pal megadrive games on a ntsc japanese tv

[tokyochojin]

Can anyone tell me if pal megadrive games will work on a Japanese ntsc television through a Japanese or Asian megadrive?


Thanks

[JazzFunk]

They should do, if they're not later titles (with all that region lock gubbins going on). Given my experience of early to mid-period MD games, it seems they work on any telly, the only thing that really stopped the Megadrive playing all-region games was the shape of the carts, and a hot knife could quite easily see to that. I don't think that any 50hz/60hz-specific coding was included in 98% of MD games, and you could happily play a Jap Alien Storm quite beautifully on a PAL MD, albeit it would be slightly bordered and run a tad slower. Yep, there were some early 90s Namco titles that wouldn't play, and Jap stuff after Sonic 2 got released could be problematic, but the MD was a pretty good console for getting over universal boundaries.

Hazarding a drunken guess, there possibly could be some problem with games coded from a UK PAL perspective that were programmed to maximise the more detailed British telly output, but I know f*ck-all about that, and truly feel like I am talking absolute trollocks. But there were never really any non-Jap MD games truly worth playing, anyway.

[DeathAdder]

Brian Lara was fun in its day, as was Cannon Fodder

[egparadigm]

What follows are just impressions from using a switched UK MD.

The JPN MegaDrive is set to 60Hz and will, as such, run in NTSC mode. The Asian MD is set to 50Hz and will run in PAL. If you run a PAL game on 60Hz it will display in NTSC, so I think it should run fine on a Jap telly. The only thing to stop you may be the shape of the cart slot.

[DeathAdder]

The tech stuff goes over my head, but just in case...

I tried to play my Brian Lara (presumably PAL) on my Nomad (presumably NTSC). I got screen jumping. I was told that was because some Codemasters PAL games woyldn't work on ntsc machines, or something

[tokyochojin]

Cheers guys, I had been thinking that ntsc-j system had wider slots so the unit itself wouldn't need any alteration, is this correct?