***WARNING*** THEC64 NTSC is being Sold in PAL Regions ATM

And for those in the states, make sure you don't buy a PAL unit or the games you remember might not run at the proper speed. Remember too, often there were two completely different versions of the same game for the NTSC and PAL regions due to software house licensing agreements. Sometimes the pal version was better, but also sometimes the NTSC version was better too. As somebody who grew up around a huge crowd of NTSC C64 fans, not once did I hear somebody say ntsc was an issue for them, and I can't remember a single piece of software that wouldn't run for me.

The C64 was the number one selling computer in the states. The Spectrum was virtually unheard of here. While the Spectrum was a UK born computer and was very popular there, giving the C64 a real run for it's money in a fan base, Commodore was a US born company and the C64 had no close competitor in the states. The extremely expensive Apple II line were mainly owned by the upper class in small numbers (much like apple products today), and Atari never caught up to Commodore in their more expensive and less powerful 400 and 800 line of computers. Tandy (Coco Computer) and Texas Instruments (the much more expensive and less powerful Ti994a) also were never even close, and considered oddball obscure computers to the average consumer. It was all mostly C64 for the computer scene here, being owned by the much bigger middle class in numbers.

The UK also largely stuck with tape drives and TV's for screens, while in the states it was far more common for C64 owners (and thus professional software and games) to embrace disk drives, color monitors, and accessories like modems and printers for the C64. As a result, things like BBS systems flourished, and that alone was a completely different C64 sub-culture onto it's self in the Commodore computer scene in the states.

When you think about disk drive based software for the C64, you can pretty much thank the states for having a huge fan base of C64 owners, because without the massive popularity of NTSC C64 owners who also bought disk drives, everything would have been on tape and the software base for the C64 would have been much smaller, much more boring, and much more limited in scope.

Far as the true color of the C64, the fact is there was no one true color of the computer. Here in the states several shades of it existed. There also wasn't one true size to the machine. The C64 Maxi is based on early versions of the C64 that were using the Vic20 dimensions, which was slightly taller than later C64s produced by Commodore.

Commodore was notorious for using whatever parts or materials they could get their hands on. This included putting older C64 motherboards in newer generations of the machine, and even doing that with older disk drive boards being put in newer model drive cases. And yes, Commodore even made C64s of varying colors depending on what plastic resin they could get at the time. As an example, there were even C64s with yellow or orange Vic20 function keys. Vic20 keyboards were sometimes just put into the C64 straight from the factory.

It all comes down to what you owned. If you were in a pal region you're used to pal, and if you were a ntsc owner you're used to that. Some software back then and especially written today will detect which machine you're using and make the proper adjustments to run with no slight variation in speed.

All of the above can also be said about the Pal Amiga computers versus NTSC. Software flourished for it on both sides of the ocean, and again software often had different license agreements with completely different versions of a game, and one region or the other would be better. Besides, you can simply hold down a mouse key while powering up an Amiga to boot into the proper mode if you ran across the rare odd piece of software that wouldn't run based on region.

I just purchased one, and with the latest firmware mine allows you to select both PAL and NTSC from the options menu. Does this work to support games from either?