So what games does everyone remember having slowdowns, particularly really bad slowdowns. Even if it's just in part of the game. I'll start us off with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the platformer not the beat em up. TMNT would slowdown pretty bad in areas with alot of enemys and what was worse was the status bar would flicker madly too. Another game I remember slowdown in was Kirby's Adventure. Whenever an enemy was doing a special move while you were too or two enemys perhaps such as two Beams or a Beam and a Spark power you'd notice slowdown, particularly if there were more enemys moving on screen or you were moving and you notice that speed drop. One more for me. Mega Man 2 I remember having some bad slowdown with those traps on chains in Metal Man's stage as well as sometimes with the drills that would spawn everywhere in certain parts of the stage where it's hard to avoid them and you're on a moving floor. So what other games had slowdowns? The worse the slowdown the better.
I never said anything about a prize. Making a game slowdown isn't that hard if you just add some pointless loop or subroutine to eat up time. I'm curious about actual games that suffer from the rather slow CPU as I added overclocking to my emulator and want to see the difference in games. TMNT1 runs much nicer at 2.68Mhz. No more slowdown from what I've played of it so far, and that also means no more flickering status bar.
I m surprised people insist on overclocking such timing-sensitive devices like the NES is. It affects how the whole system behaves due to the obvious lack of abstraction layers and how timing is so gameplay determinant, evidenced in PAL and NTSC game comparisons. Not trying to rain on your parade or anything by the way, I m just ranting
Faxanadu could have some pretty amazing moments of "Bullet time" if you spent too much time near one of those things that'd spawn bees, or you just found some of those places that just happened to get the game to slow down (I seem to recall one of the rooms with those long distance "stick around for too long and you'll take damage" enemies slowing down. Some of the rooms with the bread dropping ghosts also slows down under the right circumstances, and when you kill a boss enemy and they "explode" and drop coins, the game goes into dramatic slowdown mode too.) I remember seeing some old Duck Tales videos demonstrating the difference between Normal and Overclocking on an NES. Showing Scrooge running in the amazon(iirc), through corridor with rocks dropping from the ceiling. Normal would slow down and OC would be all smooth.
There's a known and heavy slowdown in SMB3 when more than 4 enemies appear at the screen at the same time, it actually made of the life cheat with the goombas in the second stage something really easy to do... I remember seeing slowdowns in some screens in McDonaldLand too, but that thing was a bunch of bugs disguised as a game.
I think a more difficult challenge would be trying to name NES games that doesnt have slowdown:icon_bigg As far as specific offenders that come to mind, any Megaman game, Fantasy Zone, Life Force, Clash at Demonhead, TMNT. I know i can think of more, maybe after ive been awake for more than 5 minutes theyll come to mind.
I'm aware of the games in which altered timing has drastic effects, I did say I've written my own NES emulator and added an overclocking feature to it. The way I overclock doesn't have the effects that the hardware overclocking by changing the crystal has where the audio pitch changes and how overclocking too much causes no picture and such. So you can actually benefit in most games with the overclocking so long as the game doesn't use a CPU Cycle based IRQ counter (which very few US games have) or uses very tricky timing like Battletoads and some other RARE games. That leaves a huge amount of games that benefit. Plus, in the emulator you can just push a key and change the speed on the fly, so even if one part of a game has problems overclocked you could switch to regular cpu speed during those parts. I'm not sure what you are talking about with CPU Timing and gameplay. NTSC and PAL differences are due to 50 frames versus 60 frames mostly although there are some other things. Basically while there are timing sensitive games on NES, some that are EXTREMELY sensitive to timing, there are also alot of games that really are indifferent to it and you could clock the CPU much higher with no ill effects. I appreciate everyone that's mentioned some games for me to try. If anyone cares to try out what I'm talking about with overclocking you can try my emulator here. Downloads are at the bottom of the page. Edit: Apparently in Batman if you get enough enemies on screen there is slowdown and even the music slows down.
PAL and NTSC devices of the past had slightly different clockings in some components in order to achieve the desired refresh rate, I m sure you knew that of course
Well my point is that the primary difference between NES NTSC and PAL gameplay timing is due to 50hz versus 60hz (approx) and not due to CPU Clock Speed. That's what I mean to your comment about NTSC v PAL timing differences.
and the 50/60 Hz difference derives from..? the timing of a relevant component that's why many older games were "slower" in PAL regions, music and gameplay included
I know that, but you were making it seem like my changing of the CPU speed was somehow equal. I suggest you give the overclocking a try on some of the games mentioned and you'll see they benefit greatly and dont have any negative effects. =) Ofcourse other games aren't as lucky. However I mentioned on my site that I did add compensating for Konami VRC4 so that you could play Kid Dracula overclocked cause I noticed some slowdowns in it before.
I wish I could,but I m afraid I lack your skills. Is the OC you're talking about on an actual stock unit or an emulator?
On the NES, most games wait for a VBlank, and it just happens less often in PAL-Systems. That may also be the reason why games run without slowdowns, but not faster. Maybe the CPU-Speed was adjusted to synchronize the rest of the system to the image output.
I knew a little until Calpis informed me about a lot in a PM. I will quote him, for the purpose of clarity since he's well versed in everything electronic:
