Nintendo’s breakthrough system was the NES in the United States and the Famicom, or Family Computer, in Japan. This was the first system to use a regional lockout; the NES uses a two-stage lockout system, with different cartridge shapes and fewer pins on the ends of the Famicom cartridges than on the NES ones. You’ll need a passthrough converter, a small device that accepts a Famicom cartridge in one end and plugs into the NES on the other. A company called Honey Bee made these converters (http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/honeybee.html) decades ago, but they’re hard to find now. Try searching eBay for honeybee NES.

Also, in the early days of the NES, when the Japanese and American software was identical, Nintendo would plug Japanese circuit boards into Famicom converters, wrapping the whole setup in a NES cartridge shell. You can find more-or-less official NES-Famicom converters inside a select few copies of games such as Gyromite, Hogan’s Alley, Excitebike, and others. Again, check eBay or the bargain bin of your local game store if you want to make off with one of these beauties. AtariHQ also has an amusing pictorial (http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/adapter.html) that shows exactly how to extract the converter.

Most Famicom carts will slide into an early-model NES, but some are too large. Either shave down the edges of the cart or buy an expensive late-model toploading NES. For the prices they fetch, however, you’re probably better off simply hunting down a Famicom clone such as Gametech’s NeoFami. Now that Nintendo has discontinued their hardware, clone makers produce their wares in mass quantities.

Nintendo’s next effort, the SNES, was the Super Famicom in Japan. You need to make only a small physical modification to run Japanese cartridges on an American SNES. If you open the cartridge slot on your SNES, you’ll see two small plastic tabs behind the metal connectors. These prevent you from inserting a Japanese cartridge; try to put one in, and you’ll feel the tabs. Use pliers to yank them out, melt them down with a soldering iron, or heat up and use an X-Acto knife to slice right through them. GamesX has a good page with pictures (http://www.gamesx.com/importmod/snescon.htm).

If you don’t want to alter your system, you can hunt down a similar passthrough converter or an inexpensive SNES-model Game Genie adapter and modify its tabs. Be aware that some convertors, including the Game Genie, don’t have the extra pins that allow you to run Super FX games such as Star Fox.

Another expensive but impressive solution is the rare Tristar 64 (or Super8) adapter, which allows you to play NES and Famicom games as well. If you’re lucky, you can find this on eBay.

Much like the SNES, the N64 uses only a physical lockout. You can take the system apart and remove the offending plastic pieces altogether, but if you’re not careful, you might lose the spring-loaded flaps that protect the cartridge slot from dust. Instead, take a hot soldering iron to the tabs and melt them down, or cut off the pieces with an X-Acto knife, as before. I personally use a passthrough convertor for my N64 because they are very inexpensive and easy to find. There are a plethora of brands, including the N64 Passport Plus III, that also have Action Replay-like functions.

Japanese GameCube discs won’t boot on an American system; a software lockout prevents the game from booting on a non-homeland system. Luckily, the Japanese and American GameCube hardware is identical except for one small connection on the circuit board. It’s possible, if tricky, to wire a switch to that connection so you can shift the system between U.S. and Japanese modes. Most online vendors (such as Lik-Sang or Play-Asia) that sell Japanese GameCube games also sell premodified hardware, or they will modify your existing system if you send it to them. With this mod, you need to maintain separate memory cards for Japanese and American games, because the regions use different formats. Otherwise, the system will believe your cards are corrupt and try to format them.

For the hardware-phobic, there is also a software-based solution. An inexpensive, widely available boot disc called the FreeLoader (http://www.ntsc-uk.com/tech.php?tech=FreeloaderGuide) can trick the system into thinking that the game you’ve inserted is American. This has two added advantages: it also works with PAL games, and allows you to use one memory card for all your saves.

The disadvantage of the FreeLoader disc is that newer games may not work with the disc. In that case, wait for a new revision or buy the more expensive Action Replay disc from Datel (http://www.datel.co.uk/), which features the same functions as the FreeLoader but also lets you input codes that can fix the errors. See [Hack #75] for more.

