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So, about the Wii U 50hz VC...

B

biggersmaller

Banned
mclem said:
There is a distinction between defending something and stating the reasons for something.
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Yes...a blurred, very fine distinction. Other times I understand and participate in these back-and-forths. I guess I don't get why anyone here would want to strongly promote a hypothetical explanation for Nintendo's benefit; regarding a purely idiotic customer service issue. To use more precise language.
 
D

Dead Man Typing

Member
biggersmaller said:
Yes...a blurred, very fine distinction. Other times I understand and participate in these back-and-forths. I guess I don't get why anyone here would want to strongly promote a hypothetical explanation for Nintendo's benefit; regarding a purely idiotic customer service issue. To use more precise language.
Click to expand...

I always like to hear hypothetical solutions for issues I don't have a definite answer to. It's just in this case there is no hypothetical solution that rationally explains Balloon Fight being 50hz.

I really hope this issue doesn't go away quietly and will flare up again when next month's 30p game shows up. Whether it is 50hz or 60hz, Nintendo needs to give a proper official response. Eurogamer said they'd update their article when Nintendo gets back to them.... that was on Friday. Nintendo can't come up with an official response in 3 working days?
 
Neff

Neff

Member
I see that as a positive thing, actually. If requesting 60hz games from Nintendo Japan was an outright impossibility, Nintendo Europe probably wouldn't waste time by keeping silent and offer a flat refusal and apology. As it is, they're probably weighing up the amount of protests to decide whether it's worth doing.

Or at least, that's what I'm hoping.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Signed even though I don't have a Wii U, because this is BS (and I'm likely getting one eventually).

However, and this is a bit off topic, why is my signature comment displayed under a name that is definitely not me? It's like I somehow signed it via somebody else's account, even though I'm not even logged in. I'm very confused.
 
N

netBuff

Member
AkimbO_Arcana said:
But outside of some exceptions (Contra/Probotector comes to mind), using the US rom wouldn't change any in-game content.

Though I'm not sure how picky USK or Pegi would be in this special case.
Click to expand...

PEGI didn't exist when Balloon Fight was new, and an USK rating isn't required for any games that aren't sold at retail. Anything downloadable is "self-governed" in Germany, content only suitable for ages 16+ has to be behind an age gate to be available 24 hours, otherwise only night time hours are suitable for open access. But publishers rate their content voluntarily (and platforms holders require it) with USK.

They had to re-rate Balloon Fight anyway, and especially USK only cares about content, not technical banalities - they certainly didn't re-rate Balloon Fights 60Hz 3DS version (PEGI is probably very similar).

Rating is not an excuse.

GlamFM said:
You guys know that we ( germany here ) get the "original" 50hz versions so that Nintendo doesn´t have to go through rating when they re-release the games right?

That at least was the argument given to me when I wrote to Nintendo years ago.
Click to expand...

Don't believe everything a customer service rep tells you, Nintendo submitted Balloon Fight for rating in 2007 (VC release on 8.6.2007, less than 1,5 months later):
YLNdHor.png
Click to expand...
 
C

CLEEK

Member
AkimbO_Arcana said:
But outside of some exceptions (Contra/Probotector comes to mind), using the US rom wouldn't change any in-game content.

Though I'm not sure how picky USK or Pegi would be in this special case.
Click to expand...

It would be a different version in the eyes of the certification organisations. I know that was the view of the BBFC, but since last year they handed over games certification in the UK to PEGI.
 
N

netBuff

Member
SPE said:
It would be a different version in the eyes of the certification organisations. I know that was the view of the BBFC, but since last year they handed over games certification in the UK to PEGI.
Click to expand...

Both the 50Hz and 60Hz versions were already rated by PEGI (age 3).
 
P

Peagles

Member
freddy said:
Stating the same reasons over and over becomes a defence. At least it comes across that way.



Did I miss something or did petitions become relevant again?
Click to expand...

