Thanks to the internet and international shopping websites like eBay and Amazon, it's never been easier to pick up games you may have missed out on in the past. You might not have heard of certain games at the time they were released, if they were even released in your home country at all, and sometimes it's fun to discover variations on games you already own. And it's those variations that I want to look at in this post.
The PAL version (or European version) of Sonic the Hedgehog for example came with a bland pink and white cover and the booklet was printed in greyscale, which could be considered criminal in comparison to what I'm going to show you in a moment.
 |
| Sonic the Hedgehog (PAL Version) |
Now here's the NTSC-J version (or Japanese version) and look at the difference!
 |
| Sonic the Hedgehog (NTSC-J Version) |
The cover is so much more vibrant than the PAL release and the booklet is even crammed with hand drawn images of Sonic, Robotnik and other characters from the game. Sega of Europe possibly changed the design because they didn't think the NTSC-J design would appeal to European gamers, a real shame as the Japanese offering is fantastic.
I also discovered that NTSC-J Mega Drive/Genesis cartridges are shaped differently to PAL cartridges so they won't play on European systems. The curved plastic bumpers on either side of the cartridge prevent it from fitting in the cartridge slot.
 |
PAL Cartridge (left) and NTSC-J Cartridge (Right)
|
I could make this post go on for a lot longer but I think I'll save more import related gaming for a future post or perhaps even a YouTube video. (^_-) If you know of any more fun import gaming related quirks drop me a comment as I'd be happy to hear about it. ^_^
No comments:
Post a Comment