It only very recently stopped being a thing. 3DS is the current most modern console that still has region locking. Microsoft and Nintendo only just now got on the region free train for their Xbox One and Switch respectively.
For PS3, I remember you could get around region restrictions by making a new profile with a mailing address from the desired region. At least, that worked for the PS Store and you could buy any game not available in the US that way.
The game "Joysound Dive" also was region locked on PS3. Way of the Samurai 3 is also rumored to be region locked on later consoles somehow; but I haven't seen confirmation on it.
Nice! I like that cheeky message. Here in the US, importing anything from Japan cost about $70 at the lowest. When Mickey Mania came out, the US version cost much less than that. I'm not aware if the Japanese version preceded it in release. Thank goodness for near-simultaneous launches in most regions these days, negating this issue altogether.
Please, is there a way to get the music that plays in your videos? Please include them in credits or point us to the direction where we can get those tracks, both the intro and the outro tracks, please!
He shows the wiki page for the game. It came out in Japan 10 MONTHS before it released in the states. By the time we got that game, most people in Japan were already done with it I bet lol
@@kasuraga I know right? Sega published the fourth-generation home video game console Mickey Mania ten months before they did in the States. EDIT: But in all seriousness, that was the page for the Mega Drive, not for Mickey Mania. Mickey Mania was released in Japan on March 31st of 1995, and came out 5 months after the North American release.
That's generally not that hard of a modification, XD There's only marginal differences between PAL and NTSC consoles/computers on a hardware level most of the time. Really only the final stage of the video encoder chip is different, and the clock timing. Some consoles are even so similar you can install a switch to go back and forth between regions.
Hahaha, I love these cheeky little programmer games. I love doing that in my own programs. I swear about 1% of the stuff I work on will never be seen by anyone, but it makes me happy knowing its there. Great video as always, please never stop making videos because I love this channel.
Should make a list of everything you've done & how too activate it but not say what happens, unless it does something like delete files or progress in any way & release it some day too the web for people too investigate into.
Thanks for being a good sport about it :) I am actually kinda interested in knowing just how big the import market was back in the day. It’s always just come off a extremely user hostile to me when for example I would travel somewhere outside of Europe with my 3DS but wouldn’t be able to play any game that I would legally pay money for on the bloody system. For a handheld it seem especially mean spirited to for example unknowing parents buying a game for their kids.
Yeah, I don't understand what they were thinking. The gameboy isn't region locked. The GBA isn't either. Nor are the early DS variants. It's only from the DSi on that you got this. And now the switch is back to being region free, even though you could argue that it's a home console. (obviously it isn't - it's a hybrid that follows the trends of both, but still.) I really don't know why they felt the need to do it all of a sudden.
That little joke there about changing the region mid-run in reference to hackers... reminds me of a story about a carpenter who builds things, and would always insist on putting intricate details everywhere... even in the places people will not notice. One day, a child came into his workshop and asked him "Why do you do it? Nobody will ever know it's even there." And the carpenter responded "But *I* will know it's there, and I won't be satisfied unless I can say I put everything I can into every piece I make." Now, I'm sure I didn't remember this story correctly. I can say that for sure: I remembered the moral of the story, but I had to reconstruct the story around it. But what's important is the moral. That line. "I will know it's there." That resonated with me. It told me that *that* is what defines the passion of a true creator, that *that* is the bar you need to pass for you to know you're invested in your work, and that you're *dang good at it.* And at that point, nobody can take that away from you. Hearing that the message for hackers was something that was so unlikely to be found, yet it was something lighthearted and genuine, reminded me of that story. Thanks for that.
Or the guy put such things where people are unlikely to find it so that if the customer returns something to his store he can then verify it is one of his products and is unlikely to be a forgery.
Imagine this stuff with any other product. "Yeah, you bought this car, but we don't allow you to use it abroad. It would hurt sales." I don't doubt the coding is clever, but the business practice sucks.
Yeah, I know that. Too bad that my OG DS died before I started playing imports, so the 3DS family letting you play DS imports was quite a godsend to me.
not totally true if you brought from an import shop during Super Nintendo era, expect to pay like £100 for an import if you where from the UK for example
In Australia we used to import games from the UK. (or other parts of Europe) Because, well, for one thing, you think PAL game release schedules are bad in general? Australia gets another month or two tacked on sometimes (or used to anyway) Plus, of course, European PAL games tend to work without issue on Australian hardware. Then there's the fact that we had parallel importation explicitly as a protected right in consumer protection laws (hence region free DVD players and widespread availability of mod chips in the late 90's) But also it was just cheaper. Typical price for a game here back then was $100 (sometimes $120; For instance both Wing Commander 3 and something like Conker's bad fur day much later on were at this higher price.) The typical UK game price at the time was somewhere between 26 and 35 pounds. And the typical exchange rate was somewhere between 2.5 to 1 and 2 to 1, tending closer to 2:1 than 2.5:1 Now, if you double 35 you get 70. Even if you then add 50% for the worst case scenario, you still get 87 (vs 100). (and the cheaper games are akin to $52 in the best case - vs, again almost always $100) Yeah... But of course, when importing from Europe the region locking is irrelevant too, since, well, PAL is PAL for most purposes. So, as you can imagine such imports were very common. (still are in fact. I know a few dedicated online retailers that specialise in selling European stock to Australia.)
@@KuraIthys It sounds like TT could have potentially gotten into some trouble if the Japanese version of that game ended up catching on in Australia. Am I correct at all about that?
+72speedway technology companies do this more because they can than because they really have to. Nobody is out there saying we need to region-lock socks or clothing or even cars. Sometimes it's cheaper to buy designer clothes or other items in other countries, but there are a limited number of people who are going to want to buy the Japanese version of some game in America. I'm not saying the game companies are evil for doing it: it's a competitive industry and they're trying to get all the money they can. But if every government in the world outlawed all forms of region locking tomorrow, all the sectors that currently engage in it would adapt and do just fine. The more likely outcome is that prices would go up in some countries, down in others, and some items wouldn't get a local release at all.
>With the advent of emulators, we knew it'd be only a matter of time until people found our way... Here I am thinking this was random ol' enthusiast but it looks like we've got the dev himself! Quite the nice surprise!
I know that. I watched the video, I've installed a region switch on my own MegaDrive. I'm just saying that I strongly dislike region locking. I understand it's original purpose, but it's just a barrier of entry for some fantastic games, especially when they were only released in one region or another. Almost all my consoles are modded to bypass region locking restrictions not because I have any intention of running pirated copies, but because I want to say, run a PAL PS2 game that has no NTSC counterpart on my NTSC PS2.
