Jump to content
IGNORED

Ntsc adfs


howerton

Recommended Posts

It would appear that those games, like many others, were PAL-only releases by European software houses. Apparently the Amiga had a much bigger following in Europe for games than the US, and most software houses released primarily or exclusively for the local markets. Many games also work on NTSC Amigas because they limited their vertical resolution to 200 lines, but games that used the full PAL screen resolution of 256 lines would be cut off at the bottom. Of course, there's also the issue that many games would also synchronise to the screen refresh so timing might be a little bit off, but sometimes that can actually be a benefit.

 

The software houses involved (Virgin and Gremlin Ireland) primarily released in Europe, so I don't think you'll have much luck finding NTSC copies. If you have a newer A500, or any later model Amiga, you can switch to PAL mode when needed for games. Naturally, you'll need a display that can do 50Hz, but most displays should, and the Commodore monitors from back in the day do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hate to contradict, but I'd say most of the Amiga games (even from the big houses) were available here as NTSC releases. Certainly throughout the 80's. Was only the early/mid 90's when that started to change. I think people get the impression there were way more PAL releases because that's usually the version you find when scouring the 'net for these things. 

 

Anyway, I know for sure Double Dragon II (1989 Virgin Games) saw an NTSC release as I have it CIB and believe Plan 9 (1992 Konami/Gremlin) did as well. And a quick search yields that yes, yes it did. Here's the NTSC box, which differs from the PAL a bit...

 

s-l1600.thumb.jpg.d43341355556bde207429b08ed8172c9.jpg

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most games were available in NTSC territories, but not necessarily any different from the PAL version other than having different distributors (and probably different packaging as a result). A well-written game that stuck to 320x200 resolution would work equally well on either system.

 

But that is pretty interesting, and I'm all for learning more about things I didn't know! Neither of these are games that I've ever really played, but I can only find reference to PAL versions. So, where can I find an image of the NTSC versions of these? I'm interested to see how they've changed them to fit the lower resolutions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, I've looked into this further and there is indeed an NTSC release of Double Dragon 2, though it only makes the Amiga Love article more confusing. The version of the game that was fussy about Agnus chips was PAL only. Later, it was fixed for ECS compatibility and released in an NTSC version with a modified screen layout, so all NTSC versions should work with the "newer" Agnus chip, since ECS implies the later Agnus. So the problems in the article are either from the version of the game tested being PAL and just working on an NTSC Amiga because only an NTSC OCS setup was available, or some other issue, potentially with the floppy drive, on the A2000 that was tested and failed. And while the screenshots show the bottom of the screen to be a little cropped, this could equally be a poorly adjusted monitor, and on balance, I suspect that it is actually the NTSC version (which does work on ECS), and the A2000 drive is less than ideal.

 

NTSC IPFs are available, but they're only of use for emulators - a Gotek can't deal with them AFAIK. It would appear that only the earlier PAL version was cracked, and nobody felt the need to crack the later, fixed NTSC version. Games with custom disk geometry are usually only available in original form in IPF format - to get them into ADF format, they need to be cracked versions.

 

Plan 9 seems to be in a similar situation - there appears to have been an NTSC release but the ADFs available are all based on cracks of the PAL release - including one which is supposedly fixed for NTSC use and might be worth trying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...