SNES games that had glitches on mod system

[Lettuce]

Does anybody have, or know where i can find a list of SNES games that didnt work to well on opposite regional consoles, ie if you've had the 50/60hz mod done, and playing US games on a PAL SNES?

[NFG]

The only ones that come to mind are Street Fighter Alpha 2, and Super Mario RPG.  There are undoubtedly others, anyone know titles?

[Lettuce]

The ones i know, cos ive tried them, are:

Super StreetFighter 2 (US) GFX Glitches
Final Fight (US) GFX Glitches
Mario Kart (US) GFX Glitches

I think i read most Capcom games will have GFX glitches

[Vertigo]

Starfox/wing is unhappy when not in it's native speed mode as PAL carts have a different speed Super FX chip in them, due to the close timing relationship needed between the chip and sync rate.
Generally it's all the special chip stuff that can cause problems, I don't think things like Megaman X series will work in their non-native speed because of Capcom's (really crappily-used) C4 DSP chip, and the endings of Final Fantasy 3/6 will not work on a 50Hz system because they use very 60Hz-specific timings.
The intro of Secret of Mana crashes in 50Hz but that doesn't affect anything else in the game. There's also the slime boss, I've never played the game in 60Hz mode up to that point so I'm unsure if it's meant to do this, but on a US cart playing in a 50Hz PAL SNES the slime boss expands to almost twice the size of the screen and the players can't move toward the end of the battle. Again, I'm unsure if this is a glitch or actually is meant to happen.
The PAL version of SFAlpha2 works perfectly happily in 60Hz mode and will even boot in 60Hz, so it's my opinion that the cartridge contains zero protection which was done to rush the game out. It uses a custom chip for the graphics and sound compression which is why there's a giant delay between the announcer saying Fight and you being able to move, and between death and KO coming up, because the SNES's RAM is pretty much full and it has to decompress everything and shove stuff in and out of RAM. It's a great conversion though.
A Jap SSF2 cart works fine on a 50Hz machine so it's interesting to me that a US version gets upset.

Oh and an ace, though non-SNES-related, item for you : Sega made PAL Sonic run at the same speed as the 60Hz version so if you have a PAL Sonic and switch it into 60Hz mode after booting, you'll actually end up being able to play a version that's even faster than originally intended

Once I get my hands on all my stuff again, I intend to document what I own that does and doesn't work in the 'wrong' mode, for no other reason than self-amusement and that someone else might find it useful.

[dum dum]

the first sonic does not have a pal speed up, the second game does have sped up music but the gameplay is still slow.

[Lettuce]

I know PAL Lethal Enforcers plays way too fast in 60hz mod, on the MegaDrive

[Vertigo]

Dumdum I've compared two megadrives running side by side one with PAL sonic on PAL MD and a NTSC Sonic on a (spit) Genesis. They run at just about the same speed. Switch the PAL model into '60Hz' mode and it does run faster.

[Lettuce]

I thought this too, that it just makes the music play faster and not the actual game, well it seems that way. Another game that runs too fast in 60hz on the MD is, Shinobi 3 and Street Fighter 2

[dum dum]

intresting, i guess i'll have to re-evaluate sonic1 (you do mean 1, dont you?) some time to make sure. always the posibility of different versions, after all the jap version is different to the US also.

speaking of pal/ntsc tweaking, keep an eye out for a few pal games make use of 240 line video modes (most games are 224 lines high) such as panic of funkotron and streets of rage 2. avoid pal sor3 though, the pal conversion seems dodgy as the music speeds up and down for no good reason.


if you want to waste some time, get 2 copies of the same game and run them on a ntsc machine and a pal macchine set to 60hz (or pal+50hzntsc) and note the pal machine still lags behind (the main cystal is about %1-2 slower so even in ntsc mode its still slower than a real ntsc machine).


and if you reeaaaally want to waste time, get a video camera and watch some broadcast TV - if the black horizontal part stays rock solid then the camera is the same refresh rate as broadcast tv. now watch some video game footage - see just how accurate or unaccurate your consoles are

[Kouske]

Star Ocean seems to be running wierldy on my pal system.
Sound is extremly choppy.
Can anyone perhaps verify this.

