Is the Commodore 64 region-free?...

[ataridave]

I was looking at Elite for the C64 on Ebay last night, and noticed that the seller was located here in the US. In the item description, he mentioned that this game was European, and I asked him if it would work on a US/NTSC C64. He replied that it would. AFIK, no computer is region free, so what about the C64?

 

If it's not, is there any website on the C64 that is similar to the Amiga Hall of Light, where you can look up release information (ie, what countries a particular game was released in)?

[Herbarius]

Mhh, I think the question "Is the Commodore 64 region-free?" can be answered with a definite "Yes and No".

 

 

What can be said, that there are no intentional "region lock-outs" in place. So in principle, every game should run on every system. (AFAIK this should be true of most if not all computers, as opposed to - especially newer - game consoles).

 

However, there's always (at least with systems that can use TVs as monitors) the technical issue of PAL and NTSC, and there seem indeed to be games that only work on one of the two standards. However, often you'll see Cracker Groups have released "fixed" versions that work on both. (Again I would doubt this is intentional by the original game developers. It's rather a result of laziness.)

 

 

As for websites, you propably already found those, but if not try gb64.com and lemon64.com.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Herbarius

[NightSprinter]

Yeah, I've an NTSC 64 and some PAL games. Some games will work fine with a few glitches (some just graphical flickering, some game-breaking like in Gauntlet.. which breaks it in the player's favor). Some games MUST have a PAL system possibly due to timing or it won't work (two good examples are Ocean's port of Donkey Kong and U.S. Gold's port of Xevious).

[ataridave]

Yeah, I've an NTSC 64 and some PAL games. Some games will work fine with a few glitches (some just graphical flickering, some game-breaking like in Gauntlet.. which breaks it in the player's favor). Some games MUST have a PAL system possibly due to timing or it won't work (two good examples are Ocean's port of Donkey Kong and U.S. Gold's port of Xevious).

 

Interesting. Sounds like a US Sega Master System. Most PAL games will work on it, but a few, like The New Zealand Story, have issues such as running way too fast.

 

I found out that Elite was released on the NES-PAL only-and the reviews of that port on Gamefaqs.com are all glowing! I plan on getting a top-loader NES, which are region-free.

 

EDIT: Is this legal?: http://www.c64forever.com/ I'd love to pay for this and download if it is, because I don't really care about having actual C64 hardware.

Edited February 15, 2010 by dave4shmups

[Mirage]

Yeah, I've an NTSC 64 and some PAL games. Some games will work fine with a few glitches (some just graphical flickering, some game-breaking like in Gauntlet.. which breaks it in the player's favor). Some games MUST have a PAL system possibly due to timing or it won't work (two good examples are Ocean's port of Donkey Kong and U.S. Gold's port of Xevious).

 

Interesting. Sounds like a US Sega Master System. Most PAL games will work on it, but a few, like The New Zealand Story, have issues such as running way too fast.

 

I found out that Elite was released on the NES-PAL only-and the reviews of that port on Gamefaqs.com are all glowing! I plan on getting a top-loader NES, which are region-free.

 

EDIT: Is this legal?: http://www.c64forever.com/ I'd love to pay for this and download if it is, because I don't really care about having actual C64 hardware.

 

Yes, it's legal. I have and use the Amiga Forever package myself, which is a legal way to get all the Amiga ROMs and WorkBench disk images. The Amiga Forever package is nice and convenient otherwise, but it's the same exact emulators you could set up yourself if you took the time. But the standard settings they have for it are very nice and convenient. I have not used the C64 Forever package, but I suspect it's similarly set up. While I would still recommend that package, C64 emulators are pretty easy to set up, so I wouldn't consider it to be as much of a convenience as the Amiga Forever package is. Hope that helps.

[Reaperman]

I found out that Elite was released on the NES-PAL only-and the reviews of that port on Gamefaqs.com are all glowing! I plan on getting a top-loader NES, which are region-free.

even without the region blocking chip (mine's disabled) PAL Elite displays incorrectly. the signal output is very far from usable and the game is totally unplayable even on a tv that can accept a variety of inputs.

 

Even the 'ntsc hacked' version on the elite site won't play on real ntsc hardware (I was going to have a repro made for me so I checked).

 

I'm currently shopping for inexpensive PAL famiclones in hopes of playing my pal copy.

Edited February 15, 2010 by Reaperman

[ataridave]

I found out that Elite was released on the NES-PAL only-and the reviews of that port on Gamefaqs.com are all glowing! I plan on getting a top-loader NES, which are region-free.

even without the region blocking chip (mine's disabled) PAL Elite displays incorrectly. the signal output is very far from usable and the game is totally unplayable even on a tv that can accept a variety of inputs.

 

Even the 'ntsc hacked' version on the elite site won't play on real ntsc hardware (I was going to have a repro made for me so I checked).

 

I'm currently shopping for inexpensive PAL famiclones in hopes of playing my pal copy.

 

Bummer! So, what's the best way to experience this great game if you live in a country that uses NTSC??

[youki]

Bummer! So, what's the best way to experience this great game if you live in a country that uses NTSC??

 

Go to a new country !

 

From my experience, the problem is mainly when you use PAL game on NTSC , but not the other way. NTSC to PAL works lot better.

 

Usually from NTSC to PAL the only problem you can have is that the game run slower.

 

But in the other way, in the best case the game will run faster , but most of time there are timing problem. Because coding is based on a 50hz display frame rate. It means you can do more code (because you have more time) between 2 vertical interrupts. When you run this code on 60hz machine, the 2nd interrupt occurs before the code completed its first run... so you got unpredicable things.