Version Differences

NTSC

The NTSC version of the game was released in North America for the Super Nintendo, and in Japan for the Super Famicom. These two releases of the game use the same ROM, just with different plastic shells to fit the different consoles.

Either "English Text" or "Japanese Text" can be selected in the menu. Selecting "Japanese Text" adds subtitles to the several sections of the game. The only known time difference caused by this is during the opening cutscene, where it means four of the text cards require multiple button presses to scroll through. Since most categories skip the opening cutscene, the timesave from using "English Text" only applies to TASes and categories with a reset to Ceres like 0%.

PAL

The PAL version of the game was released in most other regions of the world, and is most notable for running at 50 frames per second instead of 60.

The developers compensated for this lower framerate by giving Samus more speed per frame in order to keep her speed per second roughly similar. This extra speed per frame leads to a few categories that are exclusively possible on the PAL version, such as 14% Iceboots.

Since most speedruns are done on the NTSC version, far fewer resources are available for the PAL version, with only a few notes on room pages detailing differences, such as the Everest Spark.

In categories that include the opening cutscene, "French Text" is faster than "German Text".

Virtual Console

See: Emulators

Nintendo's official re-releases on Virtual Console or similar official emulators often included the PAL version in PAL regions on older systems (Wii, Wii U), and included the NTSC version worldwide on newer systems (SNES Classic, Switch).

The framerate on these systems varied from the originals, often running slightly slower.

The ROM included with Virtual Console on some systems also had anti-flashing patches included, which can affect gameplay in some instances such as the Kraid Quick Kill.