What is (PAL)?

[Allan Doug]

Can someone tell me what it is (PAL), please?

[Cooper]

It's a region code. Games have different region codes depending on the country you live in.

NTSC-U/C - United States, Canada, Mexico, South America
NTSC-J - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia
NTSC-C - mainland China
PAL - Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa

[PatientZero]

Actually that's only part of it, PAL specifically is "Phase Alternating Line", which is different to NTSC (National Television System Committee).
PAL video formats run at 25 fps with 625 lines, while NTSC video is 30 fps with 525 lines. A PAL signal is also 50hz while an NTSC signal is 60hz.

These are important to bare in mind if we're talking VIDJYA GAEMS, because imported PAL systems won't always work on NTSC televisions.

Of course, on the off-chance we're talking ROMs here, as the brackets suggest, there's only minor differences if the game itself is the same in all regions. PAL is slightly higher resolution but can only run at 50 FPS, and NTSC is slightly lower res but caps out at 60 FPS. That'll all depend on what you're emulating and how though, and anything older than the PS2 or Gamecube era is gonna be lower resolution and lower framerate anyway so there's actual no difference.

And naturally, PC hardware can handle both just fine, things go way above those old standards these days.

[puggsoy]

PAL video formats run at 25 fps with 625 lines, while NTSC video is 30 fps with 525 lines.

Actually, if you want to be accurate NTSC runs at 29.97 fps PAL is exactly 25fps though. Here's a video explaining why, which also goes over a bit of the history of PAL and NTSC, for anybody interested.