[acomjean]

So was there an Nintendo in PAL format?

(PAL tvs had 100 more lines and refreshed a little lower 25, vs NTSC's 30 frames per second)

Seems like it would be a pain to make that work. Knowing the pain of PAL <-> NTSC tv conversion.

[mrob]

The NES (and most early consoles) ran at 50/60fps, not 25/30fps. It achieved this by ignoring the PAL/NTSC spec and sending all the fields at the same polarity instead of alternating odd/even fields. This halves the resolution but gives you double framerate progressive scan video, which is a good tradeoff for games.

[fredoralive]

The traditional game console solution for PAL consoles was to just have letterboxing with the extra 100 lines blank, with everything vertically squashed a little. Games usually didn't compensate for the lower framerate, so just ran slower.

PAL console gaming was a GREAT experience, as you can imagine.

Things got better from the Dreamcast onwards as they could software switch to 525 line / 60Hz modes (usually with PAL encoded colour for composite video, except for the PS2 which used pure NTSC), and it's all now moot with HD.

[seanp2k2]

Not all moot with HD; we have new and exciting problems! Now we have issues with poor-quality cables not being able to negotiate 4K 60hz 4:4:4 chroma, the Vizio 2016 P series negotiating 4:4:4 but actually doing 4:2:2 internally ( https://hardforum.com/threads/2016-vizio-p-series.1896948/ // http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/p-series-2016 if you're curious , there is also a long thread on AVSForum), etc. Good times.

[Flow]

Here's a comparision of Super Mario Bros 1 NTSC vs PAL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUI5xFEW_tg

They show more graphics at the top and bottom, probably nothing that affects actual gameplay, but it's nice it's not just black regions.

[DominikR]

It's probably better to emulate NTCS as PAL games very often ran slower when compared to the NTSC versions of the same game.