Nintendo says to Europeans: "Don't worry, we still hate you too!"

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/virtual-con...219592.php

PAL Wii Owners Gipped On Retro Games

Think your 60hz TV is going to make a lick of difference to your Virtual Console experience, PAL users? If your answer is "yes", PREPARE FOR DISAPPOINTMENT.

To get around the performance difference between PAL & NTSC, for years now PAL TVs have had the option of running at 60hz. A ton of last-gen games, Nintendo ones included, even gave you specific options for this feature. So it would have been natural to assume that in 2006, the Virtual Console & Wii would have accommodated this.

WRONG.

With PAL consoles in the hands of a select few, people are reporting that some VC titles (though not all) are running slower and have black on-screen borders, even when the Wii itself is set to 60hz. If you recall, these are the deficiencies PAL gamers had to put up with during the 80s and 90s, and that we were meant to be well past.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, PAL gamers are getting shafted by Nintendo. No surprises there. What it also hints at, though, is the reason why each region has had a different VC launch list. If digitally downloaded titles are maintaining the same regional differences they had in the 80s and 90s 9which is stupid when it's a download), it looks like Nintendo are directly sourcing each region's specific version of a title. So if your 1991 British version of Sonic was letterboxed and slower, then your 2006 British VC version is going to be the same game, even when a superior English-language version exists in the US.

Weak, Nintendo. It's cool you're preserving the authenticity of VC titles, but you don't need to be so meticulate that you sell PAL customers an inferior product when you no longer have to. Luke Plunkett

PAL Wii warning - [some] Virtual Console games are 50hz only with borders [Lyris Lite]

BECAUSE IT'S SO HARD :weird:
~Ryan

[Weltall]

That's what Europe gets for using different standards. Serves 'em right.

[A Black Falcon]

They're also region-locking based on what games were released in a region -- so Austrailia, for example, in addition to getting the 50hz versions of games, gets no TG-16 stuff since it wasn't released there...

[Dark Jaguar]

This could be solved with future updates. Further, HDTV is standardized but Wii doesn't really support those higher resomalutions.

Ryan, keep in mind that the people having this problem aren't the ones that picked the bad standard. Someone else did. Keep in mind that when these standards were being set up, countries were a lot more isolated from each other than today. A broadcast in Europe wasn't going to see the light of day in America. It didn't matter, and the PAL standard does have advantages, like higher vertical resolution, so they had a differing opinion at the time. It only comes to bite now that everyone is far more connected. "Serves them right" isn't the right attitude, especially for a company that's trying to convince them to buy old games all over again. The idea is to woo them, and if they need to put some extra work into fixing compatibility, then that's that. Europeans shouldn't be told "buy it anyway". It's their choice, and it's Nintendo that's going to suffer if no one tolerates it, so yes, Nintendo does have something it may need to fix.

That said, screw Europe. They're all the way over there, and there be dragons there.

And that region locking thing? I hate that. We've talked about that to death, but again, listen up MS, Sony, Nintendo. All 3 of you need to stop this nonsense and just let us access every single thing in your store. Warn us that the games aren't in our language or weren't "culturally optimized" or whatever, but just let us access them. We'll pay you monies!

[A Black Falcon]

And that region locking thing? I hate that. We've talked about that to death, but again, listen up MS, Sony, Nintendo. All 3 of you need to stop this nonsense and just let us access every single thing in your store. Warn us that the games aren't in our language or weren't "culturally optimized" or whatever, but just let us access them. We'll pay you monies!

X360 has region locking in most games (and the demos and Live games are region-locked), but a few aren't...

Wii has everything completely locked.

PS3 has no hard region-locking, but for games that are being released simultaneously in multiple regions it'll force you into your regions' version of the game -- so the Japanese version of Resistance, for example, has most of the blood and gore removed... play the US version on a Japanese PS3 and it'll be censored too, unless you take some steps to get around it (involving using a save file from early in the game to get around the lock somehow, something which may or many not work in future games)...

And yeah, region locking is horrible. Really, for PAL gamers the only decent choice is roms, which aren't legal but at least don't get you horrible crippled versions of the games... and no releases of games that didn't come out in your region before? What the heck? VC makes that so easy that it should be a no-brainer... what are you thinking, Nintendo?

[Great Rumbler]

I honestly don't care one bit.

[Dark Jaguar]

Thanks for your insight.

[A Black Falcon]

Americans: "The rest of the world? Why should we care?"

[Great Rumbler]

We've got our own problems here! If the European guys don't like ir then they can protest it by not buying VC games.

[Dark Jaguar]

Which is exactly what I said, and it's not like taking the time to give my opinion on this is somehow going to hurt progress with the US game problems. I've got time for all of it.

Read my post. I don't think you took the time to GR. I addressed exactly how it's in Nintendo's best interest to take that into account. They have an entire headquarters in Europe, NOE, and they should use those assets for this.