PAL Asterix and Obelix

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PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156550)
I have seen some Asterix & Obelix carts for sale at some retro game conventions. This is normally a PAL only game. Does anyone know of a patch or fix to let it play on a NTSC console?
Natively, the game will do it's intro screen and then it says "this game pack not for your console..." uCON doesn't find any protections. Since I've seen these for sale in the US, I presume there is a fix for it to operate on a NTSC console.
Anyone know of a fix?

Thanks!
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156554)
PAL systems have an extra long vblank time, which allowed PAL exclusive games to spend more time updating video memory each frame. Any game that takes advantage of this would be very difficult to port to NTSC.

Asterix specifically uses this to upload 192 bytes of the main character's sprite every frame, plus the usual nametable, palette, and OAM updates. That's an awful lot of data for NTSC. You'd have to do some clever modifications to get it to run within NTSC's shorter vblank.
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156558)
rainwarrior wrote:
PAL systems have an extra long vblank time, which allowed PAL exclusive games to spend more time updating video memory each frame. Any game that takes advantage of this would be very difficult to port to NTSC.

Asterix specifically uses this to upload 192 bytes of the main character's sprite every frame, plus the usual nametable, palette, and OAM updates. That's an awful lot of data for NTSC. You'd have to do some clever modifications to get it to run within NTSC's shorter vblank.


I hear ya! I saw a working cart and was wondering if anyone here knew about it. The Pop'n Twin bee has similar protection but changing one bit got rid of the protection on that game.
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156559)
Are you talking about Asterix, or some other game? I can't seem to trigger the protection screen you mentioned, and I can't find any information about an "Asterix & Obelix" game that was released for NES (there is one for SNES). Wondering if it's a variant title, or maybe I'm looking at the wrong game.
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156560)
rainwarrior wrote:
Are you talking about Asterix, or some other game? I can't seem to trigger the protection screen you mentioned, and I can't find any information about an "Asterix & Obelix" game that was released for NES (there is one for SNES). Wondering if it's a variant title, or maybe I'm looking at the wrong game.


it's for the SNES.

http://superfamicom.org/info/asterix-obelix

The Asterix for the snes runs fine on NTSC http://superfamicom.org/info/asterix and there doesn't seem to be protection on this one even though it was PAL only release.
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156561)
rainwarrior wrote:
Are you talking about Asterix, or some other game? I can't seem to trigger the protection screen you mentioned, and I can't find any information about an "Asterix & Obelix" game that was released for NES (there is one for SNES). Wondering if it's a variant title, or maybe I'm looking at the wrong game.

...just Asterix?
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156562)
Okay, well ignore what I said then. I don't know if that game would have an "easy" conversion to NTSC or not. It might.
Re: PAL Asterix and Obelix
by on (#156563)
Myask wrote:
rainwarrior wrote:
Are you talking about Asterix, or some other game? I can't seem to trigger the protection screen you mentioned, and I can't find any information about an "Asterix & Obelix" game that was released for NES (there is one for SNES). Wondering if it's a variant title, or maybe I'm looking at the wrong game.

...just Asterix?


No, the SNES version called "ASTERIX & OBELIX"
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Asterix Obelixtitle .jpg
Asterix Obelixtitle .jpg [ 102.26 KiB | Viewed 3477 times ]


so the title screen shows then this screen....
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protect screen.jpg
protect screen.jpg [ 73.54 KiB | Viewed 3477 times ]