Greetings, everyone! I'm a happy owner of a 64drive and two N64s: a regular PAL British model and a French PAL N64 modded to output RGB. I play mostly NTSC roms for obvious reasons. They all work fine, but I run into problems with some NTSC games when running them in RGB. On this french model all PAL games work fine. NTSC games also mostly work fine, but some of them (apparently those which have some pre-rendered intro scenes) have glitches: the TV produces a popping sound, the screen is black and the sound is one second present - one second silent (I think the TV is trying to switch modes but fails). I have tried those NTSC games on another TV - CRT one, they work fine, both PAL and NTSC. I have patched most of problematic games I care about with PALadin utility using the command: paladin /m name.z64 which means I've just converted videotables to MPAL. But alas, some games are too stubborn for some reason: Donkey Kong 64 refuses to run at all. Spider-Man and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1, 2, 3 seem to "ignore" the patch applied and behave the same as before. Paladin also has a /f command which is said to do the country-check fix, but it doesn't work for me. Also I have patched Indiana Jones and Star Wars: Battle for Naboo (both LucasArt games apparently), and these two games work almost OK, but sometimes the screen blinks for a fraction of second and gets the picture again (as if my TV is still struggling with incorrect modes changing). From this I conclude, that Paladin is a good program, but it still leaves something behind. Is there anything that can possibly help me? Thanks to anyone who reads and replies to this. Lady Eklipse.
Have you tried a cable other than RGB? What about real NTSC cartridges? It seems unlikely for games to have RGB specific problems. If even possible depending on how N64 generates video. (I don't know, ask an expert on that one)
RGB-modded console apparently is not able to produce normal AV signal anymore, but I have tried those games on my regular N64 with AV cable, they work fine. Paladin program seems to fix my problem: it converts videotables, making my TV think that the signal is MPAL. The problem is rather in TV than in the console, though the fix is possible. But on the other hand, I can't get Spider-Man (U) [!].z64 and some other roms fixed whatever I do, though Paladin has converted videotables in those roms as well. So what I'm asking, maybe anyone knows what can I do with those "stubborn" roms? Thanks anyway for your reply.
Hmm, well I'm curious. It might be educational about the N64 for me. Isn't a patch to MPAL redundant? I thought non-video-patched NTSC games already default to NTSC's number of lines at 60hz, except with PAL color, when played on a PAL N64.
The problem is not in a game, but in my TV. By the way I don't experience these problems with my older CRT one. Here is the log file generated by Paladin: All other working games have pretty the same logs (mostly). But this one is different: the tables change, but the TV still doesn't change modes correctly. I don't know where does my LCD TV take the information about when to change RGB modes from and how to modify the Spider-Man game... I tried modifiyng the game with "paladin /n game.z64" command but that didn't work either. The same with "paladin /p game.z64" (this either makes the game slow, gives it black borders on top and bottom and hideous popping sound or just nothing - as with Spider-Man)
Yes it is tougher to diagnose video problems on a LCD TV. Many models just halt with an error message and mute the sound, when receiving unsupported modes. Instead of at least trying. That's why figuring out just what mode these problem games want would be useful info. As for your "this either makes the game slow, gives it black borders on top and bottom and hideous popping sound", it more or less means you've forced a game to use PAL when it's not supposed to. Brings up an interesting question. Perhaps tech issues could be part of why Spider-Man N64 lacked a PAL release its cousins enjoyed (PSX/DC/etc)...
Maybe you're right, but I have actually played Spider-Man via AV cables on my regular N64 with no problems. Haven't tried the RBG version on my allmighty CRT yet, but will try soon.
Most likely, this This is not N64 cart emulator progress thread, this is my thread, for your information. You should have posted here
Back to topic. I have got Spider-Man to work on my LCD monitor via RGB by simply removing the Expansion Pak (and thus reducing the resolution and maybe something else video-wise). I'm using a third-party Expansion Pak: XP2, but it works rather well, so I don't think it is a problem. Not only this, but Tony Hawk's Pro Skater NTSC series all work fine on my LCD TV as well, but with Jumper Pak only. With Jumper Pak I still had to use patched versions of those games, but for example Indiana Jones ran fine even without it! As for my CRT TV, of course it runs all the games both patched and unpatched, with or without expansion pak, PAL or NTSC.
I'm having a similar problem with my 64Drive on my 27" CRT, though my N64 is an RGB modded US N64. I've not had the chance to attempt patching the ROMs or been able to test with another TV or my PAL console. I've been considering trying something like the Sync Strike since reading this post to see if that stableizes the signal.
It could be the RGB cable (assuming SCART) is missing the correct resistors to stabilize individual r,b,g and sync lines.
