It's generally accepted these days that Nintendo was the first major company to introduce region locking to its products, limiting their use outside specific regions or territories. Heck, if you simply Google 'region locking' and take a peek at the Wikipedia entry, it says the following:
"Nintendo was the first console maker to introduce regional locks to its consoles, and used them for every one of its consoles except the Nintendo Switch, while mostly eschewing them for its handheld products."
What if we told you it wasn't actually the first, though? Would you believe it? Well, you should. In a thread on Twitter, user @AtariSpot dives into the rather bizarre case of region locking for the Atari 2600 in Turkey.
According to the thread, it seems that ME-TA, Atari's Turikish licensee, really wasn't keen on its consumers playing games from outside its own region, even going so far as to provide warnings that any modifications to its consoles would provide basis for ME-TA to pursue legal action.
How did ME-TA ensure its products were region locked, though? Well, in a fairly primitive solution, it effectively re-routed two pins from the cartridge roms along with the corresponding pins in the Atari console ports, ensuring that only cartridges produced in Turkey with this slight modification would line up correctly and play.
It's relatively unknown at this point what the motive behind this move actually was. As explained in the thread, the two most possible reasons behind it is to either combat the growing piracy of Atari 2600 games, or essentially force consumers to play a measly total of 13 games only produced in Turkey. Either way, being limited to such a meagre selection of titles doesn't sound ideal!
Regardless of the reasoning behind it, it's nevertheless a clear indication that Nintendo wasn't actually the first to introduce region locking to its products. Granted, ME-TA's solution is pretty rudimentary and obviously didn't catch on in the years since, but it's an interesting look at the lengths certain regions would go to in order to region lock their products.
What do you make of the region locking for the Atari 2600 in Turkey? Have you managed to get your hands on any of the games released in the region? Let us know!
[source twitter.com]
Comments 20
Regardless of who made the first region locking items I get it but at the same time it sucks because region free is a better way to do it so you can reach more people. But I also understand that you have to be able to protect your property from piracy. If this sounds all over the place I have not had my coffee yet this morning. LOL
Sega didnt really region lock their games, they just made the carts different sizes so they didnt fit in the slot in the top unless you got a converter.
But this is the type of boring stuff I find interesting
@Bunkerneath most consoles back on the day had this approach. Super Famicom (Super Nintendo) and N64 did that: different shells for compatible internals.
I would say I feel bad for this person, but the U.S versions of these cartridges are available for very little. I played a lot of Asteroids, Basketball and Video Pinball on the 2600 in my early gaming days. So much fun!
The first ever Nintendo region lock console is the Famicom (a.k.a. Family Computer) released on July 1983 in Japan so Nintendo is still the first. This region lock thing in Turkey didn't happen til 1984.
@abdias Yeah but in Europe they did completely region lock on some games, most won't work if not play on the specific console or else they got a message telling them why. This means simply putting the cartridge on a Game Genie cart and inserting it won't do the trick unless your console is an NTSC console.
It was such a relief when I heard the Nintendo Switch was going to be Region Free. Oh and I still have my Atari 2600 btw which still works.
@Serpenterror Actually the Famicom had no region locking per se, it's just that cartridges from other regions just won't fit, but it did not have a "region lockout" built in by design, since it was initially designed to only be used and sold in Japan (at launch Nintendo didn't have any plans to release the console or the games anywhere else, since it was not a proven success yet).
The Famicom and its cartridges have no CIC lockout chips whatosever (which is also why piracy was so rampant on Famicom in the first place, anyone could make an unlicensed cartridge for it that would work without any workaround necessary)
@RudyC3 Region lock means anything that prevent something from working on it whether by compatibility or design. This is why I count the Sega Genesis and Super NES as region lock and the Game Boy and Game Gear as region free. Region free means you don't had to do anything, you just plug in a game or software from any region onto your system, turn it on and it plays. A better example is VCR and DVD Player, a VCR is region free where as a DVD Player is not.
If any device that is preventing you from using a software on that same device of another region, then it's region lock. If you had a music CD and you take a trip to like say China and their CD player over there won't play your music CD, then that's region lock, if it just won't fit your music CD that's still region lock. Yes there are two kind of region locking but it's still region lock nonetheless, modding it could help but if you had to mod something for it to be region free then yeah it counts as region lock.
Region locking has nothing to do with piracy in reality. It's all about price fixing.
@Serpenterror From what I have learned, there was no lock-out (or region-locking) on the FamiCom. The chip was added to the NES (circa 1985) to avoid unlicensed games as was the case with carts from other Asian markets made for the FamiCom..