Are you kidding? We just got our government to reinstate funding for rape crisis services with one of these petitions.

Signed.
 
F

freddy

Banned
Peagles said:
Are you kidding? We just got our government to reinstate funding for rape crisis services with one of these petitions.

Signed.
Click to expand...

I didn't hear about that. I would have thought Prime Minister Gillard would have supported that anyway, being a woman herself.
 
P

Peagles

Member
freddy said:
I didn't hear about that. I would have thought Prime Minister Gillard would have supported that anyway, being a woman herself.
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Wrong country :p

I get where you're coming from though, some petitions are kinda stupid, but some actually do work.
 
D

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
GlamFM said:
You guys know that we ( germany here ) get the "original" 50hz versions so that Nintendo doesn´t have to go through rating when they re-release the games right?

That at least was the argument given to me when I wrote to Nintendo years ago.
Click to expand...

So Germany is the only Country in EU getting 50hz VC games on 3DS as well?
 
Robin64

Robin64

Member
Glad to see that well over half of the posts in Popular on the Miiverse community are still about this. Some nice drawings people have done for it, in fact! We have to keep this up, and in every title they release that isn't 60.
 
Neff

Neff

Member
If I'm being honest, I always thought that 50hz gaming was considered to be a problem only by a relatively niche collective, and no doubt Nintendo did, too. But the protest on Miiverse continues to stagger me with its volume, persistence and passion. It's clearly something a lot of gamers are aware of, and aren't willing to accept.

Discovered this excellent article on the history of Europe's 50hz gaming woes earlier. Very much worth reading, with some interesting links.
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
I never got a reply from Nintendo about this. Looks like Eurogamer didn't get a reply either. I am guessing nothing will be done, but I am going to email them again.
 
M

mktrOOp

Banned
Nintendo sent me an answer three days ago.

Vielen Dank für Ihre eMail und die offenen Worte. Ihr Feedback zu "Balloon Fight" haben wir gerne weitergeleitet.

Herzliche Grüße aus Großostheim
Click to expand...

Translation:

Thank you for your email and your open words. We have gladly forwarded your feedback regarding "Balloon Fight".

Greetings from Großostheim
 
P

Prez

Member
Why is the main focus on Balloon Fight when most VC games are affected by this? Who knows because of that Nintendo will only fix Balloon Fight.
 
JimboJones

JimboJones

Member
Neff said:
If I'm being honest, I always thought that 50hz gaming was considered to be a problem only by a relatively niche collective, and no doubt Nintendo did, too. But the protest on Miiverse continues to stagger me with its volume, persistence and passion. It's clearly something a lot of gamers are aware of, and aren't willing to accept.

Discovered this excellent article on the history of Europe's 50hz gaming woes earlier. Very much worth reading, with some interesting links.
Click to expand...

So did I but only because when the Virtual Console started back in 2006 no one seemed to care about the issue, I put it down to the majority of gaming media and websites being seemingly mostly US centric and it was a matter of out of sight out of mind for them.
So i'm sort of suprised to see other people take the issue so seriously now, maybe it's just a combination of the existence of miiverse and other social websites being so prevelant now.

Prez said:
Why is the main focus on Balloon Fight when most VC games are affected by this? Who knows because of that Nintendo will only fix Balloon Fight.
Click to expand...

Because there is no other Virtual Console games at the moment, Balloon Fight is the only Virtual Console community that exists in miiverse, i'm sure once Fzero is released it's community will be filled with similar posts if the problem hasn't been addressed. But it would be hilariously depressing if the mesage Nintendo got was that Europe only wanted Balloon Fight in 60Hz lol
 
gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman

Member
Prez said:
Why is the main focus on Balloon Fight when most VC games are affected by this? Who knows because of that Nintendo will only fix Balloon Fight.
Click to expand...
Balloon Fight is currently the only VC game on Wii U. This means it has it's own Miiverse area for discussion of related matters.

Hopefully any action they take will hold for future Wii U VC titles?
 
