Hi, currently I try to get into Shadowgate speedrunning and it really is a lot of fun. I've done several runs until now and my pace is becoming better, but I've noticed some strange things. Since I'm playing the German PAL version on PAL NES, I expected it to run slower than NTSC versions, which is fine for me. But I've noticed also several slowdowns, e.g. in the dragon chamber or the switch room. My questions are:

1. Has someone experience with the PAL version of Shadowgate?
2. Did anyone compared the PAL version against the NTSC version regarding speed?
3. Are these slowdowns also present on the NTSC version? These slowdowns happen also sometimes during the game. Thank you a lot for helping me out and also for the great guides you provided, which helped a lot to get into the game :) Best regards

I'm from Sweden so I grew up with PAL NES and the Swedish translated version of Shadowgate.

I think you should expect ~16% slower times with PAL versions of the game. If you want to see the difference you can start a game like Super Mario Bros 3 that has an ingame timer. Time how long it takes for the timer to run out on PAL, then redo the test on NTSC to see the difference.

I'm positive the NTSC version has the same kind of slowdowns, and they are most certainly caused by the sprite limitations of the NES. There are too many items present on the screen simultainously on these rooms which causes the lag.

Hi, thanks a lot for your help. I was expecting 16% as a worst case, but some games are doing weird stuff to increase the speed on the PAL versions so I wasn't sure. For example, I remember the counter on Super Mario Bros. is running faster on the PAL version, so I'm not sure, if this is the correct way of determing the speed differences. I tried to search for long sequences, like the shark fin sequence, where different speeds would cause a noticable difference, but for me it seems to be the same length. Anyhow, thank you for your answer, I'll try my very best to improve my runs for my very first submit. The German version is somehow special, because the menu is a single row, so it might be fun to watch :) Best regards

This is an old thread, but in case anybody's wondering - the "Switch Room" is definitely bad even on the NTSC version. It's probably my least favourite screen in the game lol. I haven't really noticed any issues in the "fire breathing" room, though.

I'm really curious to know why the cursor drags so badly in the "Switch Room" though. There really isn't a whole lot going on in there that would cause system slowdown, unless the logic behind the switches + the animation of those white things opening/closing when you do the switches correctly is doing something behind the scenes?