I have a copy of Super Mario Bros. (PAL). When I play it on my NES two weird things happen: the speed of the music is like 1.5x as fast; the instruments even go out of sync when the time is almost up (when the music plays even faster). The demo, which shows up when you don't press any buttons at the Title Screen for a while, is all messed up. First Mario walks to the right, bumps into a pipe, then walks left and jumps, missing the '?'-box with the mushroom in it and moves back to the right, again jumping and missing. Then he jumps over the pipe, crashes into a Goomba and dies.
Does someone knows what's going on? Is it rare? I can record a video and record the sound when you guys are interested.
-DvdHeijden
DvdHeijden wrote:
Does someone knows what's going on?
Yes. You said it yourself - you're using the PAL version, and you're apparently used to the NTSC version.
You're right. I compared it to the American version, the European is the same. But why? Why is the demo weird? Why is the music faster? It just doesn't seem right.
-DvdHeijden
The music is faster because it is timed to the vblank, and NTSC consoles have 20% more vblanks per second than PAL consoles, so the music coder will usually speed up the music on the PAL version so that it will sound the same (or, in NT2's case, slow down the music on the NTSC version).
Okay. What about the demo?
The game's timing was altered so it would be the same speed in PAL as the NTSC version is in NTSC, but they apparently forgot to alter the demo code accordingly.
Thanks, it makes a little more sense now. But I still think it's the worst NTSC > PAL port ever.
The worst NTSC->PAL ports are the titles "labeled" (JE) and (UE) and (JUE) where no modifications took place between countries.
Are there any (JE), (UE), or (JUE) ports that autodetect the speed of the NES on boot and choose a 50 Hz or 60 Hz mode?