R

rvy

Banned
Wait, what? They still release games at 50Hz. In 2013?! Oh, sweet Jesus. I'm so sorry, PAL Nintendo fans.
 
P

Prez

Member
Wasn't the 50Hz conversion on PAL NES/SNES done on the hardware and not the games? I thought you could make most PAL SNES games run full-speed by doing a simple mod on the console. If that's the case, wouldn't they only have to make a slight change in the emulator?
 
Neff

Neff

Member
JimboJones said:
So i'm sort of suprised to see other people take the issue so seriously now, maybe it's just a combination of the existence of miiverse and other social websites being so prevelant now.
Click to expand...

I think it's a case of people being steadily soured by 6 years of 50hz Wii VC in an era when 50hz is pretty much dead, having their hopes cruelly raised for future Nintendo VC with the excellent 60hz 3DS titles, then being suckerpunched out of nowhere with an apparent and inexplicable 50hz future for Wii U VC, something that will no doubt kill the anticipation many had for the awesome prospect of countless classic games on the Gamepad. It's a really hard blow to be dealt, all things considered.
 
B

Bony Manifesto

Member
Genki said:
Oh hey, actual games journalism. From the 90s! Stuart Campbell <3.
Click to expand...

N64: It could be argued that the brand support is lacking in certain areas anyway. We’re thinking here of some of the inferior PAL conversions of top games, like Mario Kart and Wave Race...

DF: Well, saying they’re inferior is just a matter of personal opinion.

N64: No it’s not, they’re demonstrably inferior – Mario Kart runs nearly 20% slower than the NTSC versions, Wave Race has those big black borders...

DF: Wave Race doesn’t have big black borders.

N64: It does if you’re playing the PAL version.

DF: Not on mine it doesn’t.

N64: Er...

DF: I certainly haven’t seen any big borders.

N64: Um...

DF: I don’t know enough about the technical side to explain it all properly. You need to talk to someone who knows about that kind of thing. I’ll get someone to ring you. Bye.
Click to expand...

GDyHI0U.png
 
Neff

Neff

Member
Prez said:
Wasn't the 50Hz conversion on PAL NES/SNES done on the hardware and not the games? I thought you could make most PAL SNES games run full-speed by doing a simple mod on the console. If that's the case, wouldn't they only have to make a slight change in the emulator?
Click to expand...

You could, but many PAL games made adjustments to compensate for the speed difference. Music was most commonly adjusted, meaning that tunes would suddenly stop or play too long if the game wasn't played on hardware matching its region. Game speeds were often altered too. PAL Super Mario World was sped up to compensate for PAL slowdown, and when played on a NTSC system, results in the game being extremely fast. More seriously, timing discrepancies cause serious game-breaking bugs in PAL games, which are rarely fixed or never even picked up on by testers. The legacy of PAL gaming is a real mess.
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
Neff said:
You could, but many PAL games made adjustments to compensate for the speed difference. Music was most commonly adjusted, meaning that tunes would suddenly stop or play too long if the game wasn't played on hardware matching its region. Game speeds were often altered too. PAL Super Mario World was sped up to compensate for PAL slowdown, and when played on a NTSC system, results in the game being extremely fast. More seriously, timing discrepancies cause serious game-breaking bugs in PAL games, which are rarely fixed or never even picked up on by testers. The legacy of PAL gaming is a real mess.
Click to expand...
SNES sound is always correct speed because the system clock speed did not affect the separate sound module.

Also PAL SNES games had less slowdown, the PPUs had extra cycles to handle the games since they ran slower. The SNES was at least a mixed bag.

Nintendo themselves were generally the best at offering PAL conversions (with the odd poor exception eg Wave Race), so most 1st and 2nd party games post 1987 would be screwed by a 60Hz player. 3rd parties and Sega mostly did no Pal conversions ever (Sega got okay with the Saturn). Capcom and Konami games are almost always just the NTSC rom dumped and running slower. PS1 is overall the worst console IMO, 99.99% of games had no fixes at all for PAL.
 
