John Spartan

Does anyone know if UK Playstation 2 games will work on a modded (or load card or whatever import method) American PS2?

I thought since they were PAL TV format that they would not work, but now I'm hearing it may be the case.

The game I want to play is a light gun shooter called Police 24/7.

dcswirl

I don't see why not. I play PAL Dreamcast games with a Freeloader type of disc, so probably you can.

tomwaits

They won't work on PS2. The Dreamcast games that I've tried always detect the video format and adjust, but PS2 games won't.

Depending on your TV, you'd either get a b/w display, or just a rolling distorted mess. I had a PAL PS2 game, and tried it on all of my TVs with no luck. Even if you get a b/w display, it's chopped at the bottom of the screen since PAL has more scanlines.

I ended up having to break out my old Amiga 1084S monitor to play it. Best monitor ever!

If you want to import a PS2 game, get the Japanese version. No problems with video format. Understanding the text isn't really necessary in most action games anyway...

PixyJunket

Tom, what kind of modchip do you have? Did you install it yourself? Can you save US and Japan games on the same memory card?

jrutz

I know for the PS1 there were patches you could apply to specific PAL games which would convert the display to NTSC. There was even a boot disc for PS1 PAL games that would convert to NTSC. Of course you needed a mod chip for all this, that goes without saying.

I would imagine something like this would exist for the PS2, no?

Jeremy

John Spartan

tomwaits, so your PS2 is chipped/modded and it still does this? Anyway, thank you for the info!

tomwaits

I have an older modchip called origa. I have an old PS2, and I installed the first modchip available that booted imports. I think it's obsolete now, as it only works on older PS2s, but it works great for me.

I'm pretty good at soldering, and it was a difficult installation. A couple really tight solder points, and layers of PS2 disassembly to get to them.

There's no problem saving different region games on the same memory card on PS2. The Gamecube is the only system I've seen that requires separate memory cards for each region.

I haven't seen a PS2 boot disc that supports PAL/NTSC select like the old PS1 disc. There might be individual game patches, but I think you'd still lose the bottom 10% of the screen because of the extra scanlines on PAL systems. Not sure how well a lightgun game would work with the frequency change either...

I'd stick with the Japanese imports.
Btw, Police 24/7 is called The Keisatsukan in Japan.

blackchubby

Anybody know a place I can buy a Boot Disc to play PAL Games for my Playstation.

John Spartan

A boot disc won't solve your problems. I've done a bit more research and you do indeed need game-specific NTSC/PAL patches to get most to display properly.

Thanks again for the help, tomwaits.