Sunday 27 January 2013

Nintendo Virtual Console - 50 Hz matters MORE than you Think


A few days ago Nintendo surprised us all with some great announcements and the news that their virtual console for the Wii U was up and running with 1 game available for just 30 pence. Balloon Fight is a fun little diversion, and for 30p well worth your effort.

However it is marred by one thing for all European (and I assume Autralian and everywhere else that uses the PAL system), the game runs at 50hz. Surprisingly, this actually is a bigger deal than it sounds.


Please, watch this video, read the article, and then click on this link: https://www.change.org/petitions/nintendo-of-japan-nintendo-europe-release-future-wii-u-virtual-console-games-in-europe-australia-in-60hz-2 to tell Nintendo that they can't get away with selling damaged goods.


Saying your complaining about the game being 50hz is misleading. 
If it was JUST the fact the game is running at 50hz, I'd agree. It's not the refresh rate that ruins the game, its damage to the actual gameplay. Nintendo (and SEGA at the time) screwed PAL gamers over by, rather than re-coding their games to run at a different refresh rate, simply slowed everything down by 17.5% so it still ran smoothly.
Think about it. This means that the speed of ALL music in these games is being slowed down by 17.5 %. Musicians, imagine someone taking everything you'd worked on, and turning the tempo down on everything. They did this to music, animation, speed of movement, everything.

To be honest I don't care about the 'actual' refresh rate, and I only marginally care about the bars at the top and bottom of the screen. So when people moan about the 50hz PAL thing, I can see why some people on the net are going 'let is rest, it's not a big deal'.

So please, even if your not on a PAL system so this wont bother you, take a moment to consider it, and visit the link I posted before.
Their reason for doing this back in 1991 was sensible, if misguided, for the limited technology at the time. Now however for over 15 years MOST CRT TVs are capable of displaying at 60Hz, ALL HDMI televisions are capable of it. The reason is no more.

I have heard people wondering if Nintendo is simply not allowing itself to descriminate against the people out there who may have old PAL CRT TVs. To them I would point out that as the Wii U ships with ONLY a HDMI cable, PAL CRT TVs are already obsolete for the system.
With that taken into account there is no reason for Nintendo to peddle damaged goods. Because that's what this is: damaged goods. Whilst this purchase was only 30p, if they get away with it they WILL be charging full price for future releases.

Please, watch the video, click the link and sign the petition.

More evidence (and the reason I wont be purchasing F-Zero when it's only 30p in a few weeks time):

This practice carried on until the N64:



And Nintendo aren't the only ones who did it:

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