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Just bought a SNES - why are the games letterboxed?

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Julian Cassin

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Jun 29, 2001, 12:51:58 PM6/29/01
to
sounds strange to me, are you sure you have a normal SNES, my SNESs here in
Australia
don't have a letterbox problem.

Julian

David Z <bz...@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:Wa2%6.170215$ff.13...@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Hi,
>
> I just bought a SNES and the games are all letterboxed. Its a similar
ratio
> to a widescreen movie.
>
> I live here in Australia where we use PAL , however , our PAL broadcast TV
> is not letterboxed so I can't understand why a PAL game would be.
>
> What gives? It would be so much better if it filled the whole screen.
> All that wasted space!!
>
>


David Z

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Jun 29, 2001, 12:39:18 PM6/29/01
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AM Urbanek

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Jun 29, 2001, 9:00:06 PM6/29/01
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You're running into a common problem with PAL games. Most developers when
converting from NTSC to PAL don't bother upping the visual for the extra lines
of resolution on the PAL set, instead they letterbox the game. Only a few
developers take the time to redraw the sprites and/or textures for this.
Thank you,
AM Urbanek

David Z

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Jun 30, 2001, 2:33:39 AM6/30/01
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Well in the case of the donkey kong country games, they're made by RARE
which is in the UK - where they use PAL. So that particular game should
have been developed in high resolution PAL, no?

"AM Urbanek" <amu...@aol.communist> wrote in message
news:20010629210006...@ng-fi1.aol.com...

brian hopkinson

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Jun 30, 2001, 4:55:49 PM6/30/01
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David Z <bz...@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:7pe%6.171463$ff.13...@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

> Well in the case of the donkey kong country games, they're made by RARE
> which is in the UK - where they use PAL. So that particular game should
> have been developed in high resolution PAL, no?

You'd think that , but the snes was notorious for having letterboxed games
in PAL format.

Whether it was a UK or US/Jap a lot of them were made with the NTSC market
in mind.

Bri


Todd Jones

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Jun 30, 2001, 7:37:35 PM6/30/01
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Only one SNES game comes to mind that is letterboxed. (bars top and bottom)
That would be Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.
However, SNES games are *all* windowboxed by the console. (bars on sides)
Most people don't see it because their TVs have too much overscan.

steven

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Jul 2, 2001, 3:28:37 AM7/2/01
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if your tv can handle rgb and 60hz you should modify your snes to run all games
in 60hz!
check here for more info:
http://home.freeuk.net/markk/
it really is worth it, the difference between 50 and 60hz is huge!
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