None of Nintendo’s portable systems (Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, and Virtual Boy) feature any regional lockouts, so you can enjoy all Game Boy games on all compatible Game Boy systems. Nintendo does this because travelers frequently take their Game Boys on the plane to foreign countries and will want to buy games there for the return trip. There is one caveat. The E-Reader attachment for the Game Boy is not region-encoded, but the E-Cards that it reads are, so you’ll need Japanese cards for your Japanese E-Reader even if you use it on an American Game Boy Advance.

Nintendo announced its innovative dual-screened, stylus-based portable, code-named Nintendo DS, at the 2004 E3 Expo, but didn’t mention whether the machine would feature regional lockouts.

Finally, PAL Nintendo consoles are radically different, and far more difficult to mod for import fun. They may need BIOS and other tricky changes.

Sega’s Master System, the SMS in the United States, is the Sega Mark III. There may be an extremely rare adapter that lets you play games for the SG-1000 and SG-3000 on the U.S. SMS hardware, but they’re almost impossible to find. A rare system called the Dina 2-in-1, or the Telegames Personal Arcade features a slot that plays SG-1000 (but not Mk III) cartridges, but that slot is disabled in some of those machines. In many cases, only the Colecovision-compatible slot works. One solution is to hunt down a Power Base Convertor for the Japanese Mega Drive (Genesis) system, then modify your Genesis to accept Japanese cartridges.

The Sega Genesis in the United States is equivalent to the Mega Drive in Europe and Japan.

Much like the SNES, the first two Genesis models used a physical lockout, with small plastic tabs inside the cartridge slot that prevented Japanese games from sliding in. Compare a Japanese cartridge to the Genesis cartridge slot, and you’ll see the offending hardware. Remove these tabs by whatever means you prefer. The Genesis 3, released in limited quantities by Majesco Sales, features no physical lockouts.

The problem is that late in the life of the Genesis, Sega decided it would be a good idea to put software lockouts into selected titles. This means that some of the best latter-day Genesis titles, such as Bare Knuckle 3 (Streets of Rage 3) won’t work. You’ll either need to modify the system internally—see web sites like http://www.gamesx.com/—or use a passthrough adapter. You don’t want a passthrough adapter that merely changes the shape of the cart; you want ones like the Mega Key that feature external switches on them that change the territory of the system. Some, like the Super Key or Mega Key 2, let you switch PAL frequencies as well.

A cheap, easy, and somewhat kludgey solution is to use the Galoob’s Game Genie (available in fairly large amounts on eBay) as a passthrough convertor. Web sites such as http://gamefaqs.com/ have codes to override any territory lockouts in the game code itself.

Sega sold the console known as the Sega CD in the United States, and the Mega CD in Japan and Europe. It has a hardware chip that locks out foreign games. Adaptors exist that plug into the Genesis cartridge slot, but they don’t work with all games or all revisions of the system. As with the Genesis and Saturn, you can fiddle with the system’s innards to make it universal, but this requires a complex BIOS image swap. If you do convince it to run, take heart that regional lockouts don’t affect RAM cartridges that let you save your games.

You can switch-mod your Saturn (modify your console to add a switch for choosing a region), but given the availability of cartridge adapters that let you run Japanese games, why bother? The best model is the Four-In-One cart that combines the 4-MB RAM upgrade necessary for hot imports such as X-Men vs. Street Fighter along with an Action Replay code device, a territory lockout-breaker, and lots of space for your saved games. Good luck finding it, though; you may have to scour eBay.

The Dreamcast, like other modern systems, has more complex region protection. You can’t modify it simply by adding a hardware switch. Instead, you’ll need a mod chip, a hardware device designed to circumvent hardware-protection schemes, or a software solution.

The mod chip only requires soldering four wires to various points on the circuit board. After that, it’s pain-free. If you are an expert at hardware tinkering and a quick draw on the soldering gun, you’ll probably feel comfortable doing this yourself. Otherwise, hire a professional or stick to software-based solutions. For example, you can purchase a FreeLoader disc or download and burn your own; it’s easy to find the files and instructions online. The mod chip is a far more elegant solution, however, because it lets you run any DC disc—including PAL ones—perfectly. If you’re still jonesing to do it that way, Wrongcrowd.com has a great, detailed FAQ on how to use NCSX’s five-wire mod (http://wrongcrowd.com/dreamcast/).

