Sega Regions and Backups

So it's no secret that I'm a Sega fanboy. Everyone who knows me knows this, and possibly from my articles/reviews on here it's known too. I'm half embarassed to admit i've only JUST aquired a Master System.. well a few months ago. Anyway, I seem to keep finding out a juicy secrets and 'special features' of the Sega Consoles. Maybe some already knew them, but I didn't, so that garantees at least someone else out there didn't. Keep in mind, all of this is mod-free unless said so.

Let's start with the simpler things. Region locking. Well for the Master System...there is none. Things like this make me giggle with delight. This means you can get any Master System game be it North American, European or Japanese and play it on your system. You can't find a certain game in North America? Well so what! Get it in Europe. It has endless possibilities. The Atari 2600 I believe is also region free. The Nintendo consoles however DO have region lock. +1 for Sega.

Sega Genesis is a bit of the same, most of the older games and newer AR'NT region locked, however there are a few that are, such as Alien Soldier. These can be played on the NTSC Genesis with a simple game genie code however. The japanese Mega Drive games have slightly different cartridges so you need to saw off a bit of your Genesis to get them in. I haven't extensively tested games yet, but I know my Mega Drive version of Revenge of the Shinobi works on my Genesis.

Next is Sega CD. This is my most recent discovery. There IS region lock on these disks, however you can burn games onto cd-rs and they play fine.(sort of). Since cd-writers were close to $1000 back then, there was no protection from these 'back up' games. Theres plenty of rom sites where you can get games in iso or cue files to burn. This has been touch and go for me, some games take a LONG time to load, if at all. Some music doesn't kick in until minutes after starting the game. However I'm still experimenting with all of this, and sometimes iso/mp3 versions work better than cue/bin versions. It's really all a test to see which version works. But now I've run out of cd-rs.

The Sega Saturn has a region lock, but there are several ways around this. First and easiest is to get a ram backup cartridge; theres tons of them on ebay and theres no 'best' one. A lot of them work with most games, some work with games the others don't. This cartridge pops into the back top of your Saturn and allows you to play Pal and J games. The only game mine hasn't worked with is the Japanese version of Panzer Dragoon Saga, but it doesn't matter anyway since I can't read it. Another thing is the disk swap method, where you can play foreign games and back up cd-rs. This method is well documented on the internet and easy to find on youtube and google. I've never tried it as saturns seem to be expensive around here and I don't want to burn out my motor.

The Dreamcast had the GD-rom. A 'improved' cd basically and you can easily play cd-rs on the dreamcast. The disk swap works for this console as well; a 'boot' disk can be placed in first and then a cd-r of a game. Or theres bootable games available you can use.

While these things make me think: SEGA IS AWESOME! These are also reasons why Sega lost so much money. Since its technically all in the past now, these are great ways to play the old games on the real consoles instead of emulators, and opens up a huge seemingly endless library of games. Remember, google is your best friend, keep looking and you'll find what you need to.

Have fun!

Added - Just for the record... I ******* HATE THE **** FORMATS THEY **** **** ******* UPLOADERS PUT THE ******* GAMES IN, HOW CAN THEY BE THAT ******** STUPID TO MISNAME THINGS?! be prepared to waste a LOT of cd-rs /ragequit