harjon1969 Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 I am wondering why if there are two rare games of Motorodeo on ebay right now, how come no one has bid on them? I become suspect when it is a rare game---many visitors to the game and no bids? I have bought the wrong games before and do not want to make the same mistake again. these are pal games but even Atari Age lists them as an 8. Just wondering. Regards, JOHN the games are here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5&category=4315 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...0&category=4315 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lhfreak Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 Thats just it.......their PAL. Wont work on my TV. So I dont collect PAL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 That first listing is in horrible condition. I wouldn't pay more than a dollar for that one. As for the second one, the starting price is about right for a loose PAL version of the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonTemplar Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 The "collectable" version of Motorodeo is the NTSC version. The PAL version isn`t worth anything. If you were to buy a game like Motorodeo only buy from a reputable seller who will guarantee it is the NTSC version. And be prepared to pay the price. Same goes for Obelix, Asterix, games by BOMB, some SPECTRAVIDEO, and a bunch of others. Selling worthless PAL versions of extremely rare(NTSC) titles is a popular scam on ebay right now...and some newbies fall in the trap. I did fall into that trap myself and lost a bit of money! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harjon1969 Posted February 28, 2004 Author Share Posted February 28, 2004 Thanks for the info guys. I have a Bumper bash that I am going to list on ebay that I found inside a group of games. I think it is ntsc as it was from Canada, but how can I be sure? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cootster Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 Does it work properly with the correct colors on your TV? If so, it's NTSC. Get the ROMs and see if it matches. For that matter, is there a PAL Bumper Bash? And why is there such a disconnect between PAL and NTSC prices anyway? They can't be that much more common, and it's not just because most collectors are American, since this site and other classic gaming forums have sizable European/Aussie contingents. So, why is it that a PAL game, even if it's probably a legitimate R-7 or above, is damn close to worthless? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harjon1969 Posted February 28, 2004 Author Share Posted February 28, 2004 I think maybe because it does not play well on our televisions---would you want to spend $799.00 as the lochjaw just went for on ebay just to have it make your screen roll?? The cart works fine on my tv. the system I got from Canada has some issues and distorted the games played on it. I tried it on another system and it was fine. Anyway this is what the cart looks like. I do not see that there is a Pal version. The picture is a poor one because with the exception of the hole in the middle of the cart it looks great. DANG FOIL!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyle Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 Ok maybe i'm wrong but doesn't canada use NTSC not PAL????????????? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harjon1969 Posted February 28, 2004 Author Share Posted February 28, 2004 Yes they do---but I have received things from Canada before that had made the screen roll---which is common for Pal to do here. I do not know if they were games original to Canada or not. For all I know they could be from Budapest. It was just a question because I am not an expert on the pal NTSC thing. For me if I put something in my system and it works, I could care less if it were Pal or NTSC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pitfall Harry Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 The "collectable" version of Motorodeo is the NTSC version. The PAL version isn`t worth anything. If you were to buy a game like Motorodeo only buy from a reputable seller who will guarantee it is the NTSC version. And be prepared to pay the price. Same goes for Obelix, Asterix, games by BOMB, some SPECTRAVIDEO, and a bunch of others.Selling worthless PAL versions of extremely rare(NTSC) titles is a popular scam on ebay right now...and some newbies fall in the trap. I did fall into that trap myself and lost a bit of money! The "collectable" version of Motorodeo (or anything, for that matter) depends on what it is you want to collect. I live in NTSC land, but that does not stop me from going after GREAT games in the PAL format, especially when their NTSC counterparts are priced well beyond my means. The case of Motorodeo is an excellent example of a good PAL/NTSC tradeoff. Motorodeo is a blast to play, and is as much fun to play in PAL as it is in NTSC format. Granted, the colors may be a bit off when you play PAL games on NTSC equipment, but color hardly matters when it comes to Atari 2600 games. It's the Gameplay! Even in PAL format, Motorodeo is quite rare. You'll likely have to pay $80 or more for one if you find it on eBay. Then there is postage from Australia or wherever it has to be shipped from PAL to NTSC land. But even at $100 it's a STEAL compared to the price of an NTSC version, which you will NEVER find and NEVER get, unless you're willing to part with a kilobuck or two. So let's say you find an old, old collector out there who has an NTSC Motorodeo AND he's decided to part with his collection, AND you're lucky enough to get to him first AND he lets you have first crack at it for a real bargain of $1,500. You've now got the rare, rare NTSC game, but you're also out a real wad of cash. Oh, well. It's the price you have to pay if your TV can't play PAL games. Or is it? Let's say you went after the PAL version instead, picking it up for a measely $100. That leaves you with $1400 to add to your collection. What better way is there to spend it than to buy yourself a new TV that CAN play PAL games? With a little effort on your part, you can find a modern, big big TV that can play PAL games. It all depends on how much you want it. Or you could go small and really save a