Is it worth region modding your PAL Sega Mega Drive? The 50/60hz difference Genesis Vs Megadrive 

Thank you all for watching and a special thanks to Mark Fixes Stuff (ru-vid.com) for his help on this one. Were you in a PAL region with NTSC envy back in the day? Did you have no idea what difference it made to your gaming? Do you find NTSC games too fast or PAL games too slow? Share your thoughts I'd love to hear them! Neil - RMC

"I'm an expert" **Has hot glue hanging from his elbow in the next shot**

That Dixons story sounds so familiar. Back when Final Fantasy VII had just come out and I was on the fence about whether to get it or not, I saw the local Dixons had the game running on a demo unit behind glass. I politely asked if I could try it out for a few minutes and they just gave me a flat "no". Well okay, thanks, guess I'll be taking my business elsewhere then. I'm glad I did buy the game in the end, but it was no thanks to Dixons.

I appreciate your low key ad spots, actually makes me want to get something from them

Thank you for being English and saying "Megadrive".

I did this many years ago, just cutting the traces and adding a toggle switch to the jumper. What it would also let you do is chance the language of the console - remember being blown away when my Streets of Rage cart magically became something called 'Bare Knuckle'

It's nice to see mark collab so seamlessly with Neil doing these fun mods and sharing stories of a time I wish I was born in. Just great stuffff

-mark come over to talk Sega stuff! -oh yes just let put my Nintendo shirt on!

I still have my Model 1. It cost £40 from the local market in the mid 90's (I was late to the party). Wouldn't dream of modding it for fear of breaking it and if I want to play full speed, emulation is good enough for me. Besides, the slow PAL speed makes me "better" at the games!

You guys went for an over-complicated mod I think. I did the basic 50/60Hz mod on my Megadrive, two wires, one switch, one track cut. As I have an early Model 1 with the EXT port there's a screw hole in the back where the Mega Modem would attach, and I got a tiny toggle switch that fit through that hole without any cutting. As others say, being able to switch at any time is useful for getting past region lockouts - Sonic Spinball is nicer at 60Hz but my PAL copy has to be started at 50.

This is cool, I've never attempted the switchless mod myself, always used two single pole double throw switches to control region and herz.

I'm pretty excited for the cave being the nexus of a British retro gaming RU-vidr multiverse

i have a no-cut 50/60hz mod for a model 1-bear with me here: a small throw switch will fit perfectly in the space on the front of the console normally occupied by the stereo output jack. with the stereo module turned inside towards the back of the case, you can also run the audio jack from a rgc cable past the rf jack on the rear, which also acts as a strain relief.

Nobody does guest appearances as smooth as Niel!

I’ve done the same with my Sega master system and also fitted a fm board and wonder boy becomes super wonder boy . About 40 games support fm sound . Many uk releases still have fm sound option even though we didn’t get fm sound board here in the uk

I really need to get this for my Mega Drive which I still own today from new.. love it...

Love all of your videos. I had to drop quite a few of my Patreon's due to work, but yours is one that'll always stay - thanks again

I think I know why some games had wrong music or graphics glitches when set to 60Hz. See, some Megadrive games were actually optimized for PAL, with timings and code changed for the slower console.

Here in Brazil we had the best of both worlds with our PAL-M MegaDrive because it has PAL superior colour reproduction with 60 Hz.

Amazing mod! With mine I went the cheap way and installed a 3 position double throw switch on the back, removing the RF modulator. I also installed a dual main oscillator solution, so I can get a 100% correct NTSC and PAL output (even composite ntsc works!)

Woolworths...miss that shop so much

I need a ‘high definition graphics stereo sound’ model Megadrive in that condition.

There's a few things we can talk about this mod. First, PAL MDs don't use the same oscialator as the NTSC ones, so if this region switch work mostly work with CRT, you will end with some ever slight frameskip issue when upscaling it, with one frame dropping every X frames. So, a good region switch mod should also try fix that, especially nowadays with device like the OSSC becoming popular. It's not a big issue but i think it's worth to point out. Also, the issue you had with the mod would be problematic for some games, as they might have region protection built in, and to bypass it, you have to trick the game by switching on to 50hz then swap to 60hz after the copy protection screen. With the specific issue you ran into, it would be a problem. Finally, i wouldn't say that cutting plastic, changing part and cutting trace is non invasive, but that's just me being picky. It's cool to see MD being able to play all the games and getting some love. Glad to see the cave back, good luck with all the work left !

The only thing where we missed out where the releases. Sometimes i thought that for example Nintendo must have hated Europe and Germany in particular with all the cool RPGs and action adventures we did not get. At least at the end of the Super Nintendos timeline we got one middle finger towards the US, we got a localized(!) version of Terranigma whereas the US folks got nothing, even if it was a Moyse-Job, meaning done by Claude M. Moyse, one of the more controversial German localisators. I only need to remind you of the Lindenstraße joke in Secret of Mana. But Terranigma being only released over here outside of Japan was a late but sweet revenge on all the Final Fantasies and Chono Trigger and whatnot we missed out on.

The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was a huge hit here in Canada too. I was 13 when I got mine back in 1991. Like the US, it was called Genesis here in Canada instead of Mega Drive. It launched at the same time in Canada as the US (Autumn 1989). All our TVs here in Canada are always 60Hz only (although in recent years I've noticed some TVs, like my locally bought Sony bedroom LCD, can accept 50Hz signals from sources like AppleTV, but that's VERY uncommon in Canada). The VAST majority of TVs sold in Canada will not accept 50Hz signals at all. My impression at the time was that the SNES and Genesis were pretty neck-and-neck in Canada as far as popularity. I think the SNES perhaps appealed more to the outer suburban/middle-class area kids more while the Genesis did better in urban inner-city/working class neighbourhoods a bit better than the SNES; but all around both were pretty equally popular everywhere in Canada back in those days. You could rent games for either system at nearly every video store that existed on every city block back then. Both the Genesis and SNES were pretty much tied for the top gaming platform in Canada circa 1990-1995, with everything else a distant 3rd, 4th, or worse place (ie. Amiga, TurboGrafx-16, PC, 3DO, Jaguar, etc). Although, unlike the U.S., the Amiga was slightly more successful here and reasonably known (it had an audience).

For some pal games you do want to switch frequency whilst its switched on as some games will check for 50hz during bootup, if its on 60hz you get the “this game can only be played on pal and secam mega drive systems” so you basically boot in 50hz and then change to 60hz when you reach the title screen

I too was impressed with the Genesis in 1989. It became a major source of motivation for my upgrade to an accelerated Amiga.

There is quite a bit of reverb/echo on the mics? I had to keep adjusting the volume as it gets louder and quieter.

You say non destructive mod but cuttng trace is destructive. Anyway, great video as always, thanks RMC! :-)

Your discussion at the beginning reminded me, when I was 15 I got my first job. Due to some synchronicity, the week I got my first paycheck was also the week the Sega CD came out... so the Sega CD was the first thing I ever bought with my own money.

I didn't have a Mega Drive, I played my friends a lot though and honestly we just didn't know about the 50/60Hz thing. We had no point of comparison either, it's not like we'd seen the NTSC games running a little faster.

The MegaDrive was my fav machine of the time and i had one as well. F22 Interceptor was THE game !.

I imported straight away as my friends showed me the difference. I never thought I'd be watching videos on this 30 years later.

Just got this mod. Very useful.

During the 90s, Computer exchange in Harrow was a church for me.

Same here in Australia we were a 50hz region too, I had no idea back this back in the day till I found a grey import store in my home town. I got the mod done and never looked back

Good episode as always. Just one point i'd like to mention. The sound is noticeably different in this video, I don't know if it's because you're in a much bigger space now but there is noticeable reverb and echo in the sound which makes it sound like you're using different, less studio class mics.

I did a similar mod for about 5 or 6 years ago on a Megadrive model II and not only it changes from 50 to 60hz also made a region mod too so i could enjoy my everdrive with games from diferent regions. Simply transforming my megadrive in a US, JP or EU whenever i feel like it... Also did the same on a Master System II. Really an easy mod vastly documented through the internet.

