Making a NES region free
It all began with me walking into a video game shop. I decided to buy a new NES game, settled down on GOLF, one of the classics that were released with the console in 1985.
I got home, Decided to try it out, but it didn’t work. Well, it’ll be fine, I thought, this happens all the time. Just grab a q-tip, rub the contacts to free them from their dirt prison. Done, the q-tips were indeed dirty, indicating a good job of cleaning. There I go butting the cartridge back in the console… for it not to work. Then it hit me : i had bought a USA version of the game, but I own a french version of the console…
After 5 minutes of search online, I found a tutorial to fix this issue : making the NES region free. This gets rid of the inter-country protection. So, let’s go !
First, dismantle the soul out of the console :
You’ll have to dig a little deeper to find the light at the end of the tunnel : The bare PCB !
Now I won’t cover all the details here, but here’s a very good article about doing so (I even stole a picture from them 😉 )
After having made the necessary changes (actually, snipping a leg from an integrated circuit) I put back the console in its place :
And the USA game worked like a charm !
