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Topic: Pal or ntsc Nes console?

Posts 1 to 7 of 7

Jackangus

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum.

I loved the Nes and Snes consoles when i was growing up and want to get back into it and do some collecting.

I live in New Zealand and have been looking for a great condition console with a box. A few are coming up from Ebay, but mainly NTSC consoles.
How will that affect me in NZ if I buy a NTSC console? Probably different power wattage or something I suspect.
Also, which is better? Pal or NTSC?

I already own the nes classic with 700 games and the snes classic. Buying a vintage console would be more for collecting than anything else. I would still play it though.

I would appreciate any ideas and recommendations.
Thanks guys.

Jackangus

KingMike

Power, connection to TV (although I heard PAL TVs commonly support NTSC, rarely in the opposite case),
also, only NTSC games would work.

PAL NES games were further divided into "A" and "B" regions. I'd guess NZ was a "A" region as Australia was (along with UK and Italy. Much of the rest of Europe was the "B" region. Probably because Nintendo had some kind of licensing issue back in the day.)

I would guess NTSC would be better, but importing games to that part of the world would probably get expensive quick.
(of the 700 or so "official" NES games released in North America, I think literally half of them were not released in PAL. Whereas conversely PAL only about 38 games not released in NTSC.
Similarly for SNES, there's a number of major games not released in NTSC but probably only a couple PAL games which NTSC owners regret not getting. The expensive Terranigma in English is one of them. I'm not sure if there's any others with HUGE demand for. Though the better bugtested PAL version of Lufia II is one I'd like personally to have seen on like VC.)

KingMike

Jackangus

@KingMike

Thanks Mike, that clears that up for me.
It's tricky because a lot of great condition Nes stuff on ebay is NTSC.
I get what you say about getting stuff from the US would be pricey. The postage is sometimes more than the game and it can take weeks to get here.

Jackangus

Jackangus

Does anyone have one of those Nes top loaders?
They are region free which would help me loads.
Is there any real difference between the Nintendo licesened top loader and the original front loading Nes?

Jackangus

KingMike

Aside from the lack of lockout, the design of the top-loader cartridge slot is much less error prone (likely the reason Nintendo removed the lockout was because even back in the day, they knew how common it was for the lockout for the front-loader to be set off by dirt or even a slightly off insertion.
Kind of funny that the reason they went with the front loading design was for the exact reason it was supposed to make it easy to insert the cart and take it even if it wasn't exactly inserted perfectly straight. But that connector would get bent out of shape from use.)

KingMike

KingMike

As to top-loader, an AV Famicom is probably the easiest to get (with a cartridge convertor it can play NES games. Might not be able to play a small handful of games like Castlevania III which contain an enhancement called MMC5 which is known to not work well with convertors, but that was the only really popular game to use it. The only others were a light-gun game called Laser Invasion and a line of history-based complicated war simulation games by Koei.)
The NTSC top-loader was released quite late so it is somewhat rare and apparently a PAL top-loader exists only in the Australian market. It is an almost unheard-of console.

The downside of a NTSC toploader is that unmodded, it only supports a US RF connection which may not even work in other countries. The Famicom version uses composite (the same cable as SNES/N64/GC) so it's probably easier to get working in other countries, though you would probably need to source a proper replacement power adapter (and want to check that very carefully, as using a wrong one will destroy the console).
There are a few people who have claimed to have a composite NTSC toploader, but I presume Nintendo made those specifically for retail demo use (you know, wanting the console to look its best in the store). The people who got one say they complained to Nintendo back in the day and Nintendo traded their consoles.

KingMike

Jackangus

Thanks Mike, you are a very knowledgeable guy.
I appreciate your input.

Jackangus

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