Has buying retro died on Bordersdown?

[speedlolita]

Borders isn't a difficult concept to grasp. It's literally the same thing as The Order: 1886. Development decision.

[importaku]

As much as i hated having to do pal gaming at the time it was all i could afford as i wasnt a spoilt little rich kid who had mummy & daddy pay for everything. But even as far back as the nes while i wasn't aware of the technical stuff like speeds & borders back then i was aware that there were a lot of games i was not getting like megaman. While i was playing megaman 2 i found out that the usa was already upto 4 and in japan they were already on mario 3 but back then importing was a hell of a lot harder, all the way upto n64 i was stuck playing peasant pal versions, i kind of know what tetsuo means it does leave the games a bit tainted when you know that you are playing a inferior piss poor version with censoring, poor optimization and jank boxart and the most insulting it cost more too. I have no nostalgia at all for playing those uk versions its the reason that once i could afford to i jumped regions & never looked back, ditched my uk stuff and upgraded them to import versions.

Nowdays its a bit better, the switch is the first time in a loooong time i have bought uk nintendo hardware due to it been totally region free.

[Leon Retro]

Borders isn't a difficult concept to grasp. It's literally the same thing as The Order: 1886. Development decision.

( An early Amiga game that runs full screen in PAL )

Well, I did mention that all sorts of genres, even simple point & click games suffer from the huge borders problem. So that's what suggests to me that it's not necessarily about boosting performance.

With something like a PAL SNES or Mega Drive, at least you can see the borders are uniform across games because of the move from NTSC to PAL. That was easy to understand.

The massive borders spoiling lots of Amiga games is just ridiculous. You could accept small borders if the developer said it boosted performance for an action game, but the way borders were normal across all sorts of Amiga games makes me think it was primarily down to devs not making sure their games looked good on PAL displays.

At least some devs, even early on in the Amiga's life, delivered full screen games for PAL users. Pac-Mania is a glorious example of this.

[importaku]

never really thought much about non uk regions for computer stuff as it was so ingrained back in the day i just assumed it was only ever for the uk. Well certainly for the spectrum as thats the only one i had, i only experienced playing amiga via friends who had one but i do have fond memories of the computer stuff. Weird that consoles are the exact opposite but with computer stuff i didnt mind pal region gaming for that at all, a weird double standard i have but as far as im aware on computer stuff we were not denied games based on region. Never saw mag articles for import speccy games lol

[J0e Musashi]

at the time it was all i could afford

and the most insulting it cost more too.

I don't get it.

Importing was cheaper until the release of the Super Famicom. A Japanese Mega Drive was about £100 less than a PAL one, and the games were way cheaper. Japanese DJ Boy was £15 brand new for example.

The whole reason I got into importing was because of the cheaper cost over domestic stuff.

[Brad]

The usual reason for borders on Amiga games is fairly obvious I think:

NTSC Amigas had 200 vertical lines of resolution, PAL ones 256. So, an NTSC machine has ~ 1/5th less vertical resolution. Performance considerations aside developers had 2 choices, make two versions of the game, one for each resolution or code for the lowest resolution once and have 1/5th of the screen as a border on PAL machines :-(

[importaku]

Sorry i was referring to different time periods of my importing exploits, the snes period i was stuck with uk as importing super fami games was way too expensive but. By the n64 era uk games were way more expensive than their japanese releases, i was lucky and found a cool place online that used to sell japanese pokemon cards but they also allowed me to buy japanese n64 stuff from them i got them a hell of a lot cheaper than paying uk prices as i was importing direct and no longer relying on uk import shops, Paying a little over japanese retail which was a lot cheaper than uk retail and a hell of a lot cheaper than the usual import £70+ for a game prices. Got stuff like getting dk64 with the expansion pack for £40. It was around n64 era i started ditching my old snes stuff and upgrading the games as by then the used prices of super fami games had come way down.

[ZipZap]

The usual reason for borders on Amiga games is fairly obvious I think:

NTSC Amigas had 200 vertical lines of resolution, PAL ones 256. So, an NTSC machine has ~ 1/5th less vertical resolution. Performance considerations aside developers had 2 choices, make two versions of the game, one for each resolution or code for the lowest resolution once and have 1/5th of the screen as a border on PAL machines :-(

The reason I'm not sure about this is that in having identical PAL/NTSC versions, you're limiting your processing power per frame. You would need to tell the CPU to do *nothing* for 56 lines each frame. The fact that a lot of PAL games don't work on an NTSC Amiga suggests this isn't what's happening.

