Playstation says that they’ll be bringing NTSC versions of the majority of their PS Classics to Playstation Plus and give players the option to switch between them and the PAL versions currently available.

The was announced on the official PlayStation Asia Facebook Account:

“We’re planning to roll out NTSC options for a majority of classic games offered on the PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe plan in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, India, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand regions.”

VGC say that from what they’ve tested 7 of the 13 PS1 classics on Playstation Plus are currently based on their PAL versions outside of North America and Japan. These include Ape Escape, Everybody’s Golf, Jumping Flash, Kurushi, Syphon Filter, Wild Arms, and Worms World Party.

If you don’t know NTSC or National Television Standards Committee is the analog television format that was used in the United States and Japan during the late 90s when the PS1 was around. Europe and most parts of Asia however used the Phase Alternating Line or PAL format.

Why does this matter? Because NTSC television ran at 60 Hetz (Hz) meaning that the screen of analog televisions in these countries at the time would refresh themselves 60 times every second. In PAL countries they were 50Hz.

Games had to be developed to match these formats, meaning PS1 games ran at 60Hz in the US and Japan and 50Hz in Europe and Asia. Unfortunately with the US and Japan being the main two video game markets at the time, many games were made to run on 60Hz and not properly optimized when imported to PAL countries.

This meant that the 50Hz PAL games tended to run up to 20 percent slower than their NTSC counterparts.

As you can imagine, this is not desirable for gamers from any part of the world so it’s good that Sony is making these changes so that these PS Classics can be played in the better NTSC format.