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Breaking Region Locks on Nintendo Home Consoles

James Whitlock
13 min readOct 8, 2020

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As someone who has been game collecting for many years now, I eventually became interested in owning games from other regions, specifically from Japan. At first I had no idea how to go about this, and did not even know if the games would work on my Nintendo consoles. After doing hours of research, I figured it out and am now enjoying various different Nintendo games all the way from Japan on my home consoles and handhelds. I am sharing this information with you for a few reasons; to convince you to try out some Japanese games we never got over here in America, to show you how you can save money by buying Japanese games that did come out here, and to perhaps rekindle your interest in a system that you might have gotten burned out collecting for.

Most Nintendo systems can support Japanese games with only minor tweeks, others require software mods or hacks. Let’s go through all the Nintendo consoles in order of their release and talk about the options and requirements for each.

NES

Famicom Console

The first Nintendo console on our list is the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. The Japanese version of the NES is called the Famicom, or the Nintendo Family Computer. The US version of the console and the Japanese version have quite a few differences that may turn off potential importers at first glance. First off, the Famicom has…

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James Whitlock
James Whitlock

Written by James Whitlock

https://www.linktr.ee/Mogarth Retro and modern game collector and enthusiast. Check out my linktree for my Instagram profile, ebay account, and game list.

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