How can you tell if the PSX ISO you got was PAL or NTSC

[Soujiro-san]

Like what topic says how do you tell if the ISO you got is PAL or NTSC w/o burning and trying it on your modded PSX. Is there a program out there that can tell you which one is which w/o wasting a CD-R then find out that it was a PAL and you have a NTSC PSX

[crusher]

I think ePSXe can tell you that. Otherwise you can just try it on ePSXe and check if you can change the language of the game. If you can, it's most certainly PAL. Not all games is multi-language though.

[Zorlon]

PAL game are codes SLES and NTSC games are not.
US games are generally coded SLUS

If you check the file names in the ISO's you can tell

To see the files within an ISO before burning you can use Daemon Tools or ISO buster to do that

Edit:-

You can always use Import Player for PSone's so you can boot any country PSX ISO

Or you could patch the boot sequence with patch-it and there is also a couple of display patchers called pal4u (works both ways) and Zapper2K.

[Roux!]

What Zorlon said...

But, how do you know if your ISO was previously patched...?

I myself don't like patched ISOs...

[az_bont]

You do realise you can un-patch ISOs, right?

[Roux!]

You can...?

I thought the changes were permanent! Like with ROMs...?

[az_bont]

No, no. There is a tool that I found a while ago that I've used to un-patch ISOs before now. I believe they have it over at MegaGames. You do need to have the original patch in order to reverse it's effects, but you can find most of them at the same site.

[Roux!]

That's pretty useful! Although I don't have the patch for this particular game... Vagrant Story... prepatched... multi-region... sigh...

I'll see if they have the aformentioned patch from hell... Thanks!

[Zorlon]

This is only if there was a patch to start with but if it was patched with the tools I mentioned there is no way to unpatch them because the original patch is not available or never existed and the original data is no more, all of my games are PAL patched because I use a PAL PSone and I didn't use patches but instead made my own that I never keep once I have tested a game and not all create patch files but instead edit the ISO direct, you can however just re-patch it back to it's original state by searching for the boot and display again and setting it to the desired system, you want I.E. PAL or NTSC.

If you used a ppf yes you can use an unpatcher to remove the ppf patch (prolly some other formats aswell)

[az_bont]

Ew, NTSC games converted to PAL are horrible. It'd be much simpler to get an RGB Scart lead, and at least then your games would fill the screen and work at full speed.

Not that the majority of store-bought, original PAL games are much better mind you...

[Roux!]

So an ISO patch just changes the boot sequence and video mode...? Does that mean the rest of the data remains intact...?

/me loves NTSC!

[az_bont]

A patch is just something that can alter the code of an ISO. So, sometimes trainers or intros are added, sometimes not. More often than not, the only times trainers are added are when a game is first released on the internet, often before it even hits the stores.

[Zorlon]

PAL games on NTSC fill the screen using Scart and NTSC on PAL also fills the screen, but played on there own systems they both have a black stripe across the top and bottom of the screen, so the way you are playing your games is like watching a widescreen film that has been reshaped to fit a normal screen distorting the images to what they should originally look like.

Yes you can just patch over any old patch with the tools I mentioned before but to remove any patches first requires you to have the correct patch it was patched with to unpatch it.

Patches are good things though for some games and are needed in some cases to let you play them on a modded PSone/PSX.

I strongly recomend though that you DL yourself a copy of Import Player as it not only lets you boot both PAL and NTSC it also has a display fixer built into it, if patching alone does not help after burning (Import Player also has anti mod/anti action replay protection removers built in aswell.)

If you go for Import Player just get the lite version there is no diff anyway to the other version in the long run, as it doesn't have any fewer features, plus the lite version is more up to date (They were planning another version at the same time as the lite version that had there own type of Action Replay/Game Shark system built in but they never did do it fully, but now they are gone well the development of import player is gone anyway the group is still alive and kicking)

[az_bont]

But PAL games on a PAL system rarely fill the screen - and once an NTSC game has been converted to PAL, it will occupy less of the screen, as a result of the fact that PAL uses a higher video resolution, and so it has "wasted" bits around the side.

It's beyond me how Sega, Nintendo and Microsoft can so actively embrace the PAL60 format whilst Sony cannot .

[Zorlon]

the PS2 uses PAL60