game region deference

[droy900]

hi everyone im new and want to ask does the game region deference effect the gameplay of the game ?
im using PCSX2 0.9.8 (r4600) when i play monster hunter 2 it runs perfectly but when i play ape escape 3 it became slow and glitchy

[Shadow Lady]

In that case the difference is the game themselves giving you a difference and the region has nothing to do, monster hunter games are of the fastest 3d games emulated on PCSX2.

[droy900]

then what's the things that effect the gameplay other then the system hardware

[Livy]

First, you should use "affect" instead of "effect". Effect is the noun, and affect is the verb. When A affects B, B is said to be under effect of A.

About your question. I have the same before buying the PS2. I search everywhere, ask many ppl, and the answer could be only something like NTSC games run at 60 FPS while PAL ones run at 50 FPS. Okay, here is all things that I have studied so far:

• Everyone knows NTSC games run at 60 FPS while PAL ones run at 50 FPS. But only few know that PAL has slightly higher resolution (576i) compared to NTSC (480i).
  
• In broadcasting, PAL's color is superior to NTSC's. But for console games, there's no difference in color. Tested it myself on both PS2 and PCSX2.
  
• Some NTSC version have exclusive features not available in PAL counterpart. For example, the NTSC version of many games support progressive scan mode but the PAL version doesn't (God of War I & II for examples). I do now know whether it is a technical difficulty or they're to lazy to do that, but USA and Japan are 2 countries produce mostly video games. There's no doubt the NTSC version has better supports.
  
• Some games originally targets the NTSC region, and then poorly converted to PAL. Final Fantasy X for example. The PAL version of FFX has 16:9 aspect ratio with 2 annoying big black borders on the top and bottom of the screen and all characters are fat (when you play FFX PAL on PCSX2 everything is normal, but if you play it on PS2, you'll see). The gameplay of FFX PAL is also slower than NTSC version, as if you set the frame limiter to 50 when playing FFX NTSC. Tested on both PS2 and PCSX2.
  

Conclusion: If both PAL and NTSC games are available in your country, get the NTSC. A little higher resolution does not worth the framerate penalty. Further more, with PCSX2 you can scale the resolution up to 6x. And the most important thing is that nearly all PC monitors today are 60 Hz, so if you'd better get the NTSC if you do not want to see something called "image tearing".

/to ShadowLady In my test the NTSC version of FFX ran about 5 FPS faster than PAL version on both PCSX2 0.9.7 and 0.9.8. For others games, maybe it is not the case.

[droy900]

thanks for the reply

[Grimspiller]

PAL is good for low end PC. Since it aims at lower FPS.

[miseru99]

@Game I thought similar, but actually that's only correct for the games that run at same speed with lower FPS.(Good example of that is DBZ:Budokai Tenkaichi series) Those that are just slowed down for original PAL versions(umm FFX is an example of that I guess?), will still be same slow in both versions.

[avih]

...
Conclusion: If both PAL and NTSC games are available in your country, get the NTSC. A little higher resolution does not worth the framerate penalty. Further more, with PCSX2 you can scale the resolution up to 6x. And the most important thing is that nearly all PC monitors today are 60 Hz, so if you'd better get the NTSC if you do not want to see something called "image tearing".
...

ICO has more features at the PAL version. That's probably not the norm though..

[Shadow Lady]

PAL is good for low end PC. Since it aims at lower FPS.

Not exactly, depends on the game.

For some games, PAL (50Hz) will be the same work as the NTSC (60Hz) version so if you get 66FPS in a NTSC you would be getting 55FPS in PAL. (in the end the speed is the same)

For some games, PAL could mean the actions are slower at "full speed" against NTSC, so it would take longer to move to other places or the action simply looks sorta slow-mo at PAL 50FPS than it does at NTSC 60FPS. (in this cases the FMV speed is the only one that remains the same)

There could also be games where as you said it will simply be faster with PAL since it "aims" at lower FPS.

So... it depends on the game