Mega Drive region coding

From Sega Retro

Region locked games

These games are designed so that they will not run on certain consoles. Usually a message is displayed informing the user that the game cannot be played.

NTSC-J consoles

NTSC-U consoles

PAL consoles

Games which display a blank screen

While we can assume these games are also region locked (given that they refuse to boot in certain regions), nothing of value is displayed on-screen, which could suggest the game has not been programmed to handle the incorrect regions.

NTSC-J consoles

NTSC-U consoles

PAL consoles

Games which break

In certain circumstances, games will attempt to run in the wrong region, only to break further down the line.

NTSC-J consoles

NTSC-U consoles

PAL consoles

Unoptimised games

PAL and NTSC systems run at different speeds and can support different screen resolutions. In some cases, no effort is made to optimise for each system, leading PAL games to run too slow (with borders), or NTSC games to run too fast (or have visual elements drawn off-screen).

Many PAL titles, particularly earlier prints, are notorious for running noticably slower than their NTSC counterparts, leading many to import or modify their consoles to fix the speed issue. Unoptimised NTSC games are far rarer, and usually consist of European-developed games not being adjusted correctly.

NTSC-J consoles

NTSC-U consoles

PAL consoles

Partially-optimised games

By 1992 efforts were being made on behalf of developers to ensure that games were at least partially optimised for PAL systems. While optimisations vary, usually this involved speeding up the music, as opposed to speeding up the game logic.

NTSC-J consoles

NTSC-U consoles

PAL consoles

References

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