PAL & NTSC
This page discusses what PAL and NTSC mean, and the differences between them, and how to determine which one you use.
PAL - Stands for Phase Alternating Lines. Used in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most of Oceania, most of Africa, some parts of southern South America, and most of Asia.
NTSC - Stands for National Television Standards Committee. Used in most of North and South America, Japan and some other parts of East Asia, some parts of Oceania, and a couple of other countries.
These are the two basic television standards used worldwide, and a separate version of both the Nintendo 64 and its games must be created for each of them. The difference between them is the frequency at which the image is redrawn during animation, known as the frame rate. The NTSC version of a game, which runs at 60 frames per second, runs roughly 20% faster than the PAL version, which runs at only 50 frames per second. This causes problems in some games, especially racing games such as Mario Kart 64, Wave Race 64, or F-Zero X, because PAL players will have slower times. (However, some games are adjusted for PAL and do not have this problem, such as Banjo-Kazooie, 1080 Snowboarding, or Super Smash Bros.) Basically you can convert a PAL time to an NTSC time by dividing by 1.2 (for NTSC to PAL conversions you would multiply by 1.2) since 50 x 1.2 = 60. This is not 100% accurate, though, so we have separate pages for the PAL and NTSC versions of the games that have this problem.
To see if you have the PAL version, check the game box.
You can import NTSC games if you live in a country that uses PAL or vice versa, which can be useful for some games, such as Star Fox 64. Keep in mind that you will need a N64 Passport module in order to play a game of one version in an N64 of the other. The N64 Passport can adjust the framerate between 60 and 50 frames per second for some games (such as Star Fox 64 and Yoshi's Story) when converting the video signal, which can be incredibly useful for eliminating the need to adjust to a faster/slower framerate.
For a complete list of which places use NTSC and which use PAL, here is a link:
http://kropla.com/tv.htm
However, some of the information may be inaccurate-- for instance, NTSC is used in all of Brazil, though the voltage varies depending on the state.
There is a third television standard, SECAM, in use, which is very similar to PAL with its 50-hertz frequency; indeed, places that use the SECAM standard will have PAL video games. SECAM is used in France and its territories; Russia and most of the former USSR; and many countries in northern Africa that were formerly French colonies.
}