Crystal Castles XE (NTSC? PAL? Doesn't Matter?)

[SpendTooMuchOnAtari]

I don't know anything about XE carts so am wondering if there are PAL and NTSC carts out there or are they all compatible. I am asking because someone is selling Crystal Castles complete in the box but is from Holland. I'm not particularly interested but was going to post it here because I thought you guys might be. But, I don't want to steer anyone in the wrong direction because I'm not sure of the PAL NTSC thing with these. Anyway, it's not mine and I know nothing about it but here it is....

XE CRYSTAL CASTLES ON DP

[Rybags]

Should be fine. In most cases, the only difference is less speed on PAL systems for games.

 

I have it on .ATR image, but haven't tried it on my PAL XL or XE.

[birdie3]

Crystal Castles XE works on both NTSC and PAL as far as I know. Actually, most Atari 8-bit carts work on either NTSC or PAL systems. What is he looking to get for it?

[Mindfield]

So are you saying that 8-bit carts will automatically sync to the host broadcast format? They'd have to be programmed that way at the outset, but it would be cool if they did.

 

I know there's plenty of disk-based software that doesn't sync automatically -- mostly stuff that relies on a specific refresh rate (i.e. demos) or just wasn't developed with a foriegn market in mind.

[SpendTooMuchOnAtari]

What is he looking to get for it?

 

The original poster states:

 

Make me an offer please..

 

He is fairly new to the forums there and only has a post count of 4 which is a little concerning but I don't know. I'll post a reply there to ask about what he is looking to get and see what comes of it.

[birdie3]

OK. I thought I knew what I was talking about. I own a Crystal Castles XE that I bought from a guy in a PAL country and it plays fine on my NTSC XE. I seem to remember someone explaining to me that most Atari 8-bit carts work on either NTSC and PAL to try and convince me to buy a bunch of them. Nearly half of my cartridge collection comes from PAL countries. Could someone who definately knows the facts please explain this to us.

[Rybags]

AFAIK, no official Atari 8 bit cartridges required a specific format.

 

Most games for computers such as the Atari, C=64 and Atari ST work fine on either system.

 

Demos are really only a special case if they use a full display. That can cause problems on NTSC, either/both with the display going outside what the TV can show, or the machine not having enough cycles to be able to frame render quick enough.

 

PAL machines have around 35,500 cycles per frame, NTSC only gets29,900.

 

Almost all Atari 8-bit games base their movement/rendering on the VBlank interval so the only side effect will be that games will play slower on PAL.

 

I've never come across a piece of software that won't work on PAL. The only ones I've heard of having problems are certain hardware turbo-disk accelerators.

 

A final note is that sound on PAL is slightly different (lower pitch), but barely detectable in most cases.

[deathtrappomegranate]

I know of no A8 carts that were released with different code for the NTSC and PAL markets. Most were designed as NTSC, though.

 

It's a different story with cassette and disk games, but, even so, most will still work on either format. There are, however, differences in the way the games run.

[ijor]

Most games for computers such as the Atari, C=64 and Atari ST work fine on either system.

 

This depends on you definition of "fine". As said here, most games will run ~20% slower or faster on the "wrong" system. In many cases then the game will be too fast (you'll loose too much) or too slow (too easy and boring).

 

Also, some disk protections are based on timing, and some of them break with the "wrong" refresh rate. Others correctly adapt themselves to the current rate.