bundle. I use a Commodore 1701 model Color Computer monitor, and it works GREAT for playing PAL games. I connect my Atari's video output RCA jack to the Antenna IN of my VCR by using an RF/CABLE TV adapter. My VCR includes a TV tuner (they all do), which picks up the game's signals on Channel 3. Then I connect my VCR's A/V OUT to the A/V IN of my Commodore monitor. Finally, by giving the Vertical Hold adjust knob of my Commodore monitor a little twist, voila! I'm playing a rock-steady game of my PAL Motorodeo on my NTSC Atari Console. Total cost of my setup: PAL Motorodeo cartridge - $100 VCR w/ TV tuner - $50 Commodore 1701 Monitor - $30 RF/Cable TV adapter - $10 Shielded A/V cable - $5 ================ Total cost: $195 $195 is fantastically less to pay than what the NTSC version of Motorodeo will cost you. What's more, my collection is now PAL - ready. I can expand my collection by purchasing any of hundreds of PAL Atari 2600 games, many of which have no NTSC counterpart, with no additional PAL/NTSC equipment costs. If you want to have a great collection AND play your games AND save a ton of money, a setup like the one I described can be much bigger and a whole lot more fun than limiting yourself to an NTSC-only collection and clinging to the "My TV can't play PAL games" excuse. Your TV can't play PAL games. So what? If you're willing to pay thousands for rare NTSC games, what stops you from paying less than $200 for a setup that CAN play PAL games? Nothing. I've grown my collection by over 100 PAL titles, most of which are either unavailable in NTSC format or beyond my means. Over 100. That makes PAL games pretty darn "collectable" to me. Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Even in PAL format, Motorodeo is quite rare. You'll likely have to pay $80 or more for one if you find it on eBay. Then there is postage from Australia or wherever it has to be shipped from PAL to NTSC land. But even at $100 it's a STEAL compared to the price of an NTSC version, which you will NEVER find and NEVER get, unless you're willing to part with a kilobuck or two. Are you talking about an NIB Motorodeo PAL? I've never seen a loose PAL Motorodeo sell for anywhere near $100.00. I agree with the rest of what you've said. I have a decent size PAL collection in addition to my NTSC titles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonTemplar Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 I was simply pointing out that prices in the collector market are widely different between 1. PAL Motorodeo and 2.NTSC Motorodeo and the problem is that from the outside, both carts are identical. As for the Canadian standard it is NTSC like the USA. Some manuals and boxes may be bilingual, like Xonox and Spectravideo, but they are NTSC. I don`t know about bumper bash, but I know spectravideo did produce games in PAL and NTSC formats, an example is Mangia... so i would suppose that they produced bumper bash in both formats too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spirantho Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 First off - Bumper Bash does exist and is more common in PAL - about rarity 5 I'd say. Secondly, Motorodeo is very common in Europe, particularly France, and it's worth about $10 tops loose, boxed probably about $25. If anyone wants to pay me $50 for a loose Motorodeo give me a few weeks and I'll have some for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonTemplar Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Secondly, Motorodeo is very common in Europe, particularly France, and it's worth about $10 tops loose, boxed probably about $25. If anyone wants to pay me $50 for a loose Motorodeo give me a few weeks and I'll have some for you. No thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whisper Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Hi, I'm new on this forum and wrote a short introduction in the "general chat" area, but I will only read and post in the 2600 section I think. I'm a total newbie when it comes to anything as I never owned a 2600 "back in the day" but recently purchased one just out of curiousity because a colleage of mine got a 6-switch as a gift from a friend and I had never seen such an old model, I only knew the 2600 Jr. I bought CX2600A as 6-switch models are really rare here in the Netherlands. I Also have a "vader" 2600 on the way because I think this is the model with the coolest look and I could get it with a bunch of controllers and games for irt cheap. My friends with Playstations think I'm nuts though. But now we're on the PAL/NTSC subject, does anybody have the 32in1 casette? It is listed as being a PAL thing but with some games the older tv (early 90's) starts rolling and the newer one (late 90's) shows a perfect picture. I can remember it happening with the game in which a sort of flying saucer shoots balloons and airplanes while scrolling to the right. A real "shoot anything that moves" game. Anmd another question, unrelated to this topic, but not worth its own topic I think, does anybody have Pharao's Curse by Technovision? I got the game with my CX2600A and I have no idea what the game is about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harjon1969 Posted March 1, 2004 Author Share Posted March 1, 2004 ok--hmmm back to my original question---how can I tell if I have Pal or NTSC? It does not role on the screen and the colors look great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harjon1969 Posted March 1, 2004 Author Share Posted March 1, 2004 ok sorry---that was not my original question---but none the less a question still in my head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke 4ever Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Well, its always good to ask to make sure before buying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Even in PAL format, Motorodeo is quite rare. You'll likely have to pay $80 or more for one if you find it on eBay. Then there is postage from Australia or wherever it has to be shipped from PAL to NTSC land. But even at $100 it's a STEAL compared to the price of an NTSC version, which you will NEVER find and NEVER get, unless you're willing to part with a kilobuck or two. Are you talking about an NIB Motorodeo PAL? I've never seen a loose PAL Motorodeo sell for anywhere near $100.00. I agree with the rest of what you've said. I have a decent size PAL collection in addition to my NTSC titles. We'll see what will happen with these 2 sealed copies. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=3081903652 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velvis Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Do PAL games run faster than designed on NTSC equipment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spirantho Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 The sync rate remains the same - 50Hz ... so the game speed depends on the cart, not the console.. You'll get different colours but it'll play identically to if its on a PAL console. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 The sync rate remains the same - 50Hz ... so the game speed depends on the cart, not the console.. You'll get different colours but it'll play identically to if its on a PAL console. That was at best unclear and at worst incorrect. The colours you see on your TV are generated by the Atari itself. So no matter what cartridge you put in your machine, your Atari will be generating the actual colours you see. The frame rate *standard* differs between NTSC (60Hz - well, actually 59.97Hz) and PAL (50Hz). However the *actual* frame rate a game sends to the TV depends on the *cartridge*! This in turn depends on the number of scanlines that the cartridge 'draws' each frame of the TV picture. The standard is 262 lines per frame for NTSC and 312 for PAL. Note that 262 * 60 ~= 312 x 50. Thus, the total amount of 'work' per frame for NTSC and PAL cartridges is roughly the same. Now, although it is a *standard* that cartridges generate a certain number of scanlines based on if they are NTSC or PAL, it is not *necessary* that they actually DO generate this number of scanlines. It's quite OK for a NTSC cart to generate 280 scanlines per frame! What happens then is that the frame rate drops a little bit (to 56.1 Hz). Now as the variation from the standard number of scanlines gets more pronounced, so does the frame-rate of the TV signal. And we eventually get to a point where the TV simply can't 'synch'. Either too many scanlines (and too low a frame-rate) or too few scanlines and too high a frame rate. Modern TVs are fairly lenient. Old-style TVs had a manual vertical-hold adjustment (which effectively corrected for the variation in frame rate). Given the differences in frame rate in cartridges adhering to the standards (PAL 50Hz, NTSC 60Hz) it is POSSIBLE that your NTSC TV might happily be able to display a PAL game running on a NTSC system. It's possible that your PAL TV might be able to display a NTSC game running on a PAL system. But there are a couple of 'gotchas'. The first to remember is that the colour data in the TV signal output by your Atari is in a different 'location' for NTSC and PAL TV systems. So a PAL TV receiving a NTSC signal simply won't have colour. It will be greyscale. Similarly, a NTSC TV receiving a PAL signal simply won't have colour. The colour data is in a different place in the TV signal than where the TV is looking. Some TVs are able to recognise the signal format and correctly find the colour data. Next, even though you might have a NTSC TV which lets you synch to a PAL-style cartridge (outputing 312 scanlines at 50Hz instead of 262 scanlines at 60Hz) running on your NTSC 2600... you *will* see colours (because you have a NTSC signal coming from your NTSC 2600) but you won't see the colours you expect! Why? Because the actual MEANING of colours is different between PAL and NTSC Ataris. When a programmer displays a colour, that colour is represented by a number. For example, "red" might be represented by the number 152 (I'm too lazy to look up the actual vaues, so this is a theoretical discussion). Whenever that number is put into the background colour register, the programmer expects the background to be red. The problem is, 152 might mean red to a PAL Atari, but it might mean blue to a NTSC Atari! So, differences between PAL and NTSC are... a) The frame rate, as a side-effect of the number of scanlines per frame b) The location of the colour signal in the output TV signal from the Atari c) The differences in the meaning of colour d) The ability of your TV to find the colour signal, and synch to the frame rate. Hope that makes it clearer Cheers A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
highinfidelity Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 Back to the subject, PAL Motorodeo is rated 8 here. How comes that everyone say it's so common and - except P.Harry - bought it for few bucks, then? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YOK-dfa Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 Back to the subject, PAL Motorodeo is rated 8 here. How comes that everyone say it's so common and - except P.Harry - bought it for few bucks, then? Maybe because the PAL rarity list has some errors But seriously. Motorodeo is hard to find in most countries, but for some reason seems to be pretty common in France. Bring in the internet, international auction sites, etc. etc. and down goes the rarity, since everybody gets his/her Motorodeo from France. It's hard to make an universal rarity list for the PAL region since there are so many differences in rarity between countries. (like UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Australia, etc.) Cheers, Raymond Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spirantho Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 That was at best unclear and at worst incorrect. So why did you then proceed to say exactly the same thing but in 10 times as many words? Seriously, I didn't want to bog the question down with a technical discussion - he wanted to know if a PAL game ran faster than it should on NTSC equpment - I think "the game speed depends on the cart" was kind of all he needed to know really. (No offence intended - but be careful how you phrase statements like the above 'cos it can come over a little rude. ) It's hard to make an universal rarity list for the PAL region since there are so many differences in rarity between countries. (like UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Australia, etc.) Yeah, it'd take a real loony to make a PAL rarity list. Anyone want a copy of mine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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