Nintendo Switch Online N64 Games Will Be 60Hz In Europe After All

But still no date and prices

Well... that was not the only issue... $$$

So instead of getting the worst of it sounds eu peeps are getting the better deal here.

The truth Hertz.

Or doesn’t.

Good to see Nintendo being smart here. They done good.

So it's either 60fps(or a faster game to precise) or native language, nice
Better then not having this option I guess

This is the right decision. Letterboxed, slowed down versions of games are a nostalgia trip I can do without, and I imagine anyone who remembers playing the original PAL versions feels the same way. Nice that the 50Hz versions will still be available for those who prefer them or want multilingual support though.

So will we in Europe be able to play StarFox 64? Instead of Lylatt Wars??
But giving us the option between the 60 and 50 Hz is a good thing, you can play it like you remember it, or play a slightly better version

NSO expansion pak direct incoming?!

@MrGawain I was gonna go with "Everybody Hertz...", but I like this too.

Cool that Nintendo addressed this. Still not going back to NSO.

Really excited to see the bear and bird back on Nintendo soon

I'll be playing the original 50hz EU versions, it's what I'm used too. Honestly 60Hz doesn't make that much difference, but cool to have the option.

This is the right thing to do. I’ll probably have to try these at some point, even tho I’m not thrilled at the up charge. I’ve just been itching to play oot and fzero x.

Nice... Now just to let us know what kind of price hike and release this will be!
i'm betting they'll announce it all the week after the AC direct (Fri 22nd) for a Monday 25th release.

There you go, this is put to bed.

All the rage this caused without an actual official announcement from Nintendo.

Just another day on the Internet.

Were people worried?

That's probably the best solution all around. Good on Nintendo!

Well that's good at least, I still dislike the entire prospect of these game being relegated to rental only but it would have bordered on insulting had they still gone with the 50hz versions of the games at this day and age.

@Rosalinho Letterbox were no more with N64 games though, they were full screen even in PAL region, still a very good news indeed

Wonderful. Extremely glad to hear this. Only problem is for Europeans who want to play in other languages... I still don't quite understand why the emulator that Nintendo just can't just slightly overclock to compensate for the difference. But either way this is the second best option and I'm very happy English speakers won't be saddled with 50hz only.

@JamesR Yes, because the footage on the UK version of the Nintendo direct had some games running at 50hz with the slower framerates etc. leading many to feel worried this would be the only option.

@MS7000

I used that on the last story.

That's some extremely good news, as an Italian myself I don't care about playing in English considering I don't think most of the line up ever got localized here anyway

The silence on the price makes me think it'll be $60 a year.

Another thing added to the list of reasons why you need multiple regional accounts on your Switch.

I didn't think EU/UK would get worse performing N64 games than North America on a region free console, the Switch. (that was my logic)

Glad they addressed it and went with the best solution.

@MrGawain I must of missed the last article, but you are correct. Damn.

fantastic! so they have my money

Yeah but....When64?

@Zag_Man

Many Games were patched to run as fast as the original NTSC one.
And in some it is just not as noticable.

Viceversa:
Using a Mister or Emulator and having NTSC set causes that such PAL Games run faster ^^

@mariomaster96 I would hate to play nintendo games with my native language

It's always the same. people complain on assumptions without official announcements and then it turns out its not as horrible as they expected...

@Meteoroid The unoptimised 50hz games (sadly the majority of releases) did indeed have slower music. Running everything 1.2x faster would simply make the music, frame rates, and speed everything moves be the same as in the 60hz versions. With unoptimised games it wouldn't cause any glitches or mistimings of anything. The code for both games is identical, save for the inserted language options. The 50hz versions of the consoles were simply running the exact same 60hz code whilst clocking everything in the hardware to output at 0.8x speeds.

You can easily run the unoptimised 50hz PAL games on a region free modded 60hz machine and they run perfectly. I do this with 90% of my cib pal games on all retro console formats. (Of course you can also do this in several emulators). The only times you get problems are if the games are unique versions that have been optimised to compensate for the slowdown or letterboxing. (obviously the x numbers here are not accurate, just simplified for easy examples)

@YusseiWarrior3000 Mostly a movie producer and director, but yes I've had occasional starring roles in a few direct to video/digital B-movies, and the rare cameo in Hollywood stuff, for example I had a small speaking part in Rogue One. My first big starring role is a superhero movie due to be announced at London Film & Comic Con next Spring

@Laserbeak1982 I'm pretty sure it makes a world of difference in games like F-Zero

@Meteoroid I'm not sure I'd say "most" (but I don't own a full set of physical carts and haven't tried to test!). Certainly Nintendo were more likely to vaguely optimise things in their first party releases - in OOT the music is sped up to match (except for the actual Ocarina tunes which are slower) however the gameplay framerate is still slower and some letterboxing is present - watch comparison videos on YT and you'll see its really painful to go back to for those who've gotten used to playing on emaultion or other re-releases, its a very noticable difference.

