Hiya!
I was wondering if anyone knew a way to fix the plethora of issues that crop up with some specific PAL games when running the Xbox in NTSC mode? For example, Darkwatch cutscenes have stutter, so I tried replacing the video files and that didn't seem to work, so I replaced the XBE with an NTSC one and while that fixed the cutscenes, it made the game run fast. Other issues I couldn't even begin to try and fix were weird aspect ratio issues with Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, and immediate crash on starting a new game with Evil Dead Regeneration. I'm kinda a noob at this so I'm struggling a bit, and was kinda hoping there's some simple fix I was missing (Other than buying NTSC copies of said games, I would if the shipping costs weren't horrendous for us in NZ).
Anyway, any help would be appreciated.
Fix for Issues with Pal games in NTSC Video mode?
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EnclaveOverlord
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Coldly-Indifferent
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Re: Fix for Issues with Pal games in NTSC Video mode?
In the majority of cases PAL Xbox games natively support NTSC use too. Just swap the Xbox to NTSC using the Enigmah Region Changer app not any other dashboard NTSC settings. You should be good for the majority of games.
Of course there are exceptions.
Darkwatch PAL, I don't have because I imported the US NTSC version at the time. Never had a problem with the cut scenes or anything else. But I've never heard of cut scenes running too fast for any region version of any game. That's odd.
It sounds as if you're playing them from original disc rather than installed to the HDD so my suggestion would be that the DVD drive might be becoming a problem. Try test installing one the games to the HDD using DVD2Xbox and see if the problem persists. If DVD2Xbox throws up any errors either the disc itself or the DVD drive will most likely be the cause.
Weird aspect ratio problems with some games: the Xbox game widescreen support is iffy and in a lot of cases it is not true WS but the NTSC 'hybrid' 3:2 rather than 16:9. But there are games which do weird display things if you use WS; one of the GTAs (Vice City I think) did that.
Try swapping to 'Normal' ie. 4:3 and see if that resolves such 'formatting' problems.
Of course there are exceptions.
Darkwatch PAL, I don't have because I imported the US NTSC version at the time. Never had a problem with the cut scenes or anything else. But I've never heard of cut scenes running too fast for any region version of any game. That's odd.
It sounds as if you're playing them from original disc rather than installed to the HDD so my suggestion would be that the DVD drive might be becoming a problem. Try test installing one the games to the HDD using DVD2Xbox and see if the problem persists. If DVD2Xbox throws up any errors either the disc itself or the DVD drive will most likely be the cause.
Weird aspect ratio problems with some games: the Xbox game widescreen support is iffy and in a lot of cases it is not true WS but the NTSC 'hybrid' 3:2 rather than 16:9. But there are games which do weird display things if you use WS; one of the GTAs (Vice City I think) did that.
Try swapping to 'Normal' ie. 4:3 and see if that resolves such 'formatting' problems.
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EnclaveOverlord
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- Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2024 9:24 am
Re: Fix for Issues with Pal games in NTSC Video mode?
Thanks for replying 
I've realised from your response that I was probably a little too vague with my explanation of my issues, sorry about that.
So what I meant with Darkwatch was that the game was running fast when I replaced the XBE, not the cutscenes (Though I want to test it again to make sure of that).
Funnily enough I was running games from the discs about a week ago (because putting in discs makes me nostalgic), but I recently gave in to installing them to the HDD because of the issues I had been having, so the XBE's should be getting patched by DVD2Xbox.
As for the aspect ratio issues, it's not like their stretched, but more that part of the image in games like Dark Alliance seems to get cut off. I tried moving the image with my Retrotink 5x, as you can pretty freely mess with the aspect ratio stuff with that, but it seems like the bit of the image that gets cut off is actually gone when playing, not just hidden off screen.
Edit: Just a bit of an update, I managed to fix issues with all the EA Lord of the Rings games, Darkwatch, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and Time Splitters 2 by replacing the problem files with their NTSC copy counterparts, I also fixed Crazy Taxi 3's sound issues the same way, but those issues were unrelated to playing the games at 480p. I am still unable to fix Halo: Combat Evolved and Evil Dead Regeneration though
I've realised from your response that I was probably a little too vague with my explanation of my issues, sorry about that.
So what I meant with Darkwatch was that the game was running fast when I replaced the XBE, not the cutscenes (Though I want to test it again to make sure of that).
Funnily enough I was running games from the discs about a week ago (because putting in discs makes me nostalgic), but I recently gave in to installing them to the HDD because of the issues I had been having, so the XBE's should be getting patched by DVD2Xbox.
As for the aspect ratio issues, it's not like their stretched, but more that part of the image in games like Dark Alliance seems to get cut off. I tried moving the image with my Retrotink 5x, as you can pretty freely mess with the aspect ratio stuff with that, but it seems like the bit of the image that gets cut off is actually gone when playing, not just hidden off screen.
Edit: Just a bit of an update, I managed to fix issues with all the EA Lord of the Rings games, Darkwatch, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and Time Splitters 2 by replacing the problem files with their NTSC copy counterparts, I also fixed Crazy Taxi 3's sound issues the same way, but those issues were unrelated to playing the games at 480p. I am still unable to fix Halo: Combat Evolved and Evil Dead Regeneration though