European PS2 titles look worse than their US counterparts on the PS4

Recently Sony has started to make older PS2 games available for download on the PS4. While no one really wants to pay for games that they've already purchased on an older platform, it's nice to still be able to play those older games without having to dust off an old console. However, European users might find that their experience isn't quite as good as you'd find in the US.

After the launch of classic titles on the PS4, some European users have noticed that the games don't seem to be running quite as smoothly as they remembered. The PS4 is an obviously more powerful machine, so why would the games run more poorly than they did on the PS2? Well, it has nothing to do with power, and everything to do with video standards.

For those that might not know, there are two video standards that exist: PAL and NTSC. PAL is commonly found in Europe and some parts of Asia, while NTSC is found most commonly in North America. So what does this have to do with the games? Well, PAL runs at 25 fps, while NTSC runs at 30. And with the PS4 outputting games at 60 fps, you can imagine what the issue is. The transition from 30 fps to 60 fps isn't hard, but when you try to go from 25 to 60, there is a rather large discrepancy. Check out the video below for more details.

Since it seems that most, if not all of the games in the European store are using code from the PAL versions of the games, the only way to get around this is to connect to the US store, if you want the best experience.

VIA: Eurogamer