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Right...
I have two cartridges of the PAL edition of Sonic The Hedgehog.
I've tried them on my two Model 1 (but without the "High Definition" blurb) PAL Megadrives (Genesis-es!).
I swear, these games are far too slow. This must surely be because they were not optimised (sped up) for 50Hz? Just play Sonic on an emulator, or even on Sonic Jam, then play the PAL version on a Megadrive.
The music's too slow, Sonic doesn't seem all that fast any more, and it just generally sucks, at least when compared to the 'proper' version. And there are massive 'badly converted 50Hz game' borders.
Why didn't I notice this when I was a whippersnapper? It's only now that I've realised how slow and sloth-like the game seems.
To explain what I mean about the 50Hz thing (not insulting anyone's intelligence; just in case you don't know, since many people don't), when the games were originally released in Japan and America (NTSC), they would have been 60Hz (30 frames per second). Then, for the conversion to 50Hz PAL (crappy European TV format, 25 frames per second), the game's physics should have been sped up to compensate for the lower frame rate while still maintaining approximately the same speed.
For example if Sonic moved 1 unit every second in 60Hz NTSC, he should move 1.2 units every second in 50Hz PAL, to make up for the number of frames per second. Obviously, that was just a really simplified explanation, but hopefully you get the idea! 
Clearly, someone forgot or just was too plain lazy to do this - and now the PAL games just seem really dodgy once you've played the game at the proper speed.  I still can't believe I didn't notice it before though, with my first Megadrive. |
