Some more of my video game junk

LIVING in a PAL territory like I do you get used to being screwed by video game companies. And I don’t mean a gentle slap and tickle behind the bike shed; I mean a hand over your mouth after lights out style screw.

Little things like the “worldwide” PlayStation 3 launch a few years back and the big delay between the US and Australian release of Rock Band are just a few examples that come to mind, as well as the memory of some truly horrible NTSC to PAL conversions. But that said things have improved and most games now come out in PAL territories soon after their international release.

As a way of apologising to PAL gamers for bad conversions and late releases developers and publishers often created extra stuff to put in with their PAL releases. Below are a few examples from PlayStation 2 era from my collection.

SILENT HILL 2

Silent Hill 2 came out in Australia only a couple of months after the North American release, but Konami still felt so bad they made this awesome 2 x DVD slip-case edition of the game.

The artwork on the digipack style package and the slip-case is impressive and shows off James and the women of Silent Hill 2 along with the always creepy, and now iconic, zombie-nurse.

These photos don't do the package justice. The red band on the black inner cover is covered in quotes from Mary, the main character’s wife, such as “our special place...” and “you promised you’d take me there again...”.

The bonus disc packed in with Silent Hill 2 was brilliant. It had a documentary on the game that delved deeply into the game’s origins, creation and storyline. In all honesty waiting the extra two months for this disc was well worth it.

But there was a catch – the DVD was coded for Region 2 (Australia is Region 4), which meant that you had to call the publisher and order a new disc. Thankfully it arrived fairly promptly, and you could keep your old disc.

FINAL FANTASY X

Final Fantasy X was a shit PAL conversion. There’s no two ways about it. The game looked terrible and featured as the gorgeous 4:3 graphics were squashed into a 16:9 aspect. Don’t get me wrong, this is easily one of my all-time favourite games, but the PAL version did look like a smashed crab.

The worst part is that the game came out in July 2001 in Japan, then arrived in North America on December 2001 and then took until May 2002 to reach Australia.

Surely the 10 month gap between the Japanese release and the PAL release was enough time to get the game running at a consistent frame rate and not grind whenever I summoned an Aeon. You'd think I'd be over this by now... moving on.

To make up for this a bonus disc was included, which contained a great ‘making of’ and some other Final Fantasy X promotional material. But like the Silent Hill 2 caper it was the wrong DVD region.

This time however there was no replacement disc being made. For me it wasn’t a huge deal because I could watch it on my computer, but those gamers who only watched DVDs on their PlayStation 2 were out of luck.


METAL GEAR SOLID 2

If there is one company in this world who knows how to treat PAL gamers right it’s Konami. The PAL version of Metal Gear Solid 2 looked great and thankfully ran almost flawlessly, except for a few screen-tearing issues.

Released in 2001 on 14 November in North America, PAL gamers had to wait until March 2002 to get a copy of this brilliant (and I believe overly criticised) game. But in this four-month gap Hideo Kojima and his team made produced an excellent PAL conversion and added extra content.

The new content included a European Extreme difficulty that was a total bitch to play and only for hardcore fans of the series, a Boss Survival mode that was fun for a while and the Casting Theatre, which was a smart way to watch old cutscenes again.

In addition to these extras, PAL gamers were also treated to a ‘making of’ DVD, which was produced by the same people who made the Silent Hill 2 ‘making of’.

Like the aforementioned Silent Hill 2 DVD, the MGS2 'making of' it was extremely well made, and thankfully this time there were no region issues.

It should be noted that this 'making of' is nothing like the Documents of Metal Gear Solid 2, but is its own separate production.

The packaging was also great with clear DVD case allowing you to see the reverse side of the cover, which featured some great artwork of characters featured in the game. Overall the MGS2 PAL edition was worth the wait and was further proof that Konami knows how to treat their international fans.

So there you have it, a sample of my PAL exclusive collector’s editions and bonus discs. Nowadays being in a PAL region isn’t as of a big issue when it comes to conversions and release dates, so these kinds of extras are not as common. The biggest problem facing Australian gamers now is the lack of an R 18+ rating for games and the occasional stupid decision to not release good games here like Henry Hatsworth.