I live in the US and have an Australian person who is interested in some NES games which were all purchased here in the US. The person asked me if the US games would work on an Australian NES. I am not sure of the NES standard over there, and how or if it differs, etc. If possible, might someone please enlighten me on these issues? Thank-you very much.
Australia has PAL television - usually their consoles are the same as Europe, therefore. I know that was the case for N64. If the game has country protection, it won't work. Even if it does, it'll run at the wrong speed and you may have picture issues.
US games will not work on a PAL system full stop. Although it is possible to modify the machine by cutting pin 4 of the CIC chip on the NES so the games will run, there is a good chance that the games will not work correctly. Any game that scrolls vertically will tear badly and others will give other graphically issues, for example Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy will be unplayable due to messages not being readable.
You might want to change your statement. My Camerica games, sold by Galoob in shops in the US, WILL work on one of my unmodified UK NES units. Same goes for Color Dreams and Wisdom Tree games. Produced in the US, just not under license. Like I said, IF the game allows the CIC to run, it won't work ;-) Unlicensed games, which were still made and sold in the US, will work.
After defeating the lockout, the games will possibly work. But they may have some graphical glitches due to different frame timing. Certain games by RARE/Tradewest rely on precise timing. These games would likely fail. But alot of games will probably work fine expect they will run at 50fps rather than their intended 60fps. Since the US only ever got a few games with CPU based scanline counters, most games using scanline counters are PPU based so they should work. I don't know what Jamtex meant about tearing badly but on a NTSC system I think it's estimated only about 224 to maybe 232 lines are shown where as on PAL all 240 lines are shown. So many NTSC games might look odd when scrolling vertically on PAL machines. Many PAL releases though were completely unmodified from their NTSC release. So it's sort of trial and error. A good way to test would be to take emulators like Nintendulator and Nestopia, load the games in question and switch the region to PAL.
I have both an Australian and a Hong Kong NES with the lockout chips cut, and I can confirm this for the Aussie NES - for Final Fantasy atleast. The Hong Kong version, however, plays everything perfectly Maybe you should tell him to get an overseas console, or a region-free clone.
