Regional Differences in Hardware (Part 2)

Regional Differences in Games (Part 1)




The Famicom and the NES

Though they played many of the same games, the Famicom and the NES were very different consoles for a variety of reasons. The Famicom was first released in Japan in 1983 as Nintendo’s first console that wasn’t a Pong clone console. It was fairly small in size and featured a maroon and white color scheme. The controller cords were short and hardwired to the rear of the system, and could be stored on the side of the console when not in use. The second controller had a microphone and volume slider instead of a set of Start and Select buttons. The power button slid forward and back, and the cartridge slot had a small flap to cover it which needed to be manually moved. There was a serial port on the front which was used for attaching the light gun and other accessories. Cartridges were plugged into the top of the system, just like the Atari and all consoles had been up till that point, and the carts came in many colors. The Famicom also had an Eject slider that popped the cartridges up.

The Disk System add-on was released in Japan just as the American NES was barely hitting shelves in the West. Though disk-based games added loading times, it also included the ability to save files and have bigger games with more content. It plugged into the cartridge slot of the Famicom and actually added an additional sound channel.

By contrast, the American version came out over 2 years later, so Nintendo redesigned the system to appeal to American consumers and made a few changes to the hardware. For starters, the whole system was changed to be a front-loading console to resemble a VCR in order to make it seem less like a video game machine (which included making the cover flap angled) and changing the color scheme to grey and black. The cartridges were also uniformly grey (except for unlicensed games and both Zelda games). The redesign also entailed reconfiguring the motherboard and making a few convenient upgrades. A lockout chip was added to combat piracy, composite video and audio ports were added to the RF Switch A/V port, and the controllers were made to be removable and their cords lengthened. The power switch was changed to a push-click button and an LED was added. An expansion port was built into the motherboard and could be accessed from the bottom of the system, but it was never used. Instead of having a disk-based peripheral, cartridges with expanded memory capabilities and battery backups were used instead.



The Super Famicom and the SNES

In late 1990, the 16-bit successor to the Famicom was released in Japan – the Super Famicom. And only 9 months later, North America was basking in the 16-bit graphical glory of the SNES, which was a much smaller span of time than the Famicom-NES gap. The regional differences make a rather short list. Internally, the motherboards were identical, and all of the differences were purely cosmetic changes to the outer shell of the system. In fact, the only thing stopping American and Japanese players from using each other’s games (besides the inability to read

a foreign language and the difficulty of obtaining them via mail in a pre-internet era) was the physical shape of the cartridge. Games from other regions could be played by either removing the ROM board from the cartridge and inserting it directly, or by removing the small plastic bumps surrounding the cartridge port.

The Super Famicom’s four controller buttons were all convex and colored with red, blue, green, and yellow. By contrast, the SNES featured two lavender and two purple buttons, with the lavender ones being concave to have a different tactile feel. The rest of the differences in the systems were just the particular shape and coloring in the hunk of plastic surrounding the main board.

The Nintendo 64

Finally, by 1996, the Nintendo 64 was released in North America only 3 months behind the Japanese date, and the only difference between the consoles was the position of two pieces of plastic that straddled the cartridge slot. This form of physical region locking was easily defeated by pliers back in the day, and now can be overcome with a $7 tray ordered from eBay that replaces the stock version in a 5-minute mod job. From this point onward, there have been basically no regional differences and the only thing preventing cross-region gaming is a software lock.

Regional Differences in Zelda Games (Part 3)