PS1
Image: Damien McFerran / Time Extension

Remember when Sony added PS1 titles to its PS Plus subscription service? It was a neat way to rediscover old classics from the '90s, but it came with a sting for European players – all of the games were based on the slower 50Hz PAL versions rather than the full-speed NTSC 60hz versions used in North America and elsewhere.

While this made sense on one level – after all, European players will have played the 50Hz versions back in the day – the whole 50Hz/60Hz thing really shouldn't be an issue in today's world, as console AV connections are standardised all over the globe and there's no real excuse in forcing Europeans to play games that run around 20% slower than they do elsewhere in the world.

As you can imagine, there was quite a backlash when this became apparent, and Sony was quick to point out that an option to toggle between 50Hz and 60Hz was in development. We're now at the point where that fix is rolling out, but there's a catch – it's only available in one title, Syphon Filter 2, which arrived on the service this week. As spotted by VGC, Syphon Filter 2 offers the ability to toggle game regions from its settings menu.

Previously, titles like Jumping Flash were patched to introduce what Sony called "improved PAL output" but this simply increases the 50Hz output to 60Hz to match the NTSC versions’ speed, which results in an ugly 'ghosting' effect during movement. This new fix is much better and will hopefully roll out to more PS Plus PS1 classics soon.

[source videogameschronicle.com, via pushsquare.com]