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Within the video game community, '''PAL''' is a term used to refer to the region of Europe, most of Asia (minus Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines), Africa, most of South America, and Australia. The term comes from the analog television encoding system '''Phase Alternate Line''', which was the primary method of encoding analog TV for these parts of the world. | Within the video game community, '''PAL''' is a term used to refer to the region of Europe, most of Asia (minus Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines), Africa, most of South America, and Australia. The term comes from the analog television encoding system '''Phase Alternate Line''', which was the primary method of encoding analog TV for these parts of the world. | ||
There are numerous differences between PAL and NTSC as television formats, but the main difference which affected video games was their refresh rates. NTSC TVs run at 60 hertz (meaning the image refreshes 60 times per second), while PAL TVs only run at 50 hertz (50 refreshes per second), meaning that, unless adjusted to account for the refresh rate, PAL runs at 5/6th the speed of NTSC. An alternative standard that runs PAL at 60 hertz was later developed, so the difference between the formats primarily became their different methods of encoding. | |||
Historically, the PAL version is usually the third and final major version for games made in Japan to be released. This is for numerous reasons: as PAL functions very different to the NTSC format, games had to be converted to work in the PAL format, and games have to be translated into several languages within the region, whereas [[NTSC]] regions have fewer languages to handle (at minimum, only English and Japanese). In addition, due to differences between American and Commonwealth English, the English translation for the UK and Australia cannot always be simply copied from the American version of the game. | |||
As a result, PAL releases were often the final version of Nintendo games, with the chance of the highest amount of bugs fixed, the games being adjusted to run at 50Hz (sometimes resulting in slower gameplay speed), and possibly significant changes added, at least prior to the adoption of online play requiring copies of the games to be compatible with each other. | |||
Though the last Nintendo console to support the analog PAL video signal was the [[Wii]], the term is still commonly used as shorthand to refer to the areas where PAL was formerly used, as the games released there usually use the same version between them. | |||
==Summary of PAL releases of the ''Super Smash Bros.'' series== | ==Summary of PAL releases of the ''Super Smash Bros.'' series== | ||
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===''Super Smash Bros. Brawl''=== | ===''Super Smash Bros. Brawl''=== | ||
In order for cross-region online play to be possible, most of the differences between versions of ''[[Brawl]]'' are purely aesthetic, though they are still encoded differently. PAL versions of ''Brawl'' can be played in 50Hz or 60Hz. However, [[Masterpieces]] are slightly different in the PAL version, running their PAL 50 Hz versions, as opposed to the NTSC version's NTSC 60 Hz versions. When playing ''Brawl'' in 50Hz, the effect this has depends on the game, with some running noticeably slower while others run at more or less the same speed. When playing the PAL version of ''Brawl'' in | In order for cross-region online play to be possible, most of the differences between versions of ''[[Brawl]]'' are purely aesthetic, though they are still encoded differently. PAL versions of ''Brawl'' can be played in 50Hz or 60Hz. However, [[Masterpieces]] are slightly different in the PAL version, running their PAL 50 Hz versions, as opposed to the NTSC version's NTSC 60 Hz versions. When playing ''Brawl'' in 50Hz, the effect this has depends on the game, with some running noticeably slower while others run at more or less the same speed. When playing the PAL version of ''Brawl'' in 60 Hz, however, some of the games are still using their PAL versions, but they are sped up to match the higher refresh rate. This results in some masterpieces (such as ''Super Mario Bros.'' and ''The Legend Of Zelda'') having much faster music than they are supposed to. | ||
The PAL version of ''Brawl'' actually has some skips in [[The Subspace Emissary]] which cannot be done in the NTSC versions, which makes the PAL version preferred for speedrunners. | The PAL version of ''Brawl'' actually has some skips in [[The Subspace Emissary]] which cannot be done in the NTSC versions, which makes the PAL version preferred for speedrunners. | ||