A question about NTSC/PAL re: Vic-20 carts

[TimsterAA]

Hey gang,

 

I realize this question pertains to an Atari rival's machine, but I'm hoping someone here will know the answer (as I'm sure I'm not the ONLY one out there with machines from quite a varied list of manufacturers!).

 

I'm looking at some C= VIC-20 carts from a seller in Australia, and I understand AU is on the PAL system. Are these carts interchangeable between machines, or would PAL have used one type of cart (rom?) and NTSC another? I would think the PAL/NTSC formatting was derived/defined by the hardware, not the software. I have purchased disk and tape based software for the C=64, Amiga, and Atari ST from the UK (hence PAL), and that software has worked fine on my US machines.

 

So does anyone know if this is an issue or not? Thanks in advance, and again - apologies for posting a Commodore related question on an Atari Age forum! GASP!

 

--Timster--

[Rybags]

I doubt Vic-20 games would have many issues.

 

If they're based on the frame-rate (like most decent games) then there'd be a slowdown issue running on PAL, or a speedup issue running on NTSC.

 

Most issues with PAL original games on NTSC are either insufficient cycles per frame to render a scene, or not enough screen lines to display overscan data.

 

I don't think there were any tricks on the Vic20 to do overscan, so that wouldn't be an issue.

 

Games were fairly simplistic, so I'd imagine they were all interchangeable.

[Heaven/TQA]

vic games exist in ntsc and pal versions? aren't there special versions of each game on ftps? i can remember esp hes games where you have to adjust the screen position at the beginning.

 

and dont underestimate vic-1 gfx chip as it is possible to do overscan but i am not sure if a screen will roll or not on pal/ntsc.