[Vertigo]

Star Ocean uses an extremely custom form of compression and uses a special chip too  called an S-DD1 in order to help with the decompression to the SNES RAM. Emulator authors still haven't sussed it and use packs of decompressed graphics as a patch instead in order to get the game working on emulators. It can't run as a rom on a back-up unit as the decompression chip is very much unsupported.
Are you running a rom on a back-up unit or the actual cartridge?
The actual cartridge itself may just be very unhappy because it requires special timings or the decompression chip itself is only happy running on a system that's going at the right speed. Apparently it's a great game, but as I tend to only play SNES games on cartridge or on back-up hardware and not emulators, I will probably not ever play it. Not that I have enough time in my brain to devote to an RPG anyway.

[Kouske]

its the actual cartridge, but thanks for the info.  

[Vertigo]

It probably is the S-DD1 chip wanting a native speed only then.
It's the same as if you run a SuperFX in the wrong speed, it goes wrong and doesn't display properly.

[Hojo_Norem]

It probably is the S-DD1 chip wanting a native speed only then.
It's the same as if you run a SuperFX in the wrong speed, it goes wrong and doesn't display properly.

In my case that may be true for Starwing, but for Vortex and Yoshi's Island they seem to work perfectly, barring the usuall music timing changes.....

On a slightly diferent note, seeing that Sonic has been mentiond here I would like to point out something I discovered a little while ago:

My PAL Sonic 3 will only boot at 50Hz and then glitched if switched to 60Hz mid-game.

PAL Soinc & Knuckles is not 50Hz locked

Pluging PAL Sonic 3 into PAL Sonic & Knuckles will remove the lock on Sonic 3.

The only problem is that the save dosen't seem to be working in my copy of Sonic 3! T_T

[Vertigo]

These things are so interesting
Umm as for the save, the battery may well be dead. It's had a good 10 years to wear out.

[Lettuce]

Vertigo, you were saying about sonic running faster on PAL 60hz mode a while ago, and i have found a strange thing out. I posted else where on these forums that i had noticed that once i had finished the 50/60hz mod, when i put the games into 50hz they ran slower than they do on a usual unmodded PAl MD2 system, I have now found out why this happens.

If you boot up the MD in 60hz and then change it down to 50hz, the 50hz will run slower than it should do, this is because it was booted in 60 and then changed to 50, if you just boot the MD in 50hz it plays at the right speed (not slower than it should be) This is what cause's the games to run slower that they should do, try it your self.

This has the same effect  for games running fast in 60hz, just the other way around. if you boot in 50hz and then change it to 60hz, say when the title screen of the game appear, you'll notice that it will run extra fast (faster than 60hz should be), also you will noitce a lot of GFX glitches, i used Sonic 2 as an example. But what i did notice was that it you boot in 50hz and then change it almost straight away to 60hz, the game will run fine and no GFX glitches. Im not sure if this will be ok to do on games that have the lockout code in them, because im not sure when it is ok to flick the switch to get the game to work. But least ive found out now why i was getting extra slow PAL 50hz gameplay  

Does anybody knwo when is the best time to flick the switch to bypass the Lockout, can it be done straight away???

[dum dum]

i knew about sonic+k disabling sonic3's lockout as mine are a mismatched pair. my japan sonic3 seems to use an eeprom (flash ram) chip rather than battery. also watch out for bootleg copies that never saved in the first place.

heres something i noticed that can help you figure out if a cart has a battery... hold the cart and tap it, you might be able to feel the battery resonating! try it with a bunch of carts for several systems, compare knowen battery backed carts with regular carts

[Lettuce]

Is there a way to stop the slight graphic glitches you get on games that have a lockout on them, and that you need to start in 50hz and then change to 60hz, because i believe this is what cause's the glitches changing the hz when the game is on!