I'm actually wondering now if it's due to ST ports. It's well known how common they are, and from what I can see online, the PAL ST only has 200 vertical lines. It also makes more sense financially for developers to port between PAL ST and Amiga than to be concerned about the tiny American Amiga market (which was clearly not a concern on 8 bits as hardly any PAL C64 software works on an NTSC machine without fixing).

I think also that maybe the borders look worse due to the exact 1:1 pixel ratios of modern screens. If you look at the screenshots of Lotus 2 from CU Amiga http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_pictu...76.jpg&c=52286 they're nowhere near as squashed as those on the previous page.

[nakamura]

Another issue I have with 50 Hz is just the overall image quality. Yes PAL is technically higher resolution but a moot point in not used, but is the solidity of the image I don't like. Things just feel more solid at 60hz, even with a progressive 240p image. It's even worse when you move into interlaced visuals as everything feels much more hollow and the flickering is much worse.

[Leon Retro]

I think also that maybe the borders look worse due to the exact 1:1 pixel ratios of modern screens. If you look at the screenshots of Lotus 2 from CU Amiga http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_pictu...76.jpg&c=52286 they're nowhere near as squashed as those on the previous page.

The other screenshot was from a video on YouTube. I think the one above is a better representation of the type of borders you tend to get with PAL Amiga games.

I can only speculate as to why this was the case. It still annoys me when I go back to the Amiga, because huge borders look terrible to my eyes. At least some of the best Amiga games are full screen.

Also, if the borders were evenly put at the top and bottom, it would have looked better than just a huge black space beneath the game.

[nakamura]

Another issue I have with 50 Hz is just the overall image quality. Yes PAL is technically higher resolution but a moot point in not used, but is the solidity of the image I don't like. Things just feel more solid at 60hz, even with a progressive 240p image. It's even worse when you move into interlaced visuals as everything feels much more hollow and the flickering is much worse.

[Asura]

The usual reason for borders on Amiga games is fairly obvious I think:

NTSC Amigas had 200 vertical lines of resolution, PAL ones 256. So, an NTSC machine has ~ 1/5th less vertical resolution. Performance considerations aside developers had 2 choices, make two versions of the game, one for each resolution or code for the lowest resolution once and have 1/5th of the screen as a border on PAL machines :-(

It's really weird how being a kid affected your perception of nationalities. I always felt the Amiga was a British thing for no reason whatsoever. I've seen many comments online of British kids who thought Sonic was a very British thing too; which is bizarre, but as a kid I probably thought that too.

[importaku]

Like you can patch with some snes roms to convert them to pal or ntsc i wonder if something similar exists for stuff like the amiga? Been able to patch games to remove the borders and make it fullscreen.

[Leon Retro]

I'm actually wondering now if it's due to ST ports.

.

I was just watching 'ChinnyVision' on YouTube - and when he showed the Amiga version of 'North & South' he stated that the huge black border below the image were there because it's an ST port.

So it looks like an Amiga game ported from the ST can cause the border problem. Maybe all Amiga games with huge borders were designed on the ST? It could be the case.

There are probably other reasons why some Amiga games have varying degrees of borders to spoil things. It's just something that shouldn't have happened, because it looks terrible. Small borders evenly put at the top and bottom would have been one thing, but a huge border below the image is ridiculously bad.

I always felt the Amiga was a British thing for no reason whatsoever.

Commodore UK did their own thing, which is why the Amiga was a huge thing in Britain and across Europe. The American side of the business didn't promote the machine to the public like the UK arm of the business did. Commodore UK mostly did a good job.

It's such a shame that so many Amiga games were lazy ST ports. Amiga games can really shine when they were designed for the host system and run full screen.

Been able to patch games to remove the borders and make it fullscreen.

I don't know about that??? But if you use an emulator, you can choose to run the games full screen. So you have the proper 50Hz speed but with the benefit of the image filling the 4:3 frame.

[Brad]

If you have a monitor you just adjust to fill the screen.