Hong Kong Megadrive / NTSC consoles in Ireland?

skyhighflyer

Hi all,

New poster on this board,

I have a particular question (well, two actually) that I feel some of you on here would be well placed to answer.

I'm a long time SEGA fan and I've owned pretty much all of their consoles. I'm looking for a boxed Dreamcast and Saturn on eBay. PAL - wise, it looks like I can forget about the Saturn, and finding it boxed.

I want to know if I can buy NTSC consoles, and is it possible to use these consoles on an Irish (PAL) telly.

I know I'm going to need a stepdown for the power, which is not a problem. What I don't want to have to do is buy a NTSC telly. So will I be ok to buy a NTSC system, use it with a stepdown, and play on my PAL TV? I don't plan on modding it or whatever becasue I'll buy most of my games off ebay NTSC anyways.

Cheers lads

Dan

PS: It was recently brought to my attention that my old Megadrive was a "Hong Kong "version, and I was told that it could play all MD games regardless of region. This seems odd to me, as my parents bought it for me in ireland second hand I think in Xmas of 92. Any info?

DiscoStu

most tvs sold withing the last 5 years should be easily handle an ntsc signal. older ones might take the 60hz signal but only give you a black and white picture. there really is no way of knowing without actually trying it with an ntsc signal though.

skyhighflyer

Cheers. My TV is new and it plays games on 60Hz so I presume I'm ok.

combs

Any foreign console apart from NES, N64 or PC Engine (and maybe other obscure ones) will be fine here, as long as you use a step-down power transformer and an RGB connection to your TV. You should think about getting them converted to play all games though. It varies from system to system but most up to the Saturn use switches. If you don't want to do that for Saturn then just get a Japanese Saturn. Dreamcast can just use a boot disc.

There seems to be some doubt whether the Hong-Kong Megadrive is region-free. It might be just PAL innards in a Japanese-style case. Some Megadrive games are region-free but some are region-locked. It runs at 50Hz anyway so you should get it modded!

Kristok

do you even need a transformer ?!? isnt the american system the same as ours ?!?

combs

No; you'll destroy the power supply in it if you don't use a transformer, though consoles like Nintendo's use external power supplies so you can use a PAL power supply with an NTSC console.