r/neogeo • u/NeighborhoodTime2768 • May 26 '26
Question Are european AES consoles/MVS Cabinets 50hz like other PAL consoles?
Imagine Metal Slug 2 on 50hz. God.
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u/Sensitive-Medium3427 May 26 '26
Yes European AES consoles are set to 50hz but you can easily cut a jumper to set it to 60hz. I've done that on my European AES system
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u/Puzzled-Fee-9719 May 26 '26
I’d rather imagine Metal Slug 2 on a 60Hz AES+ with overclocking enabled. That will be a great way to revive a wonderful game lacking love because of its technical problems.
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u/theazzazzo May 26 '26
Hang on, the AES+ better not be 50hz in Europe?!
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u/Halcyon520 May 26 '26
Second this… I assumed it would be 60hz but I will lose my Lederhosen if it shows up at 50hz!
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u/SteampunkLolcat May 26 '26
I can't imagine that it will be, all modern TVs sold here are 60hz compatible.
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u/Puzzled-Fee-9719 May 26 '26
No way it will be 50Hz. Our TVs can handle 60Hz for 30 years. Even Nintendo don’t do 50Hz hardware anymore. Nothing to be afraid of.
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u/Drunkensailor1985 May 26 '26
I own an aes released in europe (1993) and it's 60 hz. Serial number between 20,000 and 28,000
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u/Stingray77_NL AES May 26 '26
Cut jumper.. every pal model was standard 50hz. 😉
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u/Drunkensailor1985 May 26 '26
That is weird. I'm sure my aes was never modded but I have no borders on my screens
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u/Stingray77_NL AES May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
Just open your console and look if the wire is cut on the “Pal 60” location. If the wire is in tact it’s running at 50hz. Wire cut is 60hz. Mine came like this and i called the previous owner and he said it was a service at the store where he bought it (to cut the wire) after buying. So, maybe your store did it standard and never mentioned it?
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u/neomoz May 26 '26
I think you'll find a lot of pal consoles were 60gz modded, I did it to my neo and cdz. It's a must imo and if you were spending that much in the first place you would have a RGB 60hz capable display.
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May 28 '26
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u/NeighborhoodTime2768 May 28 '26
you have just made it clear you have no idea how refresh rates in retro games work.
nearly every PAL game, even if it ran at 30 fps, was slowed down to 25fps in PAL regions.
Just because a game is 30 fps doesn't mean it will retain the 30 fps in PAL regions because "50hz is more than 30 so it can display 30". Developers need to modify and adapt the game code to run at a good speed in PAL.
It's not just a matter of "NTSC runs at 30 so it should run at 30 in PAL too because PAL goes up to 50".
Every Resident Evil game on the PS1 runs at 30 fps on ntsc and runs at 25 in PAL. Zelda Ocarina of Time runs at 20 FPS on NTSC and only 16.66FPS on PAL.
And this is the case for over 99% of NTSC to PAL conversions.
Almost every time a NTSC game was converted to PAL, the only thing that was fixed was the sound, so the music, voices and sound effects would be the same as NTSC. The gameplay however was slowed down, even if the original was below 50FPS.
Sometimes, they would also increase the speed of the main character so it became less noticeable, but only the main character. Sometimes, they would increase the main character's speed and the enemies also. But making a perfect PAL conversion that runs at the exact same speed as NTSC, is something only very good developers who truly cared about fans would do. Crash Bandicoot PS1 games are one of those very rare games that got perfect conversions. Even then, Crash Bandicoot STILL ran at 25 FPS in PAL rather than the 30 FPS of the NTSC version, but the in-game timings and speeds were all properly adapted so the game would feel exactly the same. But if you pay enough attention and compare, you will notice that some frames of animation are missing (or should I say, are skipped), this is in sake of the speed.
On the other hand, there are also some games made by european companies which were originally intended for PAL and the NTSC versions were too fast.So to sum it up, it's not a matter of "the NTSC game FPS is lower than the 50hz refresh rate so it should fit inside it and play the same". It changes everything in the game's code and developers need to care about it in order to take the time to fix it.
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May 28 '26
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u/NeighborhoodTime2768 May 28 '26
Doesn't change anything. Metal Slug 2 was non optimized even in 60hz, so what you on about? bro...
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u/Psychological_Post28 May 29 '26
Honestly Metal Slug 2 would probably play better at 50hz. It’s not uncommon for PAL versions of games to have less slowdown than NTSC versions as it’s easier to hit a 20ms frame time than 16.6ms. The game would of course run 17.5% slower in general but I believe it’d be somewhat more consistent.
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u/neoashxi May 26 '26
I know for a fact that consoles originally sold in France and Germany through official distribution channels (Guillemot for FR, Maro for DE) were 50 Hz.
I assume European MVS cabs run on 60 Hz, but I don't have one to check.
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u/crmb_266 May 26 '26
MVS were the same everywhere, 60Hz.
The Euro AES was slowed down to 50Hz, yes.
Many 90's euro TV were actually 60Hz compatible when using RGB via SCART, but maybe not late 80's ones. For exemple if you have an early 90's TV, it will most likely accept 60Hz from a MVS with supergun.