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Become a Redditor and join one of thousands of communities. x 41 42 43 Why does Super Mario Bros. have faster music on the real NES compared to the NES Classic? (self.nintendo) submitted 4 years ago by BridgemanBridgeman So while playing my NES Classic today I thought it'd be interesting to compare Super Mario Bros. on the Classic vs Super Mario Bros. on the actual NES, since I still have mine hooked up. Turned both of them on, compared the two... And what do you know, the original NES version has faster music. It actually sounds bad to me now. Now I do live in Europe and so my NES is a PAL version, I guess it might be because of that... But the weird thing is, aside from the music the games seem to run at the same speed. Cuz I was looking at the clocks on the top right, and both seemed to go at about the same speed. Anyone know why this is? * 20 comments * share * save * hide * report all 20 comments sorted by: best topnewcontroversialoldrandomq&alive (beta) [ ] Want to add to the discussion? Post a comment! Create an account [-]Nickbou 49 points50 points51 points 4 years ago (1 child) So, this is actually pretty interesting. I had a hunch and it sent me down a rabbit hole of internet searching. At the source, the relates to the power coming from the outlet in your wall. In the US and parts of Japan it's at 120 V / 60 Hz. In most of the rest of the world it's 220-240 V / 50 Hz. The frequency (Hz) is what is important here. The NTSC standard is based on a 60Hz input, whereas PAL is based on 50Hz. On CRT televisions, the kind that were common when the NES was released, this correlates with the refresh rate. Video games needed to provided images at the correct frequency, otherwise you would miss frames. For example, if a video game was outputting 60 frames per second, but the tv could only refresh 50 frames per second, then 10 frames would be missed. Generally speaking, music is tied to the frame rate. You can see (or rather hear) this when playing some games if you push the processing power too hard. For instance if you have too many moving sprites on the screen then sometimes you will get a slow down effect as the console struggles to handle all the calculations. The movement slows down and the music stutters. There are some tricks that can be used to get the music about the same in each version, but this was not often done because it's extra work for what is usually minor issue. Basically, most PAL versions of games played slightly slower (about 17%) than the NTSC versions in order to match the frequency of the television. Sometimes developers put in extra work on the conversion to adjust for the difference, but only if it significantly affected gameplay and the cost was justified. Now, what's interesting here is that OP is experiencing the PAL version actually playing FASTER. This is the result of a later attempt to patch the PAL game to make the gameplay (close to) the same as the NTSC version, but as a result the music also sped up and is now faster than the NTSC version. There's a further explanation I found here * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]ThisPlaceLooksCool 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (0 children) Your explanation is the most correct, you deserve more upvotes. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]roto_discMeta Naito 49 points50 points51 points 4 years ago (10 children) Pretty sure the US system played at 60fps and the PAL was at 50fps. Assuming the music is tied to the frame rate, this would explain the speed up. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]ExaskryzWhere's the inkling girl at 11 points12 points13 points 4 years ago (1 child) So if you are supposed to play a second of sound in 60 fps, but in that same second you have played 50fps, that means the same clip of sound takes 1.2 seconds to play out on PAL. Which means PAL would be playing music slower. But that's the opposite of OP's observation, as real NES, assuming that's PAL, is playing faster for him? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Thenewgameboyemulator terminator (check b4 you downvote) :) 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (0 children) Blame it on sloppy NTSC -> PAL conversion. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]TSPhoenix 1 point2 points3 points 4 years ago (0 children) Weird seeing as the PAL version of Sonic the Hedgehog is 17% slower than the NTSC version. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]SvenHudson 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (6 children) That wouldn't explain their seemingly identical gameplay speed. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Mrcollaborator 25 points26 points27 points 4 years ago (5 children) Not identical. This is a known fact * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]EllipsisBreakHow dare you scale my leaderboard? I hereby challenge you! 21 points22 points23 points 4 years ago* (3 children) This. Most old games run in slow motion in PAL. Edit: On further inspection, it seems Super Mario Bros is a weird case. There's a version if it that plays in slow motion, and a later version that Nintendo tried to fix. That seems to be the one in the OP. The fixes do not perfectly match the 60hz versions of the game, and the music in particular is too fast. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ChemicalExperimentInto the stars 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (1 child) Why did PAL have to resort to slower framerates? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]EllipsisBreakHow dare you scale my leaderboard? I hereby challenge you! 4 points5 points6 points 4 years ago (0 children) Because the standard refresh rate of TVs over there was 50hz rather than 60hz. That means they couldn't display 60fps, and since all the games were designed to run at 60fps, that limitation is really bad. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]DiskoBonez 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (0 children) Lol I wonder if they tried that with any other games. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]T1ck_T0ck_Actual -4 points-3 points-2 points 4 years ago (0 children) It is known. ...sorry couldn't resist. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]violetfoxy 8 points9 points10 points 4 years ago (5 children) Most companies did a poor job porting to pal regions up until hdmi really took a hold. You really want to avoid playing pal ports of older games. There are many more exceptions with the dreamcast/ps2 era though. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]SuperNeonManGuy -1 points0 points1 point 4 years ago (4 children) it's not a "bad job porting" it's matching the refresh rate of the tvs the game would be played on, if anything it's a good job "porting" , it's just not good for modern displays * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]EllipsisBreakHow dare you scale my leaderboard? I hereby challenge you! 3 points4 points5 points 4 years ago (2 children) Modern displays have nothing to do with it. Most PAL games play in slow motion regardless of what display technology you use. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]SuperNeonManGuy 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (1 child) No, you misunderstand, I know they play in slow motion (the same is true for some movies that aired in PAL regions too), that's not what i'm saying, I was commenting on the fact that it's not a "bad job porting". I was also saying that modern screen refreshing at 60fps will make something 50fps look more jittery than it does on a screen that refreshed at that rate since it doesn't evenly divide, unless you're using freesync or gsync, or some other form of variable refresh rate solution * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Iotah 0 points1 point2 points 4 years ago (0 children) It is completely due to the port. Tons of pal games run at the same speed as ntsc, because the devs took the time to optimise the game for pal hardware * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 4 years ago (0 children) Incorrect. It has everything to do with the port. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * reply [-][deleted] 5 points6 points7 points 4 years ago (0 children) Just a quirk of the PAL version. It's like how Sonic 1's PAL version had slower music. * permalink * embed * save * report * reply * about * blog * about * advertising * careers * help * site rules * Reddit help center * reddiquette * mod guidelines * contact us * apps & tools * Reddit for iPhone * Reddit for Android * mobile website * <3 * reddit premium * reddit coins * redditgifts Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. (c) 2021 reddit inc. All rights reserved. REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc. 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