Megadrive PAL/NTSC Game confusion

[greek]

Hi,

i have bought TAZ-MANIA recently at Ebay, and the dude didn't mentioned that it was the NTSC Version, so I own a Megadrive(PAL).

My Megadrive(PAL) is unmodified, means no extra switches on the outside. My TV is also

PAL and only able to display 50Hz, for I have tested this with other consoles.

The Package of the game reads NTSC Version and is labeld Genesis, so is the catridge, it is labeld genesis too. So its defenitly a NTSC Version.

I put it into my Megadrive(PAL) and expected to see nothing or some distorted or undistorted black/white game images, but to my surprise I got a full colored undistorted picture of the game.

Are there Megadrives out there which convert NTSC/PAL on its own per autodetect without modification or are there games which outodetect the console and run the accordingly Hz?

And what do would normaly happen if one sticks NTSC into PAL Equipment and vice versa?

 

[Cyberguile]

There is no zoning on the oldest game (actually, i think zoning began with street fighter 2', but i'm not pretty sure).

The only protection against import in the early 90s was the cartidge shape: japanese don't fit in non japanese console.

But inside the cartidge, it's the same (for example, european streets of rage 1 will display "bare knuckle" at the start screen if you use a japanese console)

 

[Arakon]

unlike newer systems, on most cart systems the game does NOT decide the video output format. a PAL megadrive will always output pal, no matter what cart you stick into it.. of course, that also means that a ntsc game runs 17% slower than it is supposed to.

 

[Akomander]

" There is no zoning on the oldest game (actually, i think zoning began with street fighter 2', but i'm not pretty sure)."

The first game I saw with Zone Protection is Streets OfRage 2 I think...

 

[greek]

I just expected the game to be b/w, but I think they only get b/w when MD is running in NTSC mode.