One of the great, but often under appreciated aspects of modern gaming is the removal of region locking. Never really should have been a thing to begin with, but it’s nice that people have options now, without the need to modify their console.
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I mean, the whole reason Demons Souls got released outside of Japan is because people were already importing copies since it wasn't region locked. If it had been, there's a chance the series never would have taken off and would have been an obscure Japanese only game
Server balancing and scheduled regional updates planning made this a normal practice early in continuous online gaming environments. There are now better adaptable cloud services, massive global data repositories, and improved internet availability and service around the world.
Yep. I bought two Japanese mega drive games back in the day to play on my Genesis and had to “modify” the cartridge to fit into the cartridge slot.
That was some nerve racking shit. So happy those days are gone.
Absolutely, region locking was always ridiculous. So I bought a game from Australia and then go home back to USA but now you can't play it due to garbage.
That’s an underrated aspect of the digital distribution model. As someone from Europe I still remember the days we missed out on so many great JRPGs because they never got a releasing our region
That’s a really good point! It’s nice not to have region locking on newer hardware!
Like, I can technically take my Switch with me if I were to travel outside my country, and I think the only thing I would need to consider is the possible differences in power wattage for the adapter.
Amen to that. There are some 3DS games that were never released physically in Europe but were in the USA. Without modding the machine, you can’t play physical imports. Stupid.
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That was some nerve racking shit. So happy those days are gone.
😔
1) NTSC vs PAL compatibility, most games were made for NTSC and many needed a lot of work to function on PAL systems.
2) Censorship, if a game needed to be censored in a region the uncensored version would not be accessible.
Like, I can technically take my Switch with me if I were to travel outside my country, and I think the only thing I would need to consider is the possible differences in power wattage for the adapter.