@@SatoshiMatrix1 no one mentioned pirated copies. Lol. Only mentions of the import market. I also have region switches on most of my consoles that need it. My Saturn being the most common one because all the great RPGs that never saw a release over here and yeah I can play them using the AR, but damn that A/V sync is a pain.
A/V sync? I take it you live in an NTSC region then. Most PAL televisions from the mid 90's onwards (And many of them even earlier than that) can handle NTSC signals just fine, so it really stopped being relevant there... (which is why later consoles often have 'PAL 60' as an option in their settings - which is a effectively a 60 hz NTSC signal but with PAL colour encoding.) Personally don't see the point of using region switching on my own consoles because of that. Especially for some of them where modding a console could cost as much as just buying a second console from the other region...
Region locking is thankfully a thing of the past thanks to digitally released content. But seriously look at the difference in years. Japan got it 2 years before everyone else. Today its a few days to hours
Was wondering when the next of your videos was being released. I'm loving them! You're a clever guy, certainly showing people a lot of what they want to see my man!
That's _Leander,_ Gabe. They etched a hole in the floppy-disk platter with a laser and instruct the machine to write to that sector. If the write succeeds, it knows it's not a genuine disk. If the write fails out, it knows the disk is genuine. But good try, buddy. Also, I have always wanted to incinerate Mickey Mouse with a laser.
He explained this in "why punching Sonic cartridge gives you a level select". Essentially the time warps occur randomly if there's ever an error in the code.
there is only one thing I miss about region locking, and is that understanding and fiddling around with the hardware/software to make it run *can* be fun
Now this is the kind of code bits I really like. It is the kind of stuff that makes hacking and decompiling heaps of fun. It is like the digital version of exploring, finding hidden secrets & etc *^^*
I know a lot of games simply ran slower with exception to the music. Sonic, for example, was just slowed down. The problem was that most old games fell into two categories. Discrete movement which could rarely be scaled, or physics locked which required a lot of testing. If the game used discrete movement, that means things happened on a grid where movement was whole integers. Some developers tried to scale games like this, but it rarely went well. One major failed attempt at scaling came from Nintendo. They tried to scale Super Mario 3, but the end result was that some game mechanics were altered, like Mario not being able to jump quite as high, and the game still ended up running slightly slower. Physics based games often used floating point numbers that could simply be scaled a factor of 6/5, *however* old games almost always tied frame rate to physics tick rate. This means that scaling up would have the same impact as reduce time steps; more glitches and less actuate physics. If you done this, you might get lucky and the game still works perfectly, but it would require tones of testing to make sure you didn't break the game. So in the end, most developers just slowed the games down. The Pal market was relatively small, so most companies viewed any sales from there as a bonus rather than target. Even Sega, who was doing best in Pal with their first system, pretty much wrote pal off. Still, I would like to hear GameHut's opinion on it.
@@fungo6631 You seem to be confused on a couple points. First off, fixed point falls under discrete which I talked about; it is just integers by another name. Second, this was the generation where floating point became common. Neither the SNES or Genus had it built into the system, but they both used floating point co-processors in the games/add-ons. Third, hardware support isn't required for floats. Sure it is faster, but the IEEE standard float was built around what had became common programing shortcuts. If you leave out all the safety checks, ADDF is just 3 integer operations.
@@amirabudubai2279 What the fuck are you smoking? The SNES and Megadrive didn't have any FPU equipped enhancement chips. If they had, they were used in maybe 1 or 2 games. The SuperFX was integer only.
Generic. Oh a PAL game, well we want GENERIC, so no run. oh a NTSC game, we want GENERIC, so no run. No games are region GENERIC, so no games will run !
The jumpers basically connect to a 0V or +5V. Based on what voltage the hardware sees is what the game will use. If none of the jumpers connect, it would be treated as 0V, so it wold use the Japan Language and NTSC Display. This guide goes into more details about it. mdpal60.net/wiki/megadrive/regionmod/start
I have to say, your videos are one of the most interesting videos i've seen. Even those with games i didnt grow up with, its still very entertaining to watch. Cant wait for more crash twinsanity prototype videos. I also hope you have some crash bandicoot wrath of cortex prototypes. That game has a very special place in my heart, because it was my first ever PS2 game.
I've never particularly understood region locking features. Then again I've lived more than half of my life in a country whose consumer protection laws explicitly protect the right of people to parallel import products. (eg, get them from another country where it may be cheaper). - this law led amongst other things to the widespread availability of region free DVD players (either region free by default or easily unlockable with a code), and the massive proliferation of people offering console mod chips legally. Around 2000 or so you could almost find mod chips for sale on every street corner. But above all what I don't really get about it is that it's not really stopping anyone in the first place. It's less of a defense and more of a minor hurdle. I mean, in 1994 I owned a device for my SNES that allowed playing imported games. It was really easy to get hold of. But more to the point, if you see my desk right this second you'll see a Super Famicom sitting in close proximity to a PAL SNES console; That, more than anything else is what I mean - there's nothing stopping people that bought games from other regions from also just buying the console from other regions (lots of people in the UK had Japanese Turbographx 16 consoles as opposed to US or actual European models - mostly due to impatience.) This is especially the case in Europe, where televisions capable of showing both PAL and NTSC signals spread rapidly, and thus there's no real impediment to using an imported console. (Case in point I was using a PAL television made in 1998 with my Super famicom until last year and it worked without the slightest issue. - now I use a more modern PAL television, but the same thing applies. NTSC or PAL really doesn't matter) Anyway, my point is, since presumably all you can reasonably detect is the console itself, this only seems to deter people from trying to import games to run on a local region console, yet there's nothing stopping them from running it on the console from the region they got the game from... At best, it's a half-baked protection that seems kinda silly. (and most modern consoles forgo any such protection anyway.)
Australia. The laws have become slightly distorted in more recent times, I think because we signed a trade agreement that meant we were suddenly expected to obey the DMCA as defined by American law, even though that flat out contradicts local pre-existing laws. I guess what we have now is some kind of nasty mess that simultaniously says parallel imports are legal, all the copy protection circumvention methods already available are legal, but actually cracking the region/copy protection on newer devices is illegal. (By the way, if you've ever cracked a DVD-ROM drive to remove region lockout by flashing the firmware, there is a very high probability what you actually did was re-flash the firmware to Australian specifications. Yeah... That's how widespread it got - at least with DVD's.) Go figure. That's international treaties for you. XD
Were you guys also responsible for the PS1 port "timeless adventures of mickey mouse"? if so, is there any types of eastereggs in that game that you think nobody has found yet?
