i live in Australia and my ps2 is pal formatted. i'm considering buying games but i don't know really know what pal means i want to know if there is any differences between countries and there formatting. the game i've been looking has written under format "pal (UK standard)". that should be fine for me to play right?

Hi Bruce, welcome to Absolute PlayStation, I hope you enjoy your stay !

until very recently there were 3 TV standards that covered the world...

PAL - mostly Europe, Australia
NTSC - Mostly USA, Canada, Asia
SECAM - Mostly France

Thankfully TV manufacturers started to make their TV's multi-standard a few years ago, but Sony used the PAL/NTSC formats to stop people buying games outside of their own part of the world, so your PS2 will not play any games that have NTSC printed on them.

If you flip your PS2 upside down, you will see it has the type written on it - in your case its PAL.

So, yes your machine will play and PAL format PS2 games on it.

If you buy games in stores they will all be PAL, but always check the format if you buy from eBay.

Games manufactured for the UK or European markets will also work fine on your PS2 as they too are PAL format.

Hope this answers your questions, if not, please just reply below.

Best Wishes

Jim