What was the point?

>>3706898
Those are the region lock prongs, right?

To stop Americans from importing SFC or PAL SNES games. Few were interested in anything SFC because most of it is as the BBS console scene guys of the time would term as "unplayable." PAL shit had lockout chips after awhile so it was mostly an exercise in pointlessness.

>>3706907
so you could have actually played PAL games on that thing if those stoppers weren't there?

>>3706937
No, only Japanese games. The earliest PAL games released work I think but that would only be a select few.

>>3706907
>stop Americans from importing SFC or PAL SNES games
But it didn't, it just stopped them from putting it in the system. All you needed to overcome it is a pair of pliers to tear the tabs out, and there you go.

>>3706987
Yeah of course. That only applies to Japanese games though. Very few people wanted to play those. Obviously those that did could use a copier, a game genie, or a pair of pliers. PAL games were more complicated. If you wanted to experience those in the 90s without actual console mods (did good ones actually exist?) you would need a copier and a patch to run the game at the correct speed. Now we have supercic though.

http://consolingmyself.co.uk/post/1251747918/supercic

Some more info here.

>>3706898
Shame region lock today isn't as simple to handle as that is. It's thanks to nintendo being stupid enough to think those would work that the US snes can play super famicom games.

http://www.gamesx.com/importmod/sneslockout.htm

Also this is of interest too on the subject of playing PAL games. The other page isn't exactly correct about just being able to play any PAL game on a US SNES without issues.

Simple: they didn't want to be liable if a game from a region different from your system, TV, etc. fucked something up because it didn't match all of your other shit. So if you opened up the system and made it possible to play them, you voided your warranty, and they didn't need to worry about any potential surprises.

They were just covering their asses. This was gobs better than digital region locks. You can't dremel those away.

>>3707028
I don't think that's true at all. If it was the PAL SNES wouldn't be able to accept SFC carts.

>>3707028
How could a game from a different region fuck anything up?

>>3707018
It's a shame it still fucking exists. There's no reason for it. This is the international age, people should be forced to compete on an international level or starve to death.

>>3707028
It's because "money money money".

>>3707049
A PAL signal on an 80s and some early 90s NTSC TV would damage it. But it's irrelevant in this case as a PAL cart on an NTSC console still outputs NTSC, it wasn't until the PS1 days that TV output was software controlled.

>>3707109
It won't play at the correct speed though.

>>3707095
It's just a fact of global commerce. Poor asian countries are subsidised by the rich western nations so they can buy stuff for $5 equivalent
since $5 for them is like $50 for us.

If there were no region locks americans would import everything from cheap countries so they'd have to make global pricing the same.

When sales in cheap countries goes through the floor, US prices would have to get even higher to compensate.

However region locks went away for Sony and to a lesser extent Microsoft because nation's spending power reached some sort of parity. Long may it continue.

>>3707109
I've never seen that happen. Ever.

>>3707029
The PAL snes is protected by a lockout chip. The NTSC US snes and the JP sf use the same lockout chip and rely on physical differences. The only logical reason for that is that during hardware design they only planned for protection against incorrect signal output but then NoA shat the bed over cheap grey market imports and changed the case design since they couldn't do a hardware redesign.

>>3707116
I have. You have to be old enough that digital control logic was a rarity rather than the norm. For instance PC CRT monitors used to switch resolution instantly, I'm guessing you grew up during the period were they'd blank, click, then redisplay? That was because they'd check the incoming signal first then if it was in range they'd lock onto it and display. In my day an out of range signal would cause the monitor to scream. If you hit the right numbers the magic smoke got out. Editing X11 modelines was scary because of that. TVs were no different, setting PAL60 on my old TV caused an overdraw effect that never went away.

>>3707121
That's probably why I've never seen it.

>>3706902

Yes.

>>3707028
Why not put a sticker that says "Warning: Only insert game carts from your region. Foreign region carts not supported on this system. Use at own risk!"?

That's just as effective and probably costs less.

>>3706898
I've seen ads for converters that accepted all 3 regions carts in 1993 or 1992.

It was basically a lock-on cart, but it had 2 slots.

>>3708202
That would encourage certain kinds of people. Including my childhood self. I remember that sticker that came on the gameboy gameshark saying not to use it on Pokemon. Hilarious.

>>3706907
>BBS console scene guys of the time
I think you've got that confused with the /vr/ emu scene babies of this time. You know. The ones who can't understand "START" because it's romaji.

>>3708247
Nah, if the game wasn't heavy on text and just required start they would usually call it playable. One group had this in most their NFO files for Japanese games and how many points you got for a Japanese release in the scene charts would be dependent on if it was playable or not. Pachinko and mahjong games got you 0.

>>3708242
It still would remove Nintendo's liability for broken systems/ TVs. Whether or not people follow those instructions isn't their concern.