Interesting find about PAL/european sonic & knuckles

[kyo_244]

It seems that some of my confusion has finally been cleared up (somewhat) about my old s&k cart.

When I had sonic & knuckles back in the day.. I had the blue mega drive outer-sleeve, blue manual (all normal so far) but inside was a red insert and an american S&K cartridge.. I could tell my the sega seal of approval on the far right of the cartridge sticker..

So what the hell happened here? Did Sega make too many ntsc carts and not enough pal ones? Perhaps this affected their decision to keep S&K non-region locked and non-pal optimized?

Here are 2 pics for comparison..


The one I had:



Genesis version:

[sj33]

I dunno if this is related, but there were two different releases of Sonic & Knuckles in Europe - the original 1994 release, and a re-release in late 1996 (Sonic 2 received a similar reprint). I believe the two releases have different rear covers.

Original vs. Rerelease.

I have no idea if the red inner box is related to this, but it would make sense.

[kyo_244]

Perhaps it is related.. doesn't change the fact that they lazily packaged ntsc cartridges with pal boxes and manuals I kind of feel scammed.. I'm also on the lookout for a CIB pal version but they seem to be fetching 40 to 50 quid these days.

[nakamura]

Aren't all Megadrive carts universal anyway? An NTSC cart will run perfectly in 50hz on a PAL machine.

[sj33]

Do you know if that is the 1996 release? It is very possible that they used the spare boxes that they already manufactured in the US, as the boxes are non-standard.

I hate cardboard packaging on games with a passion (with the exception of maybe the Japanese GameCube games), so the Sonic & Knuckles packaging irks me full stop. Sega avoided such shenanigans for the most part.

Aren't all Megadrive carts universal anyway? An NTSC cart will run perfectly in 50hz on a PAL machine.

No, the EU, US and Japanese carts are all completely different shape, and later games had region coding. In the unique case of Sonic & Knuckles though, the carts indeed are identical in all regions, probably because it's such a non-standard cartridge.

[kyo_244]

Do you know if that is the 1996 release? It is very possible that they used the spare boxes that they already manufactured in the US, as the boxes are non-standard.

I think it was yes as I got into mega drive about 2 years late. But bear in mind I'm in Cyprus so maybe this is a practice they used for European-only regions?

European PAL snes releases were also different to their UK counterparts..

[nakamura]

No, the EU, US and Japanese carts are all completely different shape, and later games had region coding. In the unique case of Sonic & Knuckles though, the carts indeed are identical in all regions, probably because it's such a non-standard cartridge.

Ok but up until a certain point all MD games were region free weren't they? You could plug a Genesis cart into a UK Megadrive and it would work?

Sonic and Knuckles was probably done this way for ease of manufacture.

[Jay]

Yes, then they started checking the jumper settings - language and 50/60hz.

[Grapple Convoy]

I remember the earlier days of the Mega Drive, pre- region locking, and it wasn't uncommon to see normal retail chains selling Genesis cartridges among the PAL Mega Drive games.

[sj33]

Also, Japanese carts physically would not fit into a European MegaDrive without a passthrough adaptor or shaving the sides of your cartridge port due to the carts being too wide.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4476042105_3ba0a7eb47_o.jpg

Saying that, I believe all Sonic & Knuckles carts are identical and region free, due to the exotic nature of the cart. This is in spite of the earlier Sonic 3 being region locked. The lock-on feature of Sonic & Knuckles proved very useful here if you had an imported Sonic 3 cart.

[monel]

No, the EU, US and Japanese carts are all completely different shape, and later games had region coding. In the unique case of Sonic & Knuckles though, the carts indeed are identical in all regions, probably because it's such a non-standard cartridge.

Aren't Pal and US Megadrive / Genesis carts the same shape? Am I missing something here, as it's late?

[sj33]

Aye sorry, made a mistake with the US carts. Confused them with the weird EA carts.

[nakamura]

I thought the US and EU carts were the same. I know the JP ones aren't but for the most part, the boards were all identical until region locking.

[S3M]

Also, Japanese carts physically would not fit into a European MegaDrive without a passthrough adaptor or shaving the sides of your cartridge port due to the carts being too wide.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4476042105_3ba0a7eb47_o.jpg

That's what I love about the 32X, Japanese cartridges fit right in without the need for an adaptor.

[Keelhaul]

My copy of S&K seems to be the same as in the first pic of the OP: PAL (re-release) box with an NTSC-looking cartridge. Would there be any difference in speed between NTSC and PAL cartridges? MY MD2 has a 60Hz switch and it feels really slow when playing at 50Hz.

Is there actually some sort of consensus that all Sonic MD games are best played at 60 Hz?