I have been testing some games out on the PS2 50hz / 60hz and Burnout 2 came up it seems to be properly converted the graphics look better than 60hz due to the difference in resolution 525i vs 480i It makes a big difference to the picture quality. I didn't notice much difference in the speed in that game so I am guessing it was ported correctly but the visual difference i striking it really does look better in 50hz mode. I tested on a CRT

Definitely a worthwhile mod for a PAL console. I never had a Mega Drive as a kid, I was a SNES owner, but I did buy a Sega Nomad recently - now that's a great system.

"Lucky to be alive in such a time" is the definitive understanding of life in a post WWII technologically advancing Britain 👍

"We actually took the bus into the nearest big town, which was Hounslow, which many of you may know" He totally forgot, that the cave is watched all around the globe 😀 For all international viewers, who never heard of Hounslow... I looked it up, it's a suburban town in West London.

I bought a modded Japanese Mega Drive back in 1990, a language mod, but the weirdest thing is it would change the resolution and go faster (albeit in black and white) if you held the reset button down. Always wondered what was going on there. :S Also got it from St. Albans, so not too far from Hounslow :P

Reading a few confused comments :) 50/60hz is all about screen refresh and DMA bandwidth (the amount of graphics/data we can shift everytime the screen is drawn). The time the screen spends being actively drawn is the time when graphics data can be sent at high speed to the VDP (visual display processor). PAL has a higher resolution and as a result takes longer to fill the screen. On the upside this allows more graphics data to be sent to the VDP than on NTSC. On the flip side NTSC has a lower resolution making it faster to fill the screen but it can only send a small amount of graphics data to the VDP. This lower resolution is why NTSC can do a higher FPS (unless the game is PAL optimised to even things up). The end results vary between games depending on whether they were PAL optimised or simply shipped over to PAL regions with minor changes to get them working.

This is such great mod, coming from a PAL-M region (Brazil), I'm used to 60Hz (PAL-M is similar to NTSC). I started collecting after I moved to Australia and the games feel so sluggish in 50hz. I feel like I'd import NTSC versions for the games that don't work as well.

Best time of the week, another RMC video

1:27 Very small world, I grew up in Hanwell, stones throw away from Hounslow, well just under 6 miles away (moved away to the coast in 2004).

The Dixon's story reminded me of some of my own happy memories. So back when I was younger my mum used to work in Comet. Being a single parent on days off or sick days from school, I used to just hang around in the store, watch the big TVs. They had kiosk demo units of a SNES and a mega drive etc. I remember I must have asked my mum's friend who works there if I could play another game, 'sure' she replied. Taking me around back to the big locked drawer that held all the games in, these would then go back into the display cases when people bought them. Asking which one I wanted to play? I can't remember what game I chose, but you can imagine how incredible that was to a techy, gaming kid of the day. I still remember that sight vividly to this day. So basically I used to just play with the games in the store, demoing them to customers. I really wish I thought to pretend to be ill more often, but I was too nice.

That case for the Saga Is the exact style of case that we used to use here in America or at least in my area when you would rent a system in the 80s and 90s you would go to your local movie rental place then you could rent the game system and they would come in cases exactly like that

The first two things i did when i got my more recent model 1 Megadrive is a switched 50/60hrtz mod and cut the two tracers on the board to get rid of the jail bars which are on many early model 1's. Both mods are essential imo.

I have a modded megadrive and yes, it's totally worth it, only way to really fully use an everdrive too

The Mega Drive launched at an interesting time in Japan's video game market. Sega was up against two other companies: NEC, and Nintendo. NEC launched the PC Engine (known in the US as the TurboGrafx-16), which has been featured in the Netflix anime Hi Score Girl multiple times. Nintendo, despite only having the 8-bit Famicom at the time, was able to stay relevant despite the 16-bit console launch period thanks to Super Mario Bros. 3, the GOAT (greatest of all time) of 8-bit games. Even though Eastern Japan's power grid is 100V 50 Hz (Tokyo, Sendai, Sapporo) and Western Japan's power grid is 100 V 60 Hz (Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Okinawa), Japan decided to use a modified version of NTSC called NTSC-J. As a result, the Japanese Mega Drive ran at 60 Hz despite the Eastern prefectures using a 50 Hz grid.

