This list is UNDER CONSTRUCTION. If you know how any other NTSC games run on PAL Famiclones please post the results, and I'll migrate them to the main post.
Games marked with a :bomb: have been queried, and need more testing. Please help and test/post your results if you have these games! :)
Bubble Bobble (FDS port) - Both the gameplay and music are slower than normal. On older Famiclones the whole game may be green.
Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu - in 4 player mode, when we are choosing players, music plays very fast (maybe 200% speed), and most of screen is glitched.
SMB1 - Both the gameplay and music are slower than on normal
SMB2 - Both the gameplay and music are slower than normal
SMB3 - Both the gameplay and music are slower than normal
Spy vs Spy - Sound is terrible on newer Famiclones :bomb:
On older Famiclones runs slowly, but sound is correct
Haven't seen such a list.
Some clones like Dendy seems to be a mix of NTSC and PAL NES/Famicom. An NTSC game on a Dendy will have the correct pitch for music (unlike with a PAL NES) but the music tempo and movement speed will still be too slow just like on a PAL NES.
A Dendy may also handle some split-screen features correctly unlike a PAL NES.
There seems to be a huge difference between how modern clones and older ones handle NTSC games.
Bubble Bobble for example on new clones seems to play fine, except with slow music (the speed looks the same as the PAL NES version, but the pitch is correct as you said.) On a Subor or similar clone though the colours are completely off, almost everything is a shade of green.
If there isn't already a list I'll start taking notes and post them here. :D
Off the top of my head
Bubble Bobble - Music is slow, and appears to play at the same speed as the PAL NES version. (On some older clones the whole game is green)
SMB3 - Overworld is slow, sound is slow, but in levels the gameplay appears to be the correct speed
SMB1 - I'm sure most people already know, but both the music and gameplay is slower
Spy vs Spy - Plays at the correct speed, but the sound is absolutely awful :'(
Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu - in 4 player mode, when we are choosing players, music plays very fast (maybe 200% speed), and most of screen is glitched. This appeared to me on Micro Genius IQ - 502 console, I must check behaviour on all clones that I have - then I will edit this post.
Quote from: Wanderer on May 18, 2016, 06:44:32 am
...Spy vs Spy - Plays at the correct speed, but the sound is absolutely awful :'(
Oh, I didn't notice this when playing on clone, time to compare gameplay with original Famicom.
Quote
Oh, I didn't notice this when playing on clone, time to compare gameplay with original Famicom.
On the two clones I tried it on it was only just recognisable as the Spy vs Spy music, it sounded truly awful.
We may have to work out how to group different clones to make this list useful. If there are a few more replies and nobody posts a link to an existing list I'll start migrating all replies to the original post, and change the title to show this is (becoming) a list instead of being a question.
I'm currently playing games on the generic new Dendys (I think these can mostly be lumped together), and an old Subor (and Subor type clones, Liko, and an old Dendy keyboard to be specific).
If you need / want an ntsc clone, i have many for sale / trade :)
PM sent fcgamer. If I buy a NTSC clone or Famicom I'll keep testing new games in the PAL clones anyway, this list could be useful for other people in the future. :)
Quote from: Wanderer on May 18, 2016, 06:44:32 am
Bubble Bobble - Music is slow, and appears to play at the same speed as the PAL NES version. (On some older clones the whole game is green)
I can explain the green tint. The Famicom/NES PPU has colour emphasis features that makes the whole screen have a tint of red, green, blue or any combination of the three. Bubble Bobble (FDS version only) is using the red emphasis bit, which is why the game always has a red tint on an NTSC system.
On PAL and Dendy (I guess old Dendy) PPUs the red and green emphasis bits have been swapped for some reason. So Bubble Bobble will activate the green tint instead of the red one when run on those systems, which is why you may think the colours are off. But it's only the FDS version of Bubble Bobble that is using the emphasis bit at all, so I guess you are playing a bootleg cart port of Bubble Bobble FDS version?
Quote from: Wanderer on May 18, 2016, 06:44:32 amSMB3 - Overworld is slow, sound is slow, but in levels the gameplay appears to be the correct speed
Quote from: verteks on May 18, 2016, 08:57:12 am
Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu - in 4 player mode, when we are choosing players, music plays very fast (maybe 200% speed), and most of screen is glitched. This appeared to me on Micro Genius IQ - 502 console
This is strange. SMB3 has wrong music speed but correct gameplay speed? I believe they both has to do with the CPU speed so this shouldn't be the case.
And Nekketsu has too FAST music? It should be slower on PAL systems.
