fuck, it’s onto me
Seriously how/why would you code for the very specific situation that the non-NTSC Sega Mega Drive this game was running on suddenly somehow changes itself to a NTSC one while still running? Like… this is a Mega Drive game. This was from over 20 years ago. I have so many questions.
So, much like modern region locked systems, a popular thing to do with the Mega Drive was to make it able to play games from any region.
Unlike a lot of newer consoles, where you usually run a piece of software/custom firmware before you start the game to change regions, the Mega Drive needed a hardware mod. There are 4 jumpers, JP1 to JP4.
(image from here)
JP1 and JP2 control if the language is English or Japanese (and subsequently if a game like Streets of Rage 2 displays as SOR2 or Bare Knuckle 2).
JP3 and JP4 control the TV output mode (NTSC 60Hz or PAL 50Hz).
You could permanently solder these in to a desired configuration, but the more common thing was to drill a hole in the case and add a region switch - either a three way switch like in the tutorial above (as the Japanese language + PAL video output combination was unused), or two two-way switches as below.
(image from here)
And of course, the thing with switches is that you can switch them while the game is playing - thus allowing for this extremely specific situation to happen on console.
My guess is that someone at Traveller’s Tales at the time either knew of this mod or had one themselves. You probably could ask GameHut on YouTube, as they were one of the lead programmers on TT’s Mega Drive games:
Reblogged from thyrell
