Did games on the Atari ST mostly run in 60 Hz on US-owned Atari STs?

[sandord]

There's something I've been wondering about for a while: did games on the Atari ST mostly run in 60 Hz on US-owned Atari STs? Or did they play the games in 50 Hz? I don't know if the American TV sets generally supported 50 Hz in those days.

I reckon that games could get into trouble, performance-wise. Because of the extra frames per second, there'd be less CPU cycles to spend on each.

Also, music playback routines that would be locked to the vertical blank would start playing a lot faster!

[alexh]

If it means anything most Europeans played games on their Atari ST mostly in 60Hz. While most original games were fixed at 50Hz most "cracks" had a menu where you could switch to 60Hz and most of us (?) did.

Some original games (notably Wings of Death by Thalion) had a menu option to switch between 50 and 60Hz

You are right some games used the VBL to time the music replay routine and sounded faster in 60Hz.

[Darklord]

During the far busier "gaming" days of the mid to late 1980's,
I didn't even notice. I'm based here in the US.

I would get an imported Euro game and just run it. The
SC1224 monitor I used always seemed to handle it just
fine. I don't remember ever having an issue because of
the 50/60 difference.

As far as TV goes, I think I hooked it up one time, shrugged,
and went right back to the SC1224 and never looked back.

[sandord]

If it means anything most Europeans played games on their Atari ST mostly in 60Hz. While most original games were fixed at 50Hz most "cracks" had a menu where you could switch to 60Hz and most of us (?) did.

Some original games (notably Wings of Death by Thalion) had a menu option to switch between 50 and 60Hz

You are right some games used the VBL to time the music replay routine and sounded faster in 60Hz.

That's interesting. I live in the Netherlands and I don't remember ever having played a game in 60Hz. I'll ask my Dutch Atari-friends if they used to do it.

[sandord]

During the far busier "gaming" days of the mid to late 1980's,
I didn't even notice. I'm based here in the US.

I would get an imported Euro game and just run it. The
SC1224 monitor I used always seemed to handle it just
fine. I don't remember ever having an issue because of
the 50/60 difference.

As far as TV goes, I think I hooked it up one time, shrugged,
and went right back to the SC1224 and never looked back.

You were lucky, I could only dream of having an SC1224 back then (I have one now though!). They are really, really nice.

[mikro]

There's something I've been wondering about for a while: did games on the Atari ST mostly run in 60 Hz on US-owned Atari STs? Or did they play the games in 50 Hz? I don't know if the American TV sets generally supported 50 Hz in those days.

I reckon that games could get into trouble, performance-wise. Because of the extra frames per second, there'd be less CPU cycles to spend on each.

Also, music playback routines that would be locked to the vertical blank would start playing a lot faster!

I have often wondered about the same thing. The scenario you describe is actually the worse one: I imagine many games were really stretching available CPU time, so they would use 99% of (50 Hz) VBL. Now, how would you run such a game on a 60 Hz display? Is someone aware of a game which got a US release with some feature(s) left out due to performance reasons?

Considering that the ST as a gaming machine was mostly an Europe thing, I wonder whether game publishers had some kind of rule "must run on 60 Hz, too" (even with faster music replay).

But maybe there are also opposite examples, i.e. that US titles were adapted to 50 Hz (much easier).

[derkom]

I remember running plenty of 50 Hz European games on my US SC1224 back in the day. It was quite a normal experience to see the image jump a little and become ever so slightly more flickery when starting a game (or demo). A normal part of the US Atari ST experience.

[sandord]

Thanks guys, this is very helpful. Do you think there were any people at all in the VS who couldn't play certain games due to fixed 50 Hz?