The Bubble Bobble cart I'm using is a Whirlwind Manu cart, not an original. When I migrate everything to the main post I'll note that it's the FDS version, thanks. :)
The SMB3 cart I'm using is based off of the Japanese SMB3, and is a pirate which gives you 20 lives to begin with. The overworld plays at the wrong speed (moving between areas is very slow,) but upon entering a level gameplay returns to normal speed, but the music and sound is slow, as in the overworld. Why, or how, I have no idea.
QuoteThe Bubble Bobble cart I'm using is a Whirlwind Manu cart, not an original.
As I thought. It's an FDS to cart port.
QuoteThe SMB3 cart I'm using is based off of the Japanese SMB3, and is a pirate which gives you 20 lives to begin with. The overworld plays at the wrong speed (moving between areas is very slow,) but upon entering a level gameplay returns to normal speed, but the music and sound is slow, as in the overworld. Why, or how, I have no idea.
A bootleg again, I see. I guess it had some speedup hacks made to optimize it for PAL systems. But the hackers forgot or didn't care to speed up the music and the overworld engine. Now it makes sense.
The game was from an NTSC region, not sold in a PAL region, so I'm not so sure that it would've been optimized for PAL systems. If somebody has a PAL Famiclone and original SMB3 cart to check how it runs before I turn this into a proper list that would be great.
Hmm then maybe the hackers thought the game was too slow in general and sped it up?
I've moved everything so far to the first post, and marked SMB3 and Spy vs Spy asking for somebody else to verify them. Both of them are fairly common games, so hopefully somebody else can test them too.
I tried SMB3 on some other Famiclones and all of them ran with everything slower, including the gameplay. Strange, I could've sworn it was playing at the right speed. Unless it happens again or somebody else reports it I'm changing SMB3 to music/gameplay slower.
I recorded bug in Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu, I tested this game in Micro Genius IQ-501, IQ-502 and Pegasus MT-777DX and all have buggy 4 player mode choose screen. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3fuRK2_i30
I also checked sound in Spy vs Spy on famiclones - in my opinion, sound is correct, but naturally slower. Tested on the same three famiclones as Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCGUJgLcrq8
I have Famicom version of SMB3, so I will test it in few days.
Updated the original post to say Spy vs Spy is just slow on older Famiclones. Tested it again on a modern globtop NOAC and the sound is awful. I'll post a video later.
Yeah, more recent NOACs are basically a gamble sound-wise from what I've noticed. Some of them aren't too bad (reversed duty cycles just like many older ones) but some will play certain games horribly out of key. No idea what causes it (other than making them on the cheap of course) but I stay away from the more recent ones mainly for that reason :(
This question is very very hard to answer. Or, question. It is not a question, but Famiclones as we all know, came and comes in totally different sizes, shapes, using totally different chipsets, and even though one PAL Famiclone might do the job it is absolutely not certain that another one will.
Also then there is the issue with the fact of following: What is a real NTSC game? A game intended for release in NTSC regions such as Japan for example, or are we talking about Pirate carts? If we are talking about official products, then it would be at least partially easier due to the simple fact that they are easier to determine why and how they are working.
Pirates tend do be extensively hacked in any sort of way. Mappers, graphics, etc etc. Indeed a lot of the bigger pirate companies has at least some kind of standardisation of what and how they released it. But those "NTSC" games might as well have been intended for sale in Russia, Poland, South America or wherever PAL-Famiclones were being strong.
So all in all, it would be really hard to track it down, although all kind of documentation for the sake of being doable is of course appreciated and I hope that you will come to a conclusion. :-[
I tested Spy vs Spy in a few older Famiclones, and the sound is fine, so it does look like just newer Famiclones have the off pitch problem..
Making this comprehensive is definitely going to be difficult. I think the biggest issue is going to be classifying the different Famiclones.
So far with everything I've tested on, there's a neat split between how cartridges work on older (90s) globtop Famiclones, and newer globtop Famiclones. I should have a Micro Genius arriving soon, so I'll go through and test again on that (assuming it works,) and see if it's safe to assume that 90s globtop and chip based clones can be considered the same for the sake of compatibility.
Working out the differences between pirates (and different pirates of the same game,) and the originals may turn out to be an even bigger issue.
If anybody has suggestions on how to classify everything and make this list more feasible I'm open to suggestions, although if people can test and post their results (including games already tested so we can cover different hardware and releases) it may (I hope) start to fall into place. :-[
"Older Famiclones" and "Newer Famiclones" is very vague. Now I don't know much about Famiclones and unlicensed games at all, but I'm assuming newer Famiclones are most often NOACs, and older Famiclones are similar to Dendy (old Dendy).
