NTSC to PAL converters (help!!!)

[Checkthisplzz]

The problem with owning a PAL Saturn and Snes is that you get cut off from the great games:the vast array of shooters for Sat and the rpgs for Snes (which being the rpg whore that i am...).

I thought i would buy the US and Jap versions of the consoles but that turned out to be financially impossible to me.

So here i come asking for solutions:
1-whats the best converter to the Snes, one that will surely work with all or almost all of the games (if it can work with Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger and Earthbound, i am a happy man)?

2-i heard on an american forum people talk about something called Action Replay 4-in-1 that would allow to play import Sat games , act as a memory unit and of course as an action replay...does anyone here knows about it?what can you tell me? are there other ways to play imports without modding?

3-i know this isn't for the RETRO forum but might as well ask:do handheld consoles (namely the GB Advance and the Neogeo Pocket) have any lock that prevents you from playing games from other regions (US/JAP) or are handhelds region free?

Thanks for your time.

[Commander Marklar]

1 - An NTSC SNES will set you back about next to nothing... especially compared to the some of those carts you've listed.

2 - Yep, available from Play-Asia, eBay, etc... it'll load anything up, does everything you said (although you can't save to it directly). They can be "problematic", due to the dodgy Saturn port but they're mostly OK. You WON'T get 60hz from it though, best to get a switch put in (very cheap, easy to do yourself).

3 - The two you listed are region free.

[killing_floor]

Action Replay 4-in-1 : One I've got says it can be saved to directly ; not tried that bit yet 'cause I've yet to get the games I bought it for. What I noticed is that the cheats that are pre-built into it have to be used with the pre-selected cheats on, if you take those off and try to load others in the list they won't work on their ownsome.

It has a plug at the top for the 4meg expansion, as yet I haven't found out what I need to plug into that to use the extended memory.

60Hz, 60Hz.......only point of that is getting stuff that works in US and Asia to work over here.

I don't see the value in having to buy a step-down for every console, if you have a PAL version and import-players that work properly, then you can buy the cheapo games that go up for sale now and again and not have to think, 'damn i can't play that and it was such a bargain too'.

[randombs]

if you put a switch in your saturn it'll do pal60 instead of ntsc so you don't need to faff about with rgb cables

the action replay can't be saved to directly - i read in an faq devoted to the device that the reason is because the saturn will either recognise it as a standard memory card or as another device. it can't boot the saturn (and thus allow imports to be played) if it's recognised as a mem card so they had to disable direct saving.

as for the port at the top, that's for connecting to your pc to copy cheats to/from the cart, not for 4mb expansion. bear in mind that there are two types of 4-in-1: one that does standard stuff, and the other that does the 4mb/1mb for capcom/snk games (aka 5-in-1 grrr)