Difference between PAL and NTSC version
7 years ago
Germany

Hi,

I wanted some motivation to play this game again and set myself the goal to make some runs in the different categories of this game.

After some practice I made a testrun of the Exhibition mode and timed it with livesplit. My in-game time was 1:10 and the livesplit time was 1:24. So the in-game time in the PAL version is 5/6 of the real time.

I would like to compare the in-game time with the times that are already posted here and so I'm thinking about switching to the NTSC version. I would load that version from a USB device and play it on my Wii.

Is that OK, or is the difference of the loading times compared to a disc too much?

Ohio, USA

Your all good to do that.

Germany

OK, I'm using the US version now.

After some trouble with my TV I got my stream working this morning. I tested it and made an attempt on the Normal Circuit (). I won't submit this now, but could someone check if that attempt was ok? I made a few more errors than during some of my offline runs, so I hope that I will improve the time when I'm more used to playing, splitting and streaming at the same time.

Germany

My timer starts with -9 seconds. I start the timer after the loading screen, during the cutscene that shows the track. That scene is playing for some time and must be skipped with the A button. I start the timer at the same time I press the A button in that scene. I haven't timed it out completely, I have only looked at my screen to see if the timer reaches 0 at the same time the lights go green. So it could be the case that the 9 seconds aren't completely accurate, but I think it's close enough for now.

My timer also has a small delay compared to the game screen. I know that's a common problem, so I will see if I can synchronize that and find the setting for that.

United States

The issue with usb/sd loading, is that on the loading screens this will cause the game to load faster. So, in the case of rta, it's a clear and un-fair advantage.

I run Luigi's Mansion and Super Mario Sunshine, and USB/SD loading was banned for that reason.

I'm not sure if this would affect the igt though, considering everything is loaded prior to starting a race.

Emulation may also have faster load times, depending on the hardware of your computer.

United States

I did a rough comparison between My normal circuit run and JimB's normal circuit run, and oddly enough, it seems the physical copy loads the levels faster.

I'm not sure why this is, though.

Germany

Looks like my USB loading takes around 1 second longer to load the tracks (comparing the counter in the videos).

I know the situation from SMS, not in detail but you often enough hear that they only allow very good runs that were done with a disc version. The loading times of Game Cube games were low compared to PS2 or XBox games because the discs of Game Cube games are smaller and the laser doesn't have to move that far than on a normal sized disc. So maybe it could be the case that the loading times are low enough to be competitive with USB loading times? There also seems to be a difference between the different loaders that you can use on the Wii (I'm using Nintendont).

I will make/stream a run with my disc version later. The ingame times will be very low compared to the NTSC version. Some Game Cube games had the option to be played in 50 or 60 Hz mode with their PAL version. It looks like Wave Race is running with 50 Hz but the game is still running at the same real time speed as the NTSC version. But the timer doesn't seem to go faster (delta t is the same?) so the resulting times are lower (only 5/6). The solution to get comparable ingame times would be to recalculate them (NTSC_Time = PAL_Time/5ยค6).

FrezzerFox likes this
Germany

Here is the PAL run

The ingame times are lower as I described above. For example the "Lost Temple Lagoon"-times are under 1 minute. Which is 1 minute 12 second in real time (factor 5/6=1.2).

It looks like the loading times are the same as the NTSC version. Maybe even a bit lower? Would be less than a second then. That's still no detailed comparison, I'm just looking at the timer and count in my head.

So I'm a bit unsure which version to use now. I started with the US version so I could see in Time Trial if my times can compete with the times posted here. It would still make it easier to compare the track times in the future. And it feels a bit strange to split at 1:14 with an ingame time of 1 minute after the first race.

Germany

There's a comparison video for Wind Waker on YouTube that shows the difference of the loading times for USB and game disc.

The first loading time is slower from USB compared to disc. Maybe the reason my USB run has slower loading times is that every track is loaded only once and during this first loading it's slower like in the Wind Waker video. That would also mean that USB would only have an advantage if the same data is loaded multiple times, which isn't the case for Wave Race.

So as long as my loading times from USB during a run are slower than the runs from disc that are already on the leaderboards I would say that it's OK for me to submit them. If both of you accept that and give your OK then I will submit some runs in the 3 categories with the US version from USB. Maybe we could also indicate on the leaderboard that the game was loaded from a USB device.

FrezzerFox likes this
Ohio, USA

You can go ahead and submit them. It's fine with me.

Germany

I made a comparison video of the PAL and NTSC version. It isn't perfect because the NTSC video seems to not run at the exact same speed as the original video, but it still shows the differences (the downloaded version of the NTSC video also has desynced audio for some reason). So here are at the moment my best times in Exhibition with NTSC and PAL:

So far my list of differences:

  • PAL IGT = NTSC IGT * 5/6 (so PAL times are lower)
  • PAL has a higher Jet Ski speed (e.g. Startturbo NTSC 132 km/h, PAL 154 km/h) With higher speed all ingame scripts don't work as they should, like the dolphins after the start of lap 3 where you can come a lot closer to them (and pass them) in PAL while on NTSC you seem to keep the same distance.