If this is true, then it sounds like PAL NOACs works like PAL NES when it comes to pitch and speed but not when it comes to the emphasis bits (Bubble Bobble FDS is red like it should).
Older Famiclones that are like Dendy however have correct pitch (unlike PAL NES) but still wrong speed like PAL NES, and the emphasis bits for red and green are swapped (Bubble Bobble FDS becomes green) also like PAL NES.
If you only talk about licensed games it wouldn't be a problem to determine what an NTSC game is, but yeah for unlicensed games there are no rules. I guess most bootlegs generally only has simpler hacks like more starting lives and sprite hacks and such though. Speed and pitch hacking is much harder to do, and bootleg companies doesn't seem to worry too much about "trivial" things such as gameplay speed and music that is out of key.
Alot of Dendys and similar from the 90s also have globtop NOACs - including the Subor which has red and green swapped. So far the earliest Dendy with a globtop I've seen was marked as being from '94.
Eschewing the newer/older split even further though - a Micro Genius IQ-701 (chip based PAL Famiclone) arrived today - and the colours on Bubble Bobble are fine.
This is kind of interesting for tracking the history of Famiclones, and the evolution of the globtop NOAC, but unfortunately makes trying to make this list even harder. If anybody has suggestions for categorising Famiclones, please post them :-[
For NTSC games I was trying to stick with licensed games, and bootlegs sold in NTSC regions. Including games which started off as being coded for NTSC before being bootlegged and hacked to sell in a PAL region would be counterproductive to trying to produce a list, seeing as they're more likely to have had the timing deliberately altered. I'm hoping that for games bootlegged to be sold in NTSC regions they (should) play comparatively to an original cart.
Quote from: Wanderer on May 25, 2016, 10:16:13 am
Alot of Dendys and similar from the 90s also have globtop NOACs - including the Subor which has red and green swapped. So far the earliest Dendy with a globtop I've seen was marked as being from '94.
Yeah that's why I said old Dendy. But yeah apparently all NOACs doesn't behave the same way.
Quote
For NTSC games I was trying to stick with licensed games, and bootlegs sold in NTSC regions. Including games which started off as being coded for NTSC before being bootlegged and hacked to sell in a PAL region would be counterproductive to trying to produce a list, seeing as they're more likely to have had the timing deliberately altered. I'm hoping that for games bootlegged to be sold in NTSC regions they (should) play comparatively to an original cart.
Yes it's hard to make a list of bootlegs since we don't know how they were messed with. Although as I said before I highly doubt many bootleggers took the time to change the speed in games, judging by how horrible most graphic hacks are in bootlegs. Even many licensed companies didn't optimise their own games for PAL, so why would bootleggers that doesn't even have access to the source code, and just tries to make quick money on games they didn't even make, bother with it? No way.
It might be easier if you know what things to look for. I found an old list I made with all the potential compatibility issues with a PAL NES that I'm aware of. Famiclones may have any mix of these features and possibly add others that I'm not aware of.
Compatibility with PAL NES (compared with Famicom and NTSC NES):
1. Emphasis bits red and green are swapped in $2001
2. Sprite speed is different
3. Music tempo is different
4. Music pitch is different
5. Raster effects needs modifications (for parallax backgrounds and such background splitting effects)
6. OAM decay doesn't occur (meaning the sprites in sprite memory never disappears I think)
7. OAM DMA needs to finish earlier (OAM DMA is a hardware thing that is normally used every frame to update sprites)
1, 2 and 3 applies to the old Dendy as well, but maybe not the other differences. 2 is basically gameplay speed. I'm not sure if it affects things like scrolling or if it's only the sprites' movement speed. Also I'm not sure if there are any games that relies on 6 or 7.
I don't know if such a list is really feasible. Even the NOAC clone makers cloned each other, introducing subtle differences in the process. Famiclones that may previously have used a popular discrete clone (like the UMC branded ones) then swapped to some kind of NOAC for later revisions. It's not always clear which is which until you open them, so even year of manufacture wouldn't help.
A comprehensive list is starting to look pretty impossible.
A list with problems common to all PAL Famiclones (using P's list of potential problems for the PAL NES is probably a good start) could be doable, listing for example, that SMB1 runs slowly on all clones, but ignoring any problems unique to any particular chipset.
Whether such a list would be useful may be another question, I personally have tried to find how certain NTSC games will run on PAL Famiclones, but how many other people have/do?
All NTSC/NTSC(J) games will run slower on a PAL system, whether it's a PAL Famiclone or an original PAL NES using an adapter to play Famicom carts.
Yeah 2 and probably 3 in the list should apply to all Famiclones that update the TV in 50 Hz I guess.