R

RoyalFool

Banned
Nintendo never made any effort at all until rare sent some engineers to Japan to show them how it could be done, the first game Nintendo released using this was Lylat Wars. If it wasn't for Rare going out of its way, I doubt we would have seen any 50hz conversions during the N64 era from Nintendo.
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
RoyalFool said:
Nintendo never made any effort at all until rare sent some engineers to Japan to show them how it could be done, the first game Nintendo released using this was Lylat Wars. If it wasn't for Rare going out of its way, I doubt we would have seen any 50hz conversions during the N64 era from Nintendo.
Click to expand...
Uh, no, you're off by a whole decade. Super Mario Bros 1 has a good PAL conversion, as does Super Mario 2, 3, Kirby... almost all first party NES and SNES games...

Almost all PAL first party Nintendo games are unplayable on an NTSC machine (with mods or converter) because gameplay and music are too fast.
 
Neff

Neff

Member
D.Lo said:
SNES sound is always correct speed because the system clock speed did not affect the separate sound module.

Also PAL SNES games had less slowdown, the PPUs had extra cycles to handle the games since they ran slower. The SNES was at least a mixed bag
Click to expand...

Like I said, the isolated music caused problems when playing a game on a system not synchronised to the cart speed. NTSC SNES Zelda's ending music draws to a close and stops while the credits are still rolling when played on a PAL SNES. You weren't supposed to do that, of course, but it's things like this that will be a headache for programmers looking to appease 50/60hz VC switch advocates, and is a sound argument for Nintendo simply dismissing the idea and offering side-by-side PAL/NTSC roms on the eShop.

The reduced CPU strain was never an acceptable compromise for the permanent sluggishness of 50hz, but it did make some intense action scenes (Contra III/Super Probotector springs to mind) look more impressive in 50hz, as the PAL hardware would handle it better than its NTSC counterpart.
 
W

wackojackosnose

Member
It also messes with the competitive aspect of gaming, e.g. speed running / high scores etc.

I'm hoping for mass civil war and fragmentation of the official Wii U VC boards, where PALers accuse NTSCers of abusing in-game slow down and NTSCers denying PAL achievements because of our 50hz slow motion gaming. Hopefully Nintendo will do something about this.
 
A

also

Banned
D.Lo said:
Uh, no, you're off by a whole decade. Super Mario Bros 1 has a good PAL conversion, as does Super Mario 2, 3, Kirby... almost all first party NES and SNES games...

Almost all PAL first party Nintendo games are unplayable on an NTSC machine (with mods or converter) because gameplay and music are too fast.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it a good conversion. The game plays at the same speed but the music is sped up.
 
R

Rikkun

Member
Today I was replaying DKC2 and I was thinking about how many crippled games I have played in my life.

Everything I knew was a lie!
Is there some sort of list to know which games were heavily slowed down?
LLShC.gif
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
Rikkun said:
Today I was replaying DKC2 and I was thinking about how many crippled games I have played in my life.

Everything I knew was a lie!
Is there some sort of list to know which games were heavily slowed down?
LLShC.gif
Click to expand...
99% or more of games had bad or no conversion.
Generally Nintendo 1st party was *okay* (but not always), and games made by European studios, who made sure their games ran well in their home country (eg Rare, Psygnosis, DMA).

SNES games all had correct music speed by default.

Almost every Capcom, Konami, Sega, Square, Sony, Activision etc game was the worst possible conversion, and you played a slow, squashed piece of crap.
 
K

KennyLinder

Member
Nintendo have replied to me:

We are sorry to hear of your frustrations with the Virtual Console games. All televisions distributed within Europe are designed to support PAL inputs and most will not support NTSC inputs. As PAL is standard on televisions in Europe the console outputs on PAL. With regards to the 3DS as it has its own screens no compatibility decisions need to be factored into the Virtual Console games.

We hope this information helps provide clarity.
 
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