PAL vs NTSC: 50 and 60 Hz, region locking and what to collect

• PAL (Europe, Australia and parts of Asia and Africa): 625 lines, 50 frames per second.
• NTSC (North America and Japan, among others): 525 lines, around 60 frames per second.

Collectors also distinguish between NTSC-U (United States and Canada) and NTSC-J (Japan), because although they share a TV system, their games are not always interchangeable.

The refresh rate is what you notice most when playing. A game designed for 60 Hz that is simply converted to 50 Hz gets 17% fewer frames per second.

On 8- and 16-bit consoles, the logic of many games was tied to the screen refresh: every frame, the game moved forward one step. If the screen refreshes 50 times a second instead of 60, the whole game runs slower, often including the music. That is what happens with the first Sonic the Hedgehog on a European Mega Drive.

On top of that there were the black borders: the PAL picture has more lines, and if the game was not adapted, there was spare space at the top and bottom. Hence the “squashed” image many of us remember from European games of the period.

Not every game suffered equally. Some were carefully adjusted to 50 Hz and others were not. From Dreamcast, PlayStation 2 and GameCube onwards, many European games let you choose 60 Hz at start-up (the so-called PAL60 mode), provided the TV supported it.

Whether a game works on a console from another region depends on the manufacturer and the generation. This summary refers to original games on unmodified consoles:

Console	Region-locked?	Details
NES	Yes	Lockout chip in both console and cartridge. Japanese Famicom cartridges have a different format and do not fit.
Super Nintendo	Yes	North American cartridges are a different shape; Japanese ones fit a European console, but the lockout chip will not let them boot without an adaptor.
Nintendo 64	Yes	Cartridge shape and lockout chip vary by region.
GameCube and Wii	Yes	Software lock; you need to mod the console or use a boot disc.
Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and DS	No	Games work on any console. Exception: DSi-exclusive games.
3DS	Yes	Games and console must be from the same region.
Switch	No	No region locking for games.
Mega Drive	It depends	Many cartridges work if they fit, but some check the region in software, and Japanese ones are a different shape that will not fit some Western models without an adaptor.
PlayStation and PlayStation 2	Yes	Games are region-locked.
PlayStation 3	Hardly ever	The vast majority of PS3 games are region-free; the PS1 and PS2 games it runs do respect the lock.
PlayStation 4 and 5	No	No region locking for disc-based games.
Xbox and Xbox 360	Depends on the game	It was up to each publisher.

Adaptors and mods exist and they work, but bear in mind that they alter the console. If you are collecting rather than playing, compatibility matters less than the edition.

A modern TV handles 50 and 60 Hz signals without any trouble. Old CRT sets are another story: some European models could not display an NTSC picture properly, which came out in black and white or rolling.

If you play NTSC games on a modded console, the cable matters: over SCART in RGB the picture is usually far better than over RF or composite video, and it avoids some of the colour problems.

There is no single answer; it depends on why you collect.

• If you collect for nostalgia, and grew up in Spain, Spanish PAL: it is was actually in the shops there, with its Spanish manuals. The what Spanish PAL means guide explains how to recognise it.
• If you collect to play 16-bit games, the NTSC versions run at the intended speed, although you need a console from that region or a modded one.
• If you are after games that never came out in Europe, importing is the only legitimate route. Be careful: a game that never had a PAL release but is listed as PAL is a repro. Classic Super Nintendo examples with no European release: EarthBound, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG or Final Fantasy VI (III in the United States).

What matters is knowing what you have. Record the region of every copy: two copies of the same game from different regions are two different pieces in the collection, with different values.