The Game Gear is fully region-free, and a simple passthrough converter called the Master Gear (easily found on eBay) will let you play all your SMS games on the portable system. Unfortunately, the portable Sega Nomad is subject to the same caveats as the Genesis.

Early PlayStation models were easy to trick with the well-known swap trick: hold the disc door open as you hot-swap an American game with a Japanese one at the right time in the booting process. Sony quickly revised the hardware to make this impossible. Finding a working early-model PS is basically impossible now anyway, since they break down with alarming regularity, generally with CD lens-related problems.

You can’t deter dedicated importers who design mod chips, but Sony found a way around that too. A small device called a GoldFinger provided an elegant no-modification-necessary solution. It plugged into the system’s I/O port, so Sony eliminated that port entirely in the next hardware revision.

Mod chips for the PlayStation 2 are widely available, but installation is far from idiot-proof. If you can bear to part with your PS2 for a week or two, some online vendors such as ModChipMan (http://www.modchipman.com) will modify your system for you or sell you a brand new, premodded unit for a premium price.

If you don’t want to alter the guts of your PS2, consider a system called Magic Slide. This variant of the swap trick method uses two boot discs—one for CD-based PS2 games and another for DVD-based titles—in conjunction with a small plastic card. To use the Magic Slide, remove the front cover of your PS2 disc tray (the long bar of plastic that has the PS logo on it). Be careful lest you permanently destroy the little clips that hold on the cover. Be aware that exerting stress on the drive tray mechanism isn’t healthy for the unit in the long run. A gentler modification replaces the top shell of your PlayStation 2 with a little hatch that opens up so you can change discs.

Once the cover is off, boot up the PS2 with the appropriate boot disc. When the screen says “Insert Disc,” slide the Magic Slide card underneath the disc tray. Slide it to the right to disengage the lock under the tray; pull on the card, and the tray will come out. You can now swap the boot disc for an import game without the PS2 knowing that you’ve opened the tray.

The Magic Slide is available at many online vendors, including Japan Video Games (http://www.japanvideogames.com/). There is not, as of this writing, any way to play import games on an unaltered PS2. Of course, as the price of the system goes down, purchasing a Japanese unit might be the best way to go.

This machine went by various names, including the PC Engine, CoreGrafx, and PC Engine Duo in Japan.

First the good news: CD-ROM games for the Japanese PC Engine and American TurboGrafx are entirely compatible. The bad news is that the cartridge games will give you problems. You’ll need an expensive passthrough convertor. Tele-Games (http://www.telegames.com/) sells them new for about $100.

All but a handful of Japanese 3DO games will run fine on a U.S. system (whether the Panasonic REAL, or the Magnavox or Goldstar 3DO) with no modification necessary. (Of course, if the game you want to play is in that tiny handful, you’re out of luck.)

All Neo Geo (AES in Japan) home systems play all Neo Geo games regardless of region. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Neo Geo software auto-detects which type of system it’s running on and will automatically convert the game language into SNKglish, a strange English dialect characterized by pure nonsense. Worse, the game might auto-censor the blood, turning it white to protect any small children who might somehow have purchased a $500 system and a $300 cartridge.

There are adapters available that let you play the cartridges used in Neo Geo arcade machines on your home system, but they cost between $150 and $200. Of course, that probably sounds reasonable to a Neo Geo collector.

Upon its entry into the console hardware business, Microsoft initially pleased importers by saying that the Xbox hardware would not feature any regional lockout. This turned out to be technically true, but the discs themselves did. The catch was that region coding on Xbox games is optional, left to the publisher’s discretion.

As you might imagine, almost every publisher—including Microsoft—exercised their discretion to put regional lockouts in their software. There are plenty of Xbox mod chips that will let the system play import games, back up games to the hard drive, play media off your computer, do the laundry, and shave your cat. There are also software mods, so search online for more details.