PAL Famiclone Cartridges

[Retrospectives]

Due to the fact that NOAC (most if not all?) didn't have a region lockout, can we come to the conclusion that it doesn't exist any PAL-Famiclone games (games as in pirates)? Nintendo and other companies for sure did optimize some of their games to run at full speed, but they were officially released for the NES. AFAIK only the official HK Famicom were in PAL and therefore it might be feasable to say that all so called "PAL-Pirates" were mererely just normal NTSC pirates that were released for the PAL-Market and that no optimization as such for PAL even existed?

I haven't come acrosss this, but I do not live in a PAL region, nor do I have that much experience of PAL games, but were there any pirate games at all that were optimized especially for PAL? I have some friends in HK and most of them say that they either just used Famiclones, or if they did use the official PAL Famicom, then they played mostly pirated carts from either HK or TW. But that's not to say that Nintendo didn't optimize popular titles such as SMB for the HK Famicom. But that's just speculations...

If no, then I think we can conclude that there isn't anything as PAL-Famiclone games, but rather PAL-Famiclones and NTSC-Famiclones. 

Just a thought. I might be wrong, so please shoot your opinions.

[Wanderer]

Good point, I hadn't considered whether PAL pirates were PAL NES games on a Famicom cart.

What about the various different Family BASIC pirates sold with keyboard Famiclones? If somebody could write a simple BASIC program to check what speed it's running at this would be an easy place to check for optimizations.

[jensma]

I have some PAL-Pirates that run at full speed on PAL-Consoles and too fast on NTSC-Consoles.

[Wanderer]

Are any of them Famicom or NTSC NES exclusives? Or are they all games that were released for the PAL NES too?

I have quite a few PAL pirates which run at the correct speed, but as far as I know they were all released in PAL NES regions too.

[jensma]

Are any of them Famicom or NTSC NES exclusives? Or are they all games that were released for the PAL NES too?

I have quite a few PAL pirates which run at the correct speed, but as far as I know they were all released in PAL NES regions too.

Mhh, I'm not sure. Didn't thought of that.

btw, your ebay listings are awesome 

[Wanderer]

Thanks  Searching for old Soviet computers and gaming consoles is a fun way to make a living - and the only reason I can afford to build my Famicom collection at all.

The various Family BASIC pirates seem like one of the more likely bits of Famicom software to have been optimized for PAL if any - and it's one that should be able to say for itself if it's been optimized without disassembling it. If somebody has the original Family BASIC, and we come up with a reliable speed test in BASIC I can run it on a few different BASIC pirates and compare results. 

[Retrospectives]

Ah my bad then. Then it indeed existed PAL pirates indeed although it seems that they just took the PAL version of the original rom? If that's the case then it's understandable.If so then we still have the question of PAL pirates or unlicensed games from the east that were optimized for PAL (I suppose codemasters released PAL versions of their games?) ...I doubt they'll exist but anyone with more info might read this.   

[Wanderer]

Unlicensed PAL games and PAL pirates are a definite. The first PAL pirate that springs to mind is SMB1 (I have both PAL and NTSC versions on multicarts).

Whether they've actually been optimized by pirates, or merely used a ROM from the NES versions is still an open question though.  

[Retrospectives]

Yeah that's what I meant. It would make sense if piracy companies merely based their carts of the original PAL released NES games, rather than to speed it up themselves (with regards of that many even original PAL-releases didn't do it). But that's kind of hard to determine since I suppose you are referring to older pirates? (not glob-top)? Pirate carts from the mid 90s and earlier tend to have a lot higher quality and some companies even released officially licensed products (For example Aronix who were licensed in Taiwan to sell the Sega Mark III) while at the same time spitting out Famiclones en masse, hehehe. Their Famiclones were considered top-notch in regards of build quality back then, but well...that's another story.

[Wanderer]

I have PAL games on globtop carts too - but there'd be nothing stopping them from using the same ROM as used on early pirate carts. Tricky to tell without examining the ROM from a pirate cart.

[fcgamer]

I have a PAL Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) on Famicom, pirate.

[Retrospectives]

USA as in Super Mario USA (Japanese) or as in Super Mario Bros 2 (as in the SMB2 that was released in the west (Ie not the FDS)? I mean the revision. If based off the SMB USA release from Japan, then we can at least conclude that the pirates were indeed optimizing non-pal-released games for the PAL regions. Interesting anyway.

[fcgamer]

No, it was the Mario 2.  I just said (USA) so people didn't think I mean the (J) version, but no not the Japanese release.  It was hacked as Mario 5,

[Retrospectives]

Ah I understand. Hope that someone might be able to provide us with some information if they might possess an original Non-PAL released game. Might be interesting to know if it even existed.

[jpx72]

I have a couple of famiclone multicarts that are optimized for PAL, but onlybthe menu part. When you plug it in a Famicom, the menu is stretched beyond screen, thus unreadable on top and bottom. So I think maybe a couple of those "educational computer" games were made specifically for PAL market filled with famiclones. But there were also NESclones here (72pin).