In the 90s here in Argentina the mega drives were clones and in the pal-n standard, we also had the experience of 50hz, but personally I prefer to play at 60hz

Love it when you two team up! Great video guys 👍 If you ever fancy having a bash at a 3DO, I have one here with a new RGB mod fitted that I can't figure out.... I think it needs an "expert" 😁

Always enjoy your content mr rmc, good for times like these! Keep going my man

Sms is even better for a region mod as every single sms game is actually NTSC without region lock and soldering a single wire converts your console into PAL60Hz (mega drive doesn't support PAL60 only NTSC). Actually SMS2 would make a great project as you can drop in RGB AMP and add RGB output making the picture crystal clear - without RGB AMP would still work fine but still with it the picture quality is much better.

Great collaboration guys. Loved the content and would love to see you impressions of the SNES. I remember picking up a Japanese super famicom a few years back and the difference between the fluidity and screen size was pronounce on certain games. Fzero was the main one i remember but also yoshi’s island. That game became so much harder.

I missed this one 😫 the Mega Drive is looking lovely! I don't fancy modding my Mega Drive and do enjoy 50hz and 60hz but I have Mega Sg for that.

Somehow took a while for me to watch but I loved this video :-) the back and forth around 9:10 with the catchy funky music is really cool!!! :-)

The Saturn had a load of PAL optimised games that won’t work at 60hz. Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2 run at full speed and screen. It’s only a few first party titles that weren’t optimised.

Actually there are games that can only switch properly from 50hz to 60hz in mid game. For example streets of rage 2. You need to boot 1st in 50hz when the intro starts, you switch to 60hz. The screen will roll but if you press start to the menu, the game will play perfectly in 60hz.

I have a real bastardised version as mine is a Japanese model w/ the huge ‘16 BIT’ lettering and purple accent on the bezel but had been botched to 50hz at some point in its life apparently done to ship to places like Korea at the time. Since I’ve owned it I’ve had to un-botch the botch returning it to 60hz but it’s permanently set to Japanese region though so this mod looks like it would be a great all round solution.

Glad we got 60hz over here, tho you guys got better picture quality lol. Motion resolution vs ... Not-motion resolution haha

Great video i love the Sega mega drive 👍

Definitely worthwhile to add a 50/60hz mod to the PAL MD.... Luckily I was a grey import MD owner in 1989 ...and the language /region mod is also great too. 👍 Imo the Amiga didn't hold a candle to MD for quality games...

Our local uk import store used to fit switches to Mega Drives so we could run Japanese games. Some games had a security check on bootup to see if they were running in 60hz, so you'd switch to 60 (which our tv's couldn't display properly unless you were rich and had one with a scart socket) then flick the power on, wait until the sega logo had gone then flick back to 50 so you could play it. Eventualy got a 15khz monitor so could play in 60 too.

Excellent video lads, looking forward to the Saturn one ;)

PAL is much closer to original aspect ratio in 320px wide games. NTSC is stretched vertically. Just look at the circles in both modes. However, NTSC stretching compensates for distortion in 256x224 titles.

Fab Mod Neil/Mark. But me being purist I like the Sega Mega Drive as is. I had one back in the day and what got my to sell my Amiga 500 was Afterburner. When I got it home plugged it into the TV I was blown away from the Hi-res graphics and sound which is almost identical to the Arcade Version I have to say the Mega Drive was the must-have Arcade Machine for the home with the Motorola 68000 CPU and the Yamaha YM2612 sound chip made this the best game machine IMO. Plus it was easy to ( well I say easy ) for developers to write code for the Mega Drive as it uses a cut-down version of the Sega's System 16 arcade board the only downside was the cost of cartridges from £40+ and most of the time you got an almost perfect conversion of the Arcade Game but hey at least the cartridges were not as much as the Neo Geo cartridges.