Quite impressive that you preserved the original code for Mickey Mania after all these years; you probably never thought at the time you wrote it that you'd one day get to share parts of it with the entire world via TH-cam.
I remember when I first read about this on TCRF and I just thought that was such a weird thing. It was cool to hear about it from the guy who developed it
I've released a couple of things on Gameboy cartridge (as homebrew in recent years, not commercial games). Gameboy is region free, but there are very rare clone systems. I detect those in my releases and show an Easter egg. Just like with the cheeky message in the Mickey game, very few if any people would have seen these Easter eggs.
@@stoicvampirepig6063 The GB Boy, GB Boy Colour as well as the newer GBA clones are fairly common. I'm talking about the ones from the '90s: Game Fighter, Bitman/Fortune 3000B. Those are hard to come by these days
I wonder what guys like you could do with modern hardware. Seems the innovation and crafty sideways thinking is long dead because now if a game goes above spec (for PC at least) they just change the listed spec requirements for your PC or if storage space runs out, they just change the required storage space needed. The crazy stuff you guys pulled off with such limited hardware AND firmware/software is nothing short of amazing.
Funny that I become a fan of a guy who took part in creating a game that defined my childhood! Even though I SUCKED at this game and actually was for some reason freaked out by the Steamboat Willie level xD
I doubt he will, Mega Turrican was developed by Factor 5 not Traveller's Tales so I'm pretty sure that Jon had no involvement with that game so he probably wouldn't be able to discuss something for a game that he had no involvement with, a better bet would be to ask for a coding secrets talking about the scaling and rotation effect used in Puggsy which Jon did develop.
How is keeping someone who legitimately bought the game from playing the game on the system they bought, but is a different region sticking it to hackers?
Loving the in depth videos. You are probably aware of the retro community building FPGA replicas of hardware. There are some questions of what in the VDP changes when the 'region jumpers' are changed. Do you have any documentation? The current Megadrive 'Core' runs only in NTSC and we would like to know what changes to implement PAL. This is on the MiST & MiSTER FPGA boards. Thanks for your time.
Man, the comments section is full of you people. I'll copy what I wrote before... That's... No... You're either insane, conceited, or extremely naive. I hope it's the latter, because then you could at least be educated, you complete ding-dong. First up, the publishers probably asked for this. And it's not 'anti consumer' _anything._ They're a company and they have to protect their bottom-line. Second up, what's anti-consumer about "It took us 9 months and $2500 in licenses for the proprietary code and _Silicon Graphics_ machines to make this thing that Disney wanted, but we *don't want people to not pay us* for our effort"? Are you the kind of person who thinks that _everything_ should be free while still wanting companies to push products out, fuelled by nothing but wings and prayers? Please learn some business ethics before you spout off this prattle again.
@@Noxedwin You start by using an ad-hominem attack on people, classy. For one thing Insane people aren't automatically wrong when they say things. If an insane person says 2+2 = 4 that doesn't make it false. As for conceited you seem pretty proud of yourself so you seem to fit that descriptor rather well. Naive? ha. First off, I don't care what publishers ask for. Publishers ask for a lot of anti-consumer things. I can defend Loot Boxes in games with this logic. Sure they have to protect their bottom line, but that is merely an excuse. You are making excuses for them and poor ones at that. Second if you bought it from Japan, contrary to popular belief you are STILL buying a copy of their game. I know, shocking concept right? Do you think Japanese carts come out of thin air or something? Every one sold makes them money. Third are you the kind of idiot who thinks making excuses for companies that want to make money no matter how greedy they are, they don't just want some money, they want ALL of the money. Again, I ask you, where were the Japanese carts coming from?? They weren't bootlegs, they were produced by a publisher over there. And if they were bootlegs they would have been cracked to work on different regions. If you buy a game from another region, you are still buying it. I think you fail to grasp that. If they made NO money from those sales at all they simply would not even bother allowing it to be published it there. You are an idiot if you don't realise that. Sure they might make a little less money, but they wouldn't be getting no money at all. Also how do you account for modern consoles being region free, if games from Japan are so threatening to peoples business why would they even bother?? And you end with an ironic message about learning, I think you should learn. Finally: As for the bottom line argument, consumers have to protect that too and that means getting things cheaper if they can. Oh boo hoo, the publisher in europe got less money because people imported, let me play a tiny violin. Good luck in the future my friend, but your arguments are pathetic.
When you do videos about mickey mania I just get overly satisfied knowing that you will reveal the coding secrets and how it works within the game despite me not knowing anything about programming. Great job I'm hoping to see some more videos about Mickey
I suspect the Brazil Mega Drive uses the same Region and Display settings as the American Genesis (English | 60Hz). The only difference between the Brazil and American consoles is the colour carrier for composite.
Did you made Bram stoker's Dracula for GENESIS/SNES along with Andy Ingram? By the way the AVGN said that the game was made by Fred Fuchs, so are you Fred Fuchs?
reminds me of the anti piracy jon and the team did in puggsy "play a version on cartridge instead of this silly copy until then bye... travellers tales 93" along with the creepy music funny stuff.
I have a question : why does it bother game producer their game was sold in other regions ? If a japanese game was bought in japan and shipped to us/eu, it's still a game sold. So, why is it a thing to avoid ?
The worst thing about Japanese cartridges is having to ruin your cartridge slot, though... BTW, are PAL and NTSC-U versions (though having different ROMs) essentially the same? I can run my PAL release in 60 Hz without any restrictions or speed issues.
With PAL games, they can fall into 3 categories: 1 - Not optimized for PAL 2 - Optimized for PAL Only 3 - Optimized for PAL and NTSC Sonic 1 is a famous example where if you run in PAL, the game runs 20% slower (but playable). These type of games will work fine in NTSC. Earthworm Jim PAL release was optimized to run at a similar speed to NTSC. Running the game in NTSC will cause the game to run 20% faster (usually unplayable). Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage was programmed so it detects what display the console is. So the game will work fine on NTSC / PAL. Some games like Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine have region lock, but I can ensure you works fine in NTSC or PAL. The best thing to do is download the ROM and switch displays. It will be clear what category it falls.
I remember commenting on this in a past video. I'm glad to see that you finally covered it. I've always wondered why that region lock message was there.
This trick was used in a lot of Mega Drive games later on. One of my favorite Mega Drive games is Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and of course it uses this method to only run for that region. Interestingly this game was optimized to run in NTSC and PAL, so bypassing the region check isn't an issue. Interestingly, Mean Bean Machine is a modified rom of Puyo Puyo (although it includes extra stuff like passwords). Puyo Puyo had the ability to unlock a Sound Test by meeting one of two conditions (input code or beating story mode). The people who worked on Mean Bean Machine modified the code so the Sound Test won't unlock if the region is USA (Eng | NTSC) or Europe (Eng | PAL). They even locked some unused songs if the console wasn't Japanese. More information can be found here: tcrf.net/Dr._Robotnik%27s_Mean_Bean_Machine_(Genesis)#Sound_Test Why they locked the Sound Test and didn't just modify it or remove it entirely is very strange. Although what's really lazy is some of the original graphics get loaded, and then over-written with the new ones. I have to play Mickey Mania. Looks like an awesome game!
You could not just add or remove bytes anywere. These are Assembler times. There was a decent chance you needed those bytes as padding for something else. You needed to know *exactly* at wich byte each subrotine started and ended. And you needed to know that at writing time. There was no compiler or pointer variables that could keep track of those things for you. To this day, you handle naked pointers like a live hand grenade. Compared to that, assembler code is a storehouse or factory full of live hand grenades. You were happy about every second it did not explode in your face. There is also the option that part of that screen subroutine was used as another subroutine (you could and sometimes had to do stuff like that in Assembler days). All those tricks about compressing textures? Yeah, you applied those to your code as well!
Yes, the region mod requires you to cut traces on the PCB and then solder wires and switches in place of those traces plus additional ones. Then you can change your console to JP/PAL/NTSC modes when it was once only able to do one.
One thing that won't be missed from retro hardware: Region locking
It only very recently stopped being a thing. 3DS is the current most modern console that still has region locking. Microsoft and Nintendo only just now got on the region free train for their Xbox One and Switch respectively.
For PS3, I remember you could get around region restrictions by making a new profile with a mailing address from the desired region. At least, that worked for the PS Store and you could buy any game not available in the US that way.
G&R Gaming I remember doing that to get some of the Miku games.
The game "Joysound Dive" also was region locked on PS3. Way of the Samurai 3 is also rumored to be region locked on later consoles somehow; but I haven't seen confirmation on it.
One thing I miss with modern systems: Installing hardware region / language switches
Changes statement from, "Japan get all the exclusive games" to "Japan get all the exclusive Easter eggs!"
@scrubthispie hey don’t be mean to our friend here
edit: wait why would you delete your comment
Oh...this comment has some how become
an NTSC comment
Oh, your comment is somehow in black and white
Y'all, this comment has somehow become
an NTSC comment, pardner.
**suspicious gunshot noises emit from local school building**
Nice! I like that cheeky message. Here in the US, importing anything from Japan cost about $70 at the lowest. When Mickey Mania came out, the US version cost much less than that. I'm not aware if the Japanese version preceded it in release. Thank goodness for near-simultaneous launches in most regions these days, negating this issue altogether.
how does this comment not have at least one reply saying "wow game sack i didnt kno u guise watch game hut too!"
@Sato
Game Sack? Never heard of them.
Please, is there a way to get the music that plays in your videos? Please include them in credits or point us to the direction where we can get those tracks, both the intro and the outro tracks, please!
He shows the wiki page for the game. It came out in Japan 10 MONTHS before it released in the states. By the time we got that game, most people in Japan were already done with it I bet lol
@@kasuraga
I know right? Sega published the fourth-generation home video game console Mickey Mania ten months before they did in the States.
EDIT: But in all seriousness, that was the page for the Mega Drive, not for Mickey Mania. Mickey Mania was released in Japan on March 31st of 1995, and came out 5 months after the North American release.
*somehow* became an NTSC machine!
That's generally not that hard of a modification, XD
There's only marginal differences between PAL and NTSC consoles/computers on a hardware level most of the time.
Really only the final stage of the video encoder chip is different, and the clock timing.
Some consoles are even so similar you can install a switch to go back and forth between regions.
We're gonna need a director's cut.
I think the point they were making is that he wrote it as "some how" rather than the correct "somehow"
Indeed.
nope
This is honestly in the top 5 channels on TH-cam. You just can’t find this kind of Sega Genesis/Mega Drive expertise anywhere else.
Hahaha, I love these cheeky little programmer games. I love doing that in my own programs. I swear about 1% of the stuff I work on will never be seen by anyone, but it makes me happy knowing its there.
Great video as always, please never stop making videos because I love this channel.
You love Cheeki Breeki programmers.
Should make a list of everything you've done & how too activate it but not say what happens, unless it does something like delete files or progress in any way & release it some day too the web for people too investigate into.
Just spoil if after a few months have passed.
If that number is 1% and nowhere near 99% then I doubt you're a real programmer :p
I'm curious what you work on, because in my career, I suspect less than 50% of what I've worked on has been seen by anyone (outside of QA)!
Love that melody in the background! It's like the "signature" of the channel!
i love that tune too...reminds my childhood
what is that tune?
I wish i knew! Maybe Jon Burton wrote it himself! It has a nostalgic feeling.
It is "Is That You or Are You You" by Chris Zabriskie, you can find it on TH-cam Audio Library.
Cool! Thanks man!
As a kid I thought those modded Megadrives with a region switch were voodoo magic. Can't believe it was just a jumper on the motherboard!
I was surprised to learn the GameCube has a similar mod. I thought it'd be a lot harder on a more modern system.
That trick with changing messages should work on Taiwanese Sega clones with region switching.
Thanks for being a good sport about it :)
I am actually kinda interested in knowing just how big the import market was back in the day.
It’s always just come off a extremely user hostile to me when for example I would travel somewhere outside of Europe with my 3DS but wouldn’t be able to play any game that I would legally pay money for on the bloody system. For a handheld it seem especially mean spirited to for example unknowing parents buying a game for their kids.
Yeah, I don't understand what they were thinking.
The gameboy isn't region locked.
The GBA isn't either.
Nor are the early DS variants.
It's only from the DSi on that you got this.
And now the switch is back to being region free, even though you could argue that it's a home console. (obviously it isn't - it's a hybrid that follows the trends of both, but still.)
I really don't know why they felt the need to do it all of a sudden.
That little joke there about changing the region mid-run in reference to hackers... reminds me of a story about a carpenter who builds things, and would always insist on putting intricate details everywhere... even in the places people will not notice. One day, a child came into his workshop and asked him "Why do you do it? Nobody will ever know it's even there."
And the carpenter responded "But *I* will know it's there, and I won't be satisfied unless I can say I put everything I can into every piece I make."
Now, I'm sure I didn't remember this story correctly. I can say that for sure: I remembered the moral of the story, but I had to reconstruct the story around it. But what's important is the moral. That line. "I will know it's there." That resonated with me. It told me that *that* is what defines the passion of a true creator, that *that* is the bar you need to pass for you to know you're invested in your work, and that you're *dang good at it.* And at that point, nobody can take that away from you.
Hearing that the message for hackers was something that was so unlikely to be found, yet it was something lighthearted and genuine, reminded me of that story. Thanks for that.
Or the guy put such things where people are unlikely to find it so that if the customer returns something to his store he can then verify it is one of his products and is unlikely to be a forgery.
Good point.
Details like this definitely works as copy protection.
I call it my ocd
I remember reading about this on TCRF and wondering why there would be a region check _after_ the system was already booted.
Imagine this stuff with any other product. "Yeah, you bought this car, but we don't allow you to use it abroad. It would hurt sales."
I don't doubt the coding is clever, but the business practice sucks.
That's actually a thig with cars too. If you try to import a car to a different country you need to pay some pretty hefty fees.
@@ano1nymus1 Yeah, fees. But you can still use it just fine.
Oh, this car has SOMEHOW teleported to the correct region!
That money goes to the government. They might pave roads or build hospitals with that money. It's not lining some greedy CEOs pockets.
Actually something similar happens with cars , they dont allow them to be sold online and such
I was expecting this check to disable some crucial thing that allows you to beat the second level.
This region locking needs to stop existing
Great video like always
Nintendo's Switch doesn't have region locking
@Pedro Morais Interestinly enough all 3DS models are region free when playing DS cartridges.
@@AgsmaJustAgsma That's because the DS was region free to begin with. However DSi Enhanced games have region locking on 3DS/DSi systems
Yeah, I know that. Too bad that my OG DS died before I started playing imports, so the 3DS family letting you play DS imports was quite a godsend to me.
I think developers still have the option to implement region lock on PS4 and Xbox One, but they don't anymore, because the market has changed.
I like how I read this on TCRF years ago...and you're the one that coded it! Neat!
Imported consoles and games used to be cheaper? Well things really changed.
not totally true if you brought from an import shop during Super Nintendo era, expect to pay like £100 for an import if you where from the UK for example
In Australia we used to import games from the UK. (or other parts of Europe)
Because, well, for one thing, you think PAL game release schedules are bad in general? Australia gets another month or two tacked on sometimes (or used to anyway)
Plus, of course, European PAL games tend to work without issue on Australian hardware.
Then there's the fact that we had parallel importation explicitly as a protected right in consumer protection laws (hence region free DVD players and widespread availability of mod chips in the late 90's)
But also it was just cheaper.
Typical price for a game here back then was $100 (sometimes $120; For instance both Wing Commander 3 and something like Conker's bad fur day much later on were at this higher price.)
The typical UK game price at the time was somewhere between 26 and 35 pounds.
And the typical exchange rate was somewhere between 2.5 to 1 and 2 to 1, tending closer to 2:1 than 2.5:1
Now, if you double 35 you get 70.
Even if you then add 50% for the worst case scenario, you still get 87 (vs 100).
(and the cheaper games are akin to $52 in the best case - vs, again almost always $100)
Yeah...
But of course, when importing from Europe the region locking is irrelevant too, since, well, PAL is PAL for most purposes.
So, as you can imagine such imports were very common.
(still are in fact. I know a few dedicated online retailers that specialise in selling European stock to Australia.)
@@KuraIthys It sounds like TT could have potentially gotten into some trouble if the Japanese version of that game ended up catching on in Australia. Am I correct at all about that?
+72speedway technology companies do this more because they can than because they really have to. Nobody is out there saying we need to region-lock socks or clothing or even cars. Sometimes it's cheaper to buy designer clothes or other items in other countries, but there are a limited number of people who are going to want to buy the Japanese version of some game in America.
I'm not saying the game companies are evil for doing it: it's a competitive industry and they're trying to get all the money they can. But if every government in the world outlawed all forms of region locking tomorrow, all the sectors that currently engage in it would adapt and do just fine. The more likely outcome is that prices would go up in some countries, down in others, and some items wouldn't get a local release at all.
It still is, that's why so many people tried to buy games from the Russia region.
>With the advent of emulators, we knew it'd be only a matter of time until people found our way...
Here I am thinking this was random ol' enthusiast but it looks like we've got the dev himself! Quite the nice surprise!
I hate region locking as a consumer. Cheers to you for not completely disallowing users to change their region to their liking!
It's not his choice. It's an engineering decision of the console itself.
He couldn't even if he wanted to... and he explains why.
I know that. I watched the video, I've installed a region switch on my own MegaDrive. I'm just saying that I strongly dislike region locking. I understand it's original purpose, but it's just a barrier of entry for some fantastic games, especially when they were only released in one region or another.
Almost all my consoles are modded to bypass region locking restrictions not because I have any intention of running pirated copies, but because I want to say, run a PAL PS2 game that has no NTSC counterpart on my NTSC PS2.
@@SatoshiMatrix1 no one mentioned pirated copies. Lol. Only mentions of the import market.
I also have region switches on most of my consoles that need it. My Saturn being the most common one because all the great RPGs that never saw a release over here and yeah I can play them using the AR, but damn that A/V sync is a pain.
A/V sync? I take it you live in an NTSC region then.
Most PAL televisions from the mid 90's onwards (And many of them even earlier than that) can handle NTSC signals just fine, so it really stopped being relevant there...
(which is why later consoles often have 'PAL 60' as an option in their settings - which is a effectively a 60 hz NTSC signal but with PAL colour encoding.)
Personally don't see the point of using region switching on my own consoles because of that.
Especially for some of them where modding a console could cost as much as just buying a second console from the other region...
Region locking is thankfully a thing of the past thanks to digitally released content.
But seriously look at the difference in years. Japan got it 2 years before everyone else. Today its a few days to hours
A lot of games today still have months of discrepancy.
@@mdude3
K
ok
Sometimes you have to translate it.
Digital released content can still be region locked.
What an amazing look into this, great work dude.
Was wondering when the next of your videos was being released. I'm loving them! You're a clever guy, certainly showing people a lot of what they want to see my man!
Couldn't shoot a laser at this one unfortunately.
