PAL vs NTSC

[zetmoon]

Is there a lot of difference between PAL and NTSC versions of the Wipeout games??

[Lance]

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hi zetmoon, welcome to the wipeoutzone

to attempt to answer your question:
for any version that exists in both formats, the main difference is caused by the different framerate of the display. this affects the laptimes so that if you compare your times in one of them to someone else's times in the other format, you don't know which person is truly faster. in our most recent wipeoutzone challenge, one of our members, Al Sartwell, developed a correction factor for each racecourse on which the competition was held. we don't know how close to perfection the correction factors were, but we're pretty sure they were close enough that it wouldn't affect the order of the results.

there is also a minor difference in WO3 in the appearance of the ships thruster trails. at least i think it's WO3; maybe it's Fusion. guys? correct me if necessary. and add any differences i missed.

the four versions of the game available for Sony consoles are basically the same for both display formats. i don't know if there are differences on WO64 for Nintendo. in fact, i don't even know if there is a PAL version of 64; i just always assumed there is. could someone inform us about this?

apart from that, there is a Special Edition of Wipout 3 that is available only in PAL format, containing 10 extra tracks. three of them are from WO1, 5 from WO 2097/XL, and, i believe, 2 oval prototype tracks from a japanese version
.

[zetmoon]

I know of the difference in framerates between PAL and NTSC but that doesn't nescessarily mean a difference in speed when the PAL version is made to play faster.
I mean Ridge Racer runs 30 frames per second on Playstation NTSC, but is a lot faster than Ferrari 335 on Dreamcast running 60 frames per second.
Ferrari just moves twice as smooth, but slower.

The PAL and NTSC versions of Gran Turismo ran at exactly the same speed, but the framerate was different.

[Lance]

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but in wipeout, there is an actual difference in times
.

[xEik]

Al (he owns almost all the versions of WO games) always says that ships are more or less floaty depending on the version.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[JABBERJAW]

The times you get on pal are almost always slower than on ntsc. Most of the pal versions are more floaty so on particular tracks, you can actually get a faster time. I did notice however when I linked xl and 2097 together, that the pal version's timer counted down quite a bit faster than the ntsc version. I think the pal ship might actually move faster, but the timer ends up showing a slower time. This might have been because they were linked though. I would have done an infinite autopilot test in link mode but when the games are linked it only accepts one of the entries.