@mike_intv The fact that the Famicom can't play NES cartridges out of the box means it's region lock. Yeah I know the lock-out chip from the NES didn't get invented til 1985 but the Famicom still count as a region lock console just for the simple fact that Nintendo choose to make game cartridges for the NES not fit in the Famicom. Sure converters and such adapters would fix that but the purpose of being region free is that you don't have to do any of that.
lol, to my mind, it isn’t a question who was the first to decide on blocking consoles according to their regions. The more important question is why Nintendo refused to do it only with Switch.
I remember how gamers bought mod-chips only to play Asian or American/European releases. It was awful.
And Nintendo did that during lots of generations.
@Serpenterror
Technically, true. But that region lock did not occur until the NES came into being ... in 1985. So this work in Turkey pre-dates that by a year. (It does not pre-date the FamiCom, but it is before the NES).
Fascinating. Granted this is more a licensee pulling a fast one than a company directive.
@Serpenterror yes but they wouldn't have made that decision until 1985 when the NES came out. By your logic the Atari 2600 would actually count for 1977 instead of 84 bc the Turkey carts still wouldn't work in a 1977 Atari.
There are different methods for region locking. Different edge connectors or cart shapes to block insertion or requiring an adapter is a basic form. This kind of lock is more advanced. As I recall, the PC Engine and TG16, had to levels of deterrence. The cards required an adapter. I believe the pins were reversed from one to the other. Japanese games work on US systems with a simple adapter, but I believe the reverse is not true as there's a region check added to US games to prevent them from working on Japanese systems. I've encountered this both in some older emulators and on real hardware. I think there's a hardware mod for it.
This is a fascinating discovery, and I'm glad for this article, and shall append my "retro knowledge" file in my head for future reference and nit-pickingly correcting people on the internet!
However, "Nintendo was the first major company" "Nintendo was the first console maker" are critical parts of the equasion here. A Turkish subliscencer is very much not a major company, nor a "console maker" in the sense of inventing new major hardware. Either they imported systems or made licensed clones. Knowing what we do of how Atari was run back then its a safe bet they weren't even aware that the Turkish company was doing this to the carts and consoles, and wouldn't have cared even if they did know, it was just another revenue stream for doing no work. The motivation was local, because Turkey was in an area where piracy was rife and not policed, and from a smaller company knowing full well that many other surrounding companies could bulk buy and get lower prices, so it was a smart move to protect their marketshare in their home turf, with no greater or sinister world plans. To equate this with "Atari did it first" (which I'm not saying the article does, but that could be some people's take-away) is no more true that equating whatever Tec-Toy did and are still doing in Brazil as "Sega" doing the same.
The situation with Nintendo (and subsequently Sega, NEC etc) was a purposeful global choice to control the entire worldwide market and separate into regions, for far more future thinking reasons with political and economic ideas. Taxes could be controlled if you split your company into separate regional entities. Profit could be increased if you charge more in areas that can afford them. Prices can be more stable (and profits more predictable for shareholders) if you can price based on the local currency rather than fluctuating because of exchange rates.
Most importantly (mostly from an 80s/90s perspective) you can control the content to match local tastes (sprite swaps for local popular franchises) to avoid political scandals (censorship), taylor to tastes and market differences (adjusting difficulty - down if too hard, or up to counter the rental market), and appeal to regional demographics (changing cover art to supposedly fit what will appeal to kids in a certain area based on research).
(cont) Of course, a lot of this harms the final experience for the consumer - I'm not arguing that I'm pro any of this. But it all makes sense from a perspective of maximising profits and avoiding the problems that occur when moving a business from local to global. Its something I have to deal with any time one of my movies gets a larger budget on the understanding it will be sold to more territories. Suddenly i'm given a load of restrictions, recomendations, and sometimes asked to rewrite or re-cut region specific versions... not to mention the region locking of physcial medai for selling to distributors so that a different deal can be done for selling the same film multiple times.
To give Nintendo (and Sega and Atari) some credit, they did at least realise that making Gameboy (/GameGear/Lynx) games region locked would have been a very bad idea, because kids would be taking their portable consoles on holiday with them and likely buying games in the airport or at local shops.
In the modern world, now that we have very easy ways to import and export goods, and worldwide travel is so much more common, I'm very glad that most major companies aren't region locking games. Its wonderful that I can import Asian copies of games that never got a physical release in the West, and cool that we can have eShop accounts from multiple regions so we don't miss out if there's something we really want to try. I can't imagine it negatively affects profits much as even if another region is cheaper, the postage and import costs of physical, or the extra steps needed to get digitally will mean the vast majority of consumers will "buy local" first, unless the option isn't available.
@gotDvamp
the 3ds/wiiu era was particularly frustrating since not only was the wiiu the only console that generation to have it but the 3ds was a rare case of a handheld being region locked .
its definitely one aspect of older gaming that i do not miss.
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