16:15 switches to 60hz

I modded my Sega Mega Drive 1 switchless with sebs code and I'm really happy I did. I started to import games from US and Japan and got a couple in my collection.

Dear Mark. If you were looking to trigger someone with your t-shirt, it was me. You triggered me. I am suitably triggered.

I got the HD Retroad 2020 Version 2 Mega Drive Clone and it has 98% compatibility. It doesn't play the MD Everdrive Pro but plays the China Clone and the power base mini works with the Master System Everdrive Clone from China. I think the audio could have been a little better but it's a gem.

After installing a 10MHz crystal in my Mega Drive and doing the region mod, I boxed it back up to discover there's a fix for PAL screen size at 60Hz, which involved another XTAL. Couldn't be arsed at that point. Works nicely.

The one kid in my neighborhood with the Sega Genesis was Jeph Howard 😂

13:49 The reason behind this is because the Japanese and European versions of Bare Knuckle II/Streets of Rage II share the same ROM (even the music is optimized at 50 Hz), but the North American version uses a different ROM entirely.

Absolutely!!

For anyone who just wanted to see the mods skip to 5:05

Interesting case! I happened to find an original Sega Mega Drive at a local op shop, which came in a nifty Nuby carrying case. Pretty sturdy. And the good people there gave it to me for $5AU. I even had it modded for a 50-60hz mod thanks to an electronics specialist here.

During the Mega Drive/Snes era, I was an Amiga 500+ owner, so the vast majority of games came from the European PAL region and so were coded natively for 50Hz, which meant I had no idea of the 60Hz/Full Screen difference. Turrican on the Amiga @ 60Hz, via emulation is just wrong! It was only with the arrival of the PS1, Saturn & N64 era, by which time I had ditched the Amiga, that I really became aware of the shocking state of PAL releases on consoles but I was in a minority of one when telling my friends about what they were putting up with by playing PAL hardware and releases. None of them really cared enough to pay the extra for the 'full fat' experience.

Nice to see Mark again! It worked so no MarkBrixesstuff for now! :> Like you said though, do I feel like I missed out: not really. I do play 60hz when emulated but back then I didn't even know there was a difference.

Answer is.... depends on preference 🤣🤣🤣 My little sister had one, I had Amiga at that time. It was fun though! Rocket Knight, Toejam & Earl, Castle of Illusion, Sonic, Aladdin all still playable and fun today imo.

If you switch your pal megadrive to 60Hz you get a black and white image on composite. Only RGB wil work then. There is a mod on mmmonkey's webside that wil fix this problem.

Yes it's totally worth doing, and yes luckily it's one of the easiest simplest soldering jobs there is. You can also install a 10MHz clock crystal in there for reduced slowdown in some games! The annoying thing about the Mega Drive is the 68000 CPU is perfectly capable of running at 10MHz but Sega underclocked it.

so mark does all the work and neil reaps the rewards by playing the games, lol i love it.

When I realised how bad 50hz was I went and brought either Japanese or American versions of all my systems.

Video molto bello,mi piace che hai messo un panno sotto la console così non si graffia,hai molto rispetto per le console,hai tutto il mio rispetto.grande,ciao.

From what I understand, the 50hz pal system allows the CPU to be able to process some more stuff in-between refreshes, which was cool for demo scene. Could a game be written using our NTSC resolution but PAL 50hz, giving the CPU even some more time for some other stuff?

I was sold on a SNES because Nintendo ran that Starfox competition that let you line up and play away as much as you want.

Wait, so one region's version of a Mega Drive/Genesis game also has the data of the other regions' versions? Interesting, but wouldn't they have more space available to use if they only had the data needed for that region? Sorry if that seems like a silly question, I understand that the additional data is not that large anyway.

Rip Woolworths

I really don't remember my MegaDrive or SNES not using the full screen but that might be because it was the norm and just didn't notice but always thought they where full screen

Proper console! I loved my Megadrive. The games I loved playing were Sonic, Desert Strike, EA Hockey, PGA Tour Golf, and FIFA Soccer - the very