe you could have at least tried to read (and possibly understand) what's being discussed. The game has been identified as PAL, but that wasn't the point. It's the fact that the game was displayed in B&W that was interesting to investigate, as that's not the typical behavior of a 2600 PAL game played on a NTSC console + TV. Or at least it wasn't with CRTs, where the result is usually a rolling color picture. Besides, the screenshot is 100% proof that the game is PAL. The label, not so much. Mislabeled cartridges *do* exist. And some people here are simply fascinated by the technical aspects of this hobby. Discussing those aspects is not more overthinking than talking about label variations (which, BTW, *I* find totally uninteresting and not worth my time). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juansolo Posted March 24, 2022 Share Posted March 24, 2022 (edited) If you fancy offloading it to someone with a PAL machine and don't mind sending it to the UK... I would be interested Then again with postage these days it'd likely be way to costly to do so... Edited March 24, 2022 by juansolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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