UK PAL NES - SMB slow?

Hey all,

Fired up my new PAL NES this afternoon, and it booted up to the Super Mario Bros title screen. Woohoo!

However, when I start a new game, I notice the music is slow. Like, really, really slow. Gameplay is slightly slow too, although still playable.

The Game Pak indicates it's from Italy (at least, the Nintendo Seal of Quality is in English and Italian on the front)

Is the console dying or have I grabbed the wrong version of SMB?

Thanks!

 

Sounds like maybe you need to adjust your TV to 60Hz. If you are running it at 50Hz, it will slow it down 17% roughly.

 

Doesn't that require a 60Hz mod on the NES? Or are you saying the NES can detect the refresh rate of the TV and alters its own clock speed?

 

Maybe its something to do with dirty contacts or something? The music is supposed to play faster in the PAL version compared to the NTSC version, not slower.. Any way you can record it?? Even a pc mic or something?

 

Oh, whoops. Yeah, It sounds like a dirty pin on the cartridge or something.

 

OK, I'll give the cart a clean this evening. Thanks.

 

Okay, so just cleaned the contacts - they are pristine. No change in speed. I've looked at videos of PAL SMB online and it's definitely at a snail's pace.

Anyone else had a similar problem?

F'ckin PAL...

 

Question: I'm wondering if my third party PSU is to blame. Does that sound plausible? Insufficient power draw making everything run sluggish?

 

I had issues with one of those 3 in 1 aftermarket PSU that work for NES/SNES and genesis. But my SNES wouldn't even boot using it I swapped back to original and it was fine.

 

Yeh could be the psu. If that still isn't it, only thing left is the console itself. Do you have any other games you could try on it??

 

I used my official SNES PSU this time (internet says it's safe for PAL SNES/NES PSUs to interchange) - no dice. It's still awfully slow.

When I get home tonight I'll fire up an emulator to see if I'm simply misremembering how slow PAL is.

No other games as yet...

 

The PAL SNES PSU is fine for NES. That's what I use. Maybe its the cart itself... If you could record it being played, that'd help. Got a smart phone? Upload the video to a download site or something lol

 

Pal games are slower by default and usually add the black bars to the image too, 50Hz is slower than 60Hz. You might need to mo the NES to output 60Hz in order to play the games faster unless it's hard coded into the game.

Edit: seems it's not possible to mod these to 60Hz, here is a thread with plenty of info on it:
http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=286.0