That's _Leander,_ Gabe. They etched a hole in the floppy-disk platter with a laser and instruct the machine to write to that sector. If the write succeeds, it knows it's not a genuine disk. If the write fails out, it knows the disk is genuine.
But good try, buddy.
Also, I have always wanted to incinerate Mickey Mouse with a laser.
Love this game channel. Full of great information been loving it
Found your channel because of Boundary Break, glad I did! Also, I used to love this game as a kid, even though I was horrible at it.
Now, all that is really left to explain is the time warps in Mickey Mania and why they trigger.
honestly if that isn't the same exact shit as 3d blast's "YOU FOUND THE SECRET LEVEL SELECT SCREEN" I don't know what is
Its something the Game triggers when It Crashes.
True, but I am more wondering what causes each specifically known crash.
He explained this in "why punching Sonic cartridge gives you a level select". Essentially the time warps occur randomly if there's ever an error in the code.
@@SgvSth each crash is very broad, like when it tries to divide by a number but that number is zero.
Why is there a raised pin on your MD's 68K? Doesn't look like the Overclock pin to me so curious about it.
I have read about this before. It's so cool how many things you have done that are popular in the game development community online!
watching all of these has reignited my interestin programming.Keep them coming:)
That's an excellent little trick. Even if it probably didn't stop many people, it's just a wonderful thing to do and very memorable, to boot.
there is only one thing I miss about region locking, and is that understanding and fiddling around with the hardware/software to make it run *can* be fun
Now this is the kind of code bits I really like. It is the kind of stuff that makes hacking and decompiling heaps of fun. It is like the digital version of exploring, finding hidden secrets & etc *^^*
Nice video as always.
But did you saw unlicensed ports of Mickey Mania and Toy story on Famicom? What do you think about them?
Did your games have any correction for the speed and resolution difference between 50Hz and 60Hz? If so, can you do a video on the changes?
I know a lot of games simply ran slower with exception to the music. Sonic, for example, was just slowed down. The problem was that most old games fell into two categories. Discrete movement which could rarely be scaled, or physics locked which required a lot of testing.
If the game used discrete movement, that means things happened on a grid where movement was whole integers. Some developers tried to scale games like this, but it rarely went well. One major failed attempt at scaling came from Nintendo. They tried to scale Super Mario 3, but the end result was that some game mechanics were altered, like Mario not being able to jump quite as high, and the game still ended up running slightly slower.
Physics based games often used floating point numbers that could simply be scaled a factor of 6/5, *however* old games almost always tied frame rate to physics tick rate. This means that scaling up would have the same impact as reduce time steps; more glitches and less actuate physics. If you done this, you might get lucky and the game still works perfectly, but it would require tones of testing to make sure you didn't break the game.
So in the end, most developers just slowed the games down. The Pal market was relatively small, so most companies viewed any sales from there as a bonus rather than target. Even Sega, who was doing best in Pal with their first system, pretty much wrote pal off.
Still, I would like to hear GameHut's opinion on it.
@@amirabudubai2279 They didn't use floating point numbers tho, they used fixed point numbers.
@@fungo6631 You seem to be confused on a couple points. First off, fixed point falls under discrete which I talked about; it is just integers by another name. Second, this was the generation where floating point became common. Neither the SNES or Genus had it built into the system, but they both used floating point co-processors in the games/add-ons. Third, hardware support isn't required for floats. Sure it is faster, but the IEEE standard float was built around what had became common programing shortcuts. If you leave out all the safety checks, ADDF is just 3 integer operations.
@@amirabudubai2279 What the fuck are you smoking? The SNES and Megadrive didn't have any FPU equipped enhancement chips. If they had, they were used in maybe 1 or 2 games. The SuperFX was integer only.
But what happens if NONE of the jumpers connect?
Generic.
Oh a PAL game, well we want GENERIC, so no run.
oh a NTSC game, we want GENERIC, so no run.
No games are region GENERIC, so no games will run !
@@televisionandcheese Unless said game doesn't give a shit about region data and doesn't check to begin with.
The jumpers basically connect to a 0V or +5V. Based on what voltage the hardware sees is what the game will use. If none of the jumpers connect, it would be treated as 0V, so it wold use the Japan Language and NTSC Display.
This guide goes into more details about it. mdpal60.net/wiki/megadrive/regionmod/start
Awesome question. Never considered that.
Thanks for the answer, RadioShadow. Will definitely give that a read.
I have to say, your videos are one of the most interesting videos i've seen. Even those with games i didnt grow up with, its still very entertaining to watch. Cant wait for more crash twinsanity prototype videos. I also hope you have some crash bandicoot wrath of cortex prototypes. That game has a very special place in my heart, because it was my first ever PS2 game.
Your creativity is awesome !!
Love your vids
I've never particularly understood region locking features.
Then again I've lived more than half of my life in a country whose consumer protection laws explicitly protect the right of people to parallel import products. (eg, get them from another country where it may be cheaper). - this law led amongst other things to the widespread availability of region free DVD players (either region free by default or easily unlockable with a code), and the massive proliferation of people offering console mod chips legally.
Around 2000 or so you could almost find mod chips for sale on every street corner.
But above all what I don't really get about it is that it's not really stopping anyone in the first place. It's less of a defense and more of a minor hurdle.
I mean, in 1994 I owned a device for my SNES that allowed playing imported games. It was really easy to get hold of.
But more to the point, if you see my desk right this second you'll see a Super Famicom sitting in close proximity to a PAL SNES console;
That, more than anything else is what I mean - there's nothing stopping people that bought games from other regions from also just buying the console from other regions (lots of people in the UK had Japanese Turbographx 16 consoles as opposed to US or actual European models - mostly due to impatience.)
This is especially the case in Europe, where televisions capable of showing both PAL and NTSC signals spread rapidly, and thus there's no real impediment to using an imported console.
(Case in point I was using a PAL television made in 1998 with my Super famicom until last year and it worked without the slightest issue. - now I use a more modern PAL television, but the same thing applies. NTSC or PAL really doesn't matter)
Anyway, my point is, since presumably all you can reasonably detect is the console itself, this only seems to deter people from trying to import games to run on a local region console, yet there's nothing stopping them from running it on the console from the region they got the game from...
At best, it's a half-baked protection that seems kinda silly.
(and most modern consoles forgo any such protection anyway.)
Which country?
Here in the USA, it's illegal for retailers to sell region free dvd players
Australia.
The laws have become slightly distorted in more recent times, I think because we signed a trade agreement that meant we were suddenly expected to obey the DMCA as defined by American law, even though that flat out contradicts local pre-existing laws.
I guess what we have now is some kind of nasty mess that simultaniously says parallel imports are legal, all the copy protection circumvention methods already available are legal, but actually cracking the region/copy protection on newer devices is illegal.
(By the way, if you've ever cracked a DVD-ROM drive to remove region lockout by flashing the firmware, there is a very high probability what you actually did was re-flash the firmware to Australian specifications. Yeah... That's how widespread it got - at least with DVD's.)
Go figure.
That's international treaties for you. XD
The way I see it, if multinational corps can take advantage of cheaper markets and cheap labor to turn a bigger profit or get cheaper parts, so can I.
Were you guys also responsible for the PS1 port "timeless adventures of mickey mouse"? if so, is there any types of eastereggs in that game that you think nobody has found yet?
Quite impressive that you preserved the original code for Mickey Mania after all these years; you probably never thought at the time you wrote it that you'd one day get to share parts of it with the entire world via TH-cam.
Whoa, I've read about that on TCRF, but I was wondering how that works. Good job!
I remember when I first read about this on TCRF and I just thought that was such a weird thing. It was cool to hear about it from the guy who developed it
I LOVE THIS SERIES! ESPECIALLY HOW Sonic 3D Blast runs the intro on the Genesis.
Hi, can you tell me what is the name of background music?
EDIT: Nevermind, found it: Chris Zabriskie - Is that you or are you you
I have been waiting for this one. :)
I've released a couple of things on Gameboy cartridge (as homebrew in recent years, not commercial games). Gameboy is region free, but there are very rare clone systems. I detect those in my releases and show an Easter egg. Just like with the cheeky message in the Mickey game, very few if any people would have seen these Easter eggs.
Very rare?
Don't you mean really quite numerous?
I've got four types of gameboy clone...all were very cheap and easy to get.
@@stoicvampirepig6063 The GB Boy, GB Boy Colour as well as the newer GBA clones are fairly common. I'm talking about the ones from the '90s: Game Fighter, Bitman/Fortune 3000B. Those are hard to come by these days
Gameboygenius so what were the messages that you put there
When are you going to make videosmwithoutntatbstupidalarmclocksound
Much funnier and less frightening than the one you put in Puggsy.
H a h a
[Gamehut uploads a Coding Secrets video]
[I s T h a t Y o u O r A r e Y o u Y o u I n t e n s i f i e s]
Just for curiosity, do you have any words about the PlayStation port?
I've got one.
Unnecessary.
Better easter egg than the entire ready player one movie :)
2:40
Might I ask why the screw is just sitting there in the shell?
Is it part of the megadrive?
There's a loose screw next to those jumpers in your mega drive
I wonder what guys like you could do with modern hardware. Seems the innovation and crafty sideways thinking is long dead because now if a game goes above spec (for PC at least) they just change the listed spec requirements for your PC or if storage space runs out, they just change the required storage space needed. The crazy stuff you guys pulled off with such limited hardware AND firmware/software is nothing short of amazing.
Funny that I become a fan of a guy who took part in creating a game that defined my childhood! Even though I SUCKED at this game and actually was for some reason freaked out by the Steamboat Willie level xD
Watching these makes md wish I knew more assembly. Love this!
You should give _EXAPUNKS_ a go if you like puzzles. It uses simple assembly concepts. It got me started learning about it.
That Same message popped up when I tried to play a European Sonic spin ball on a JP Sega Genesis
Mega Drive. It's only called "Genesis" in America
Some further development, like bug fixes, had been done in between the JP and US releases?
GameHut, will you do a Coding Secrets episode on the scaling and rotation of Mega Turrican for the Sega Genesis?
I doubt he will, Mega Turrican was developed by Factor 5 not Traveller's Tales so I'm pretty sure that Jon had no involvement with that game so he probably wouldn't be able to discuss something for a game that he had no involvement with, a better bet would be to ask for a coding secrets talking about the scaling and rotation effect used in Puggsy which Jon did develop.
Really cool, thanks for that bit of inside knowlige
Simply beautiful
How is keeping someone who legitimately bought the game from playing the game on the system they bought, but is a different region sticking it to hackers?
Loving the in depth videos.
You are probably aware of the retro community building FPGA replicas of hardware. There are some questions of what in the VDP changes when the 'region jumpers' are changed. Do you have any documentation?
The current Megadrive 'Core' runs only in NTSC and we would like to know what changes to implement PAL.
This is on the MiST & MiSTER FPGA boards.
Thanks for your time.
I've been waiting for this one
Brilliant video! Very cheeky I love it!!!
Your videos exploring the Computer Science behind TTs game development, is absolutely fascinating. :D
I think this secret was mentioned in a DidYouKnowGaming Extra episode...
I don't remember though.
Still, cheeky!
Nice. I thought it was going to be a video how you stopped hackers bypassing even hacks like this.
amazing video. how come you worked on so many sega classics? can you tell us a bit about your history?
Traveller's Tales were hot stuff back then. This guy was at their very top.
Such a dickish thing to do, region locks are anti consumer.
Man, the comments section is full of you people. I'll copy what I wrote before...
That's... No... You're either insane, conceited, or extremely naive. I hope it's the latter, because then you could at least be educated, you complete ding-dong.
First up, the publishers probably asked for this. And it's not 'anti consumer' _anything._ They're a company and they have to protect their bottom-line.
Second up, what's anti-consumer about "It took us 9 months and $2500 in licenses for the proprietary code and _Silicon Graphics_ machines to make this thing that Disney wanted, but we *don't want people to not pay us* for our effort"?
Are you the kind of person who thinks that _everything_ should be free while still wanting companies to push products out, fuelled by nothing but wings and prayers?
Please learn some business ethics before you spout off this prattle again.
@@Noxedwin You start by using an ad-hominem attack on people, classy. For one thing Insane people aren't automatically wrong when they say things. If an insane person says 2+2 = 4 that doesn't make it false. As for conceited you seem pretty proud of yourself so you seem to fit that descriptor rather well. Naive? ha.
First off, I don't care what publishers ask for. Publishers ask for a lot of anti-consumer things. I can defend Loot Boxes in games with this logic. Sure they have to protect their bottom line, but that is merely an excuse. You are making excuses for them and poor ones at that.
Second if you bought it from Japan, contrary to popular belief you are STILL buying a copy of their game. I know, shocking concept right? Do you think Japanese carts come out of thin air or something? Every one sold makes them money.
Third are you the kind of idiot who thinks making excuses for companies that want to make money no matter how greedy they are, they don't just want some money, they want ALL of the money. Again, I ask you, where were the Japanese carts coming from?? They weren't bootlegs, they were produced by a publisher over there. And if they were bootlegs they would have been cracked to work on different regions.
If you buy a game from another region, you are still buying it. I think you fail to grasp that. If they made NO money from those sales at all they simply would not even bother allowing it to be published it there. You are an idiot if you don't realise that.
Sure they might make a little less money, but they wouldn't be getting no money at all.
Also how do you account for modern consoles being region free, if games from Japan are so threatening to peoples business why would they even bother??
And you end with an ironic message about learning, I think you should learn.
Finally: As for the bottom line argument, consumers have to protect that too and that means getting things cheaper if they can. Oh boo hoo, the publisher in europe got less money because people imported, let me play a tiny violin.
Good luck in the future my friend, but your arguments are pathetic.
I'm pretty sure this has been asked, but what's the music in all of these videos?
I hate region locking, but amusing messages like this are great. Love to see the little Easter Eggs like this that you put in.
Earthbound did it best IMO, although their solution wasn't just for region locking purposes but anti-piracy as well.
My megadrive is equipped with two switches and is PAL ASIA model so, I want jp cartridge of mickey mania now...
... But why?
When you do videos about mickey mania I just get overly satisfied knowing that you will reveal the coding secrets and how it works within the game despite me not knowing anything about programming.
Great job I'm hoping to see some more videos about Mickey
Great as always.
I remember reading the living shit out of the tcrf page for mickey mania and i couldnt figure out with my 12 year ould mind how this worked.
*HELP* my PSX Mickey Mania doesn't let me *save game*
There is any chances for Activision's Ultimate spider man Prototype Build? :)
Did Traveller's Tales work on that game?
Could have removed collision detection on a random platform to softlock the player.
He already did that in _Leander._
That's cleaver. But are there such locks on japan exclusive games?
did the code consider Brazil' PAL-M? it was 60hz after all.
I suspect the Brazil Mega Drive uses the same Region and Display settings as the American Genesis (English | 60Hz). The only difference between the Brazil and American consoles is the colour carrier for composite.
Oh... this machine some how become an ntsc mega drive system.
Did you made Bram stoker's Dracula for GENESIS/SNES along with Andy Ingram?
By the way the AVGN said that the game was made by Fred Fuchs, so are you Fred Fuchs?
Fred Fuchs was from the Castlevania NES game. XD
Why not just make a save file that'll prevent the game from working? Or did Mickey Mania use a password system?
Mickey Mania doesn't use either a save system nor password, it's one of those games where you have to beat the whole game in one session.
reminds me of the anti piracy jon and the team did in puggsy "play a version on cartridge instead of this silly copy until then bye... travellers tales 93" along with the creepy music funny stuff.
Man you are awesome 😂😂. I love when game creators add their own little secrets to the games
I have a question : why does it bother game producer their game was sold in other regions ? If a japanese game was bought in japan and shipped to us/eu, it's still a game sold. So, why is it a thing to avoid ?
Most likely similar to Demon Souls that was published in JP by sony, NA by Atlus, PAL by Namco. They all want the money for a sold game.
Okay, that was literally breaking the fourth wall lol
Did you put that message on other games? This sounds very familiar.
The worst thing about Japanese cartridges is having to ruin your cartridge slot, though... BTW, are PAL and NTSC-U versions (though having different ROMs) essentially the same? I can run my PAL release in 60 Hz without any restrictions or speed issues.
With PAL games, they can fall into 3 categories:
1 - Not optimized for PAL
2 - Optimized for PAL Only
3 - Optimized for PAL and NTSC
Sonic 1 is a famous example where if you run in PAL, the game runs 20% slower (but playable). These type of games will work fine in NTSC.
Earthworm Jim PAL release was optimized to run at a similar speed to NTSC. Running the game in NTSC will cause the game to run 20% faster (usually unplayable).
Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage was programmed so it detects what display the console is. So the game will work fine on NTSC / PAL. Some games like Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine have region lock, but I can ensure you works fine in NTSC or PAL.
The best thing to do is download the ROM and switch displays. It will be clear what category it falls.
Sonic 2 had the music optimized for PAL, but the gameplay is still 20% slower.
Ironically the Japanese version of this game is now by far the rarest and most expensive version!
Why not save the region on sram?
I remember commenting on this in a past video. I'm glad to see that you finally covered it. I've always wondered why that region lock message was there.
Why NTSC? Everyone in Europe used PAL.
That version was for the Japanese Mega Drive
This trick was used in a lot of Mega Drive games later on. One of my favorite Mega Drive games is Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and of course it uses this method to only run for that region. Interestingly this game was optimized to run in NTSC and PAL, so bypassing the region check isn't an issue.
Interestingly, Mean Bean Machine is a modified rom of Puyo Puyo (although it includes extra stuff like passwords). Puyo Puyo had the ability to unlock a Sound Test by meeting one of two conditions (input code or beating story mode). The people who worked on Mean Bean Machine modified the code so the Sound Test won't unlock if the region is USA (Eng | NTSC) or Europe (Eng | PAL). They even locked some unused songs if the console wasn't Japanese. More information can be found here: tcrf.net/Dr._Robotnik%27s_Mean_Bean_Machine_(Genesis)#Sound_Test
Why they locked the Sound Test and didn't just modify it or remove it entirely is very strange. Although what's really lazy is some of the original graphics get loaded, and then over-written with the new ones.
I have to play Mickey Mania. Looks like an awesome game!
You could not just add or remove bytes anywere. These are Assembler times. There was a decent chance you needed those bytes as padding for something else. You needed to know *exactly* at wich byte each subrotine started and ended. And you needed to know that at writing time. There was no compiler or pointer variables that could keep track of those things for you.
To this day, you handle naked pointers like a live hand grenade.
Compared to that, assembler code is a storehouse or factory full of live hand grenades. You were happy about every second it did not explode in your face.
There is also the option that part of that screen subroutine was used as another subroutine (you could and sometimes had to do stuff like that in Assembler days). All those tricks about compressing textures? Yeah, you applied those to your code as well!
Can you really call it hacking when you just change a setting already on the system?
Yes, the region mod requires you to cut traces on the PCB and then solder wires and switches in place of those traces plus additional ones. Then you can change your console to JP/PAL/NTSC modes when it was once only able to do one.
Well,he absolutely knows what he does
Awesome trivia :)