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.

2016-10-15-14-23-51
Some games I previously owned
2016-10-15-14-24-09
The new game

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…

2016-10-15-14-23-37
My console, in all its glory !
2016-10-15-14-29-35
As seen in the bottom-right corner, it’s a french console (FRA)
2016-10-15-14-24-15
Yep, USA version…

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 :

2016-10-15-14-33-05
The bare guts

You’ll have to dig a little deeper to find the light at the end of the tunnel : The bare PCB !

The PCB
The 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 :

2016-10-15-15-05-39
The NES standing heroically.

And the USA game worked like a charm !

2016-10-15-15-05-41
Oooooh yeah, sweet game !
2016-10-15-15-05-45
I don’t even know how to play this thing, I’ll have to look online…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *