PS Plus patch attempts to fix PS1 PAL games – makes them worse-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro

Jumping Flash – it’s not supposed to look like that (pic: Twitter)

Sony’s efforts to address complaints about the slower PAL games on PS Plus has only made things worse.

It’s still only available in select Asian markets, but the revamped PlayStation Plus service is already off to a rather bumpy start. There have been reports of frequent crashing and some of the PlayStation 1 games included with the Premium tier are the inferior European PAL versions.

Aside from it being strange that Sony chose to include games in the PAL format for regions that never used it (like Taiwan), PAL versions are inherently slower than their NTSC counterparts and often have vertical borders. While not strictly unplayable, they are the worst way to play retro video games.

Word of this has quickly spread and, naturally, elicited a lot of confusion and frustration, even from those who don’t have access to the service yet. Sony appears to have acknowledged the complaints and attempted to fix the problem but… has only made things worse.

So far, it seems the only PS1 games based on their PAL releases are the first party titles from Sony, such as Ape Escape. The only exception is Syphon Filter which, for some reason, is based on the North American NTSC release.

Sony recently issued a patch for a few of these games to improve their performance and have them run at a faster speed, namely Jumping Flash, Everybody’s Golf, and Kurushi.

As you can see though, the patch has introduced a new issue and created what’s referred to as a ‘ghosting’ effect, where a trail is left behind every frame whenever the screen moves.

This is believed to be because Sony is adding the missing frames by blending existing ones. More examples can be seen on Twitter via user Windy Corner TV.

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While Sony hasn’t provided an explanation for why it’s using the PAL versions of games, but it’s assumed it’s because they tend to support a wide range of languages – although none that would be helpful in Asia.

It remains to be seen if all regions will receive the PAL versions of the games once the service releases elsewhere, but it does seem likely.

Sony has still yet to confirm the games line-up for anywhere else in the world, despite the service launching in Japan on Wednesday and in Europe on June 22.

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