There are quite a few first party examples with zero optimising whatsoever, and third parties from Japan and USA typically didn't bother at all.

European based software houses are a mixed bag of course, depending on which was their main target market. [edit] obvious example would be the Rare N64 games which were developed in the UK, so were very nicely designed to work well on PAL target hardware.

It's awesome when rereleases give frame rate options like this. Should be the standard for any game that was originally released at below 60.

Good!

@Nin_1151 Why not both!?

That's good news, pick the version you played growing up or how the game originally was programmed to run.

Are all the NES and SNES games 60hz?

@Max_the_German patience, Max.

The worst part is not fps, is that its still 480p

@YusseiWarrior3000 Thanks! Are you in the industry too? I see that you're in Greece - just before the pandemic started I produced a horror film in Athens and Patras

Please could someone let me know which version of mariokart I am currently playing on the NSO?

@Sinton @dew12333 Save for region exclusives, if you are in the UK (and the rest of Europe?) the NSO SNES and NES games are the 60hz NTSC American roms. For example, its "Star Fox" not "Star Wing" and the joypad button colours on all the graphical prompts ingame are purple. [edit] I just checked through the options and I can't see a way to switch to the European versions, so I wonder if in the rest of Europe its different, or they just figure "everyone speaks English"?

I got myself an NTSC N64 that was modded to have RGB output. When playing Mario 64 or Mario Kart 64 it honestly didn‘t feel any different to the PAL-versions I was used to. Maybe you’d notice the difference playing it side to side but it really isn‘t that big of an issue in my opinion. Your brain adapts to it in no time.

Good to hear Nintendo of Europe listened to the feedback.
Yet the price of the service is what everyone really wants too know.

@Zag_Man
They patched the ROM before fabricating for the PAL Market.

@MrGawain Well done!

@Grumblevolcano
WHAT?! Clearly, greedy Nintendo will charge 600$ a day!!!

For games like Ocarina where you have to choose between 60hz English only, or 50hz with other languages, I can understand why on previous platforms such as Wii U and Wii Nintendo made the choice to support more languages by picking the worse-playing version.

But just having both options available is definitely the better way of going about things.

The BEST way of going about it, however, would be if Nintendo made a ROMhack of the 60hz version of Ocarina to include the languages from the 50hz version. .... but that would be too much extra effort for them, huh?

@Max_the_German they say it on nintendo direct last time end of october and our old membership still run on it

@MichaelP looooool

The price is still a concern, but I'm glad that Nintendo addressed this and made the right decision. Honestly, I expected them to keep everything 50hz in PAL just to "preserve the games as they were played in that region" or something obtuse like that.

@Andrew5678 nintendo should add a option so cud use them both much easier update

@YusseiWarrior3000 Ah thats cool! It was going to be called "Girl Number 7" (and a sequel "Girl Number 8" is in development) - we'll see if the distributors keep the name or change it when they release it - release was delayed due to world situations!

@YusseiWarrior3000 ive have over 8000 hours on zelda: breath of the wild i play switch more then 10 hours everyday too

what do mean about movie ? youtube ?

@F_Destroyer Letterboxing was prolific but not ubiquitous on the PAL N64.

Very happy to see this for all Europeans!

@Dpullam im european but i like 60hz better then 50hz
im from denmark

See, it's like a hit or miss. Some games are better in PAL, but they're in 50HZ for accuracy. I get why they did this tho. They can't convert ALL of the games, that would be way too time consuming. Yet they did put in the effort to convert Pop'n Twinbee to 60HZ for US SNES NSO, but not Ufouria: The Saga on the Wii U VC? This is just confusing... They simply left Ufouria on the US & probably PAL Wii U (and probably the Wii as well) VC as 50hz, resulting on the game running faster than it's supposed to be on US hardware. Hebereke (The Japanese equivalant), runs fine on the Wii, 3DS, and probably Wii U. Haven't tested the Wii U version, however. It's all just confusing and weird.

@jojobar It's always the same. people complain on assumptions without official announcements and then it turns out its not as horrible as they expected...

..or maybe the complaints made a difference?

So I guess people should just not question anything that isn't officially announced? For example, we shouldn't be questioning the price UNTIL it's officially announced?

why would we want 50Hz?

I cannot wait until these release and I can order an N64 controller.

@Crono1973
"So I guess people should just not question anything that isn't officially announced? For example, we shouldn't be questioning the price UNTIL it's officially announced?"

Sounds good to me.

So that means, that I can enjoy Ocarina of Time in 20 fps instead of 16.7 fps. Great!

they could never be anything else as they are using NTSC roms, the fact you suggested it was utterly ridiculous.

@Zag_Man
Nah, many are not all Games
Mario 64 for Example runs slower.

Would be really interesting why some could fix it and some not.

@KBuckley27
Some just want to run it exactly as it was^^
It could appear pitched if you played a Game for a really long Time.

But, give the Option and make everyone happy.

Can we get Gamecube games soon on NSO?

Im still deciding if I even want to bother paying more for this. I have all of these games available through ROMs and have a dedicated retro machine (linux PC). It would be nice to have them on the go though...we shall see

Yet another instance of media sites and fans not giving Nintendo any credit i guess.

@Don with wavebird bundles + adapter bundles!

Pretty good. Beats the clownish PS1Classic where some games were randomly the 50HZ PAL versions instead of 60HZ NTSC like they didn't realise there was a difference.

Could we get Wii games next. Oh wait

Awesome! However, that still means that those people whose English skills aren't sufficient enough to play a game like Ocarina in English still have to deal with 50 hz and letterboxing

@Zag_Man N64 Magazine talked about it constantly back in '97-'98, and ran many side by side comparisons, so I became aware of it early on. Mags would usually screenshot the US/Japanese versions of games and I used to wonder "Why are the characters so tall?" I'm sure many people never noticed, it's just something you can't unsee once you're aware of it.

@F_Destroyer Not true, PAL versions of early first-party N64 games (Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 being notable examples) were almost always letterboxed, and most PAL conversions ran slower. You can find speed comparisons of games like Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64/Lylat Wars fairly easily on YouTube, both of which were full screen in PAL, but ran slower. Some games ran full screen full speed in all regions (e.g. some Rare titles) but it was far from universal.

OH NO ... anyways

@Banjosbiggestfan
Hopefully Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Long 64 and Rare Replay will also be released.

@Don
Yeah you can’t port kazooie without tooie

wow that crazy n64 on switch wow

@samuelvictor Sadly there were games which only optimized the sound, which means there is no way you're going to get ideal play out of them. It'll be either slow gameplay or fast music.

Always seemed like a fuss about nothing. They weren't seriously going to just release 50Hz versions in this day and age. The obviously won't go back and add multiple language options to the 60Hz versions as it would just not be cost effective but 60Hz in English and 50Hz in other European languages always seemed the most likely outcome

@Rosalinho You are absolutely right, I honestly forgot about those early games, I'm currently playing Diddy Kong Racing and it's full screen, just tried Mario 64 and it is indeed letterbox. It's good that they adressed that afterward though.

@westman98 Sounds good to me.

If only we could get rid of all speculation and rumor.

@YusseiWarrior3000 heck yea yusse

@YusseiWarrior3000 haha

So much drama made... for no good reason

@KingMike Yeah absolutely, I did mention above that many of the first party nintendo games sped up the music but kept everything else slow. As you said, there is no "perfect" way to play these. Though I've got used to having faster music when I play my PAL games on modded console, frankly I find the best way is to just play the US versions most of the time. So its good we'll have that option with the NSO versions

The choice is welcome, and I'm glad they made that decision. I can see the different versions not playing nice with one another online, but I would assume that since you would only play with people you know from your friends list anyway, and not random people, all involved players would speak the same language and therefore would be playing either all the 60Hz version or all the 50Hz version for the localised ones. So this shouldn't be too much of an issue, I would hope.

Personally even as a non-native speaker, I only play in English these days and probably won't touch the 50Hz versions ever, except maybe for Smash Bros. for the French announcer, which sends nostalgic shivers up and down my spine whenever I hear it ^^.

Nice to know I guess. Here's hoping it means we'll soon get some info on the cost of the new membership and when the N64 controllers will be available.

@samuelvictor Thank you for the reply

@Zag_Man yeah it really is an ignorance is bliss kind of situation. I never knew about or noticed the slowdown until I played the NTSC version of SM64 on an emulator and realised how much better the game feels lol. I just cannot go back and play that game on my original PAL N64 anymore. But for other games where I've never experience the NTSC version, they still feel fine to me.

"All games will run at 60Hz, with some also being available in their original 50Hz PAL states. Perfect."

Perfect? How is that perfect? If you want to play in your language you have to play at 50hz, again. They are charging money for this, and the cant even do it properly?

Great news GREAT FREE NEWS! Very happy to hear that!!