How to play FFX on my US PS2?
You can perform a colour fix (search around for other version PS2s) on the PS2 to force NTSC colour output even in “PAL” mode. Note that this will not fix the speed of the display (50 Hz) which can be a problem for many TVs. Note that since most of the colour fixes are for PAL PS2s to display PAL colour permanently, most of them won’t work for you. You will need to connect the appropriate pin to +3.3 volts instead of ground. No, this isn’t a modchip and probably isn’t a DMCA violation since it’s analog video, not digital. If the picture displays in black and white right now without rolling, performing a colour fix will fix the problem for that TV. The other option is a box to convert PAL -> NTSC. The cheap ones don’t touch the 50 Hz sync issue, but fix the colour, so they are useless since you can fix this already. The expensive ones will fix the sync issue, but we’re talking more than the cost of a new PS2 expensive.
A note on PAL FFX, and almost all PAL Final Fantasy games: if you can force it into 60hz (NTSC) then the game will work okay but the movies will either look horrible or not work, because they are re-encoded for 50hz (PAL). Forcing PAL FF games into 60hz works fine for the gameplay and graphics of the main game because Square’s PAL conversions simply consist of slowing everything down by 16.7% and black-bordering the game at the top and bottom to ignore the extra lines on a PAL display. Unfortunately this breaks the FMV. Playing PAL FF games in 50hz and using display hardware that understands 50hz (like a TV card for a PC) means that everything works fine, but the game still runs 16.7% slower and is bordered, which is practical terms means that it looks ugly as shit and everyone looks like a hobbit (until they lie down, when they elongate massively and look like elves). You can avoid the PAL colour issue by using a component cable, but this won’t fix your 50hz problem.
If you don’t have any luck getting your PS2 to output NTSC on this disc, you could get a PCI TV capture card — a lot of them will understand PAL through the s-video socket. Using something like dscaler on the video input could result in quite an acceptable image on your PC monitor, and you may even be able to vertically stretch the image to compensate for Square’s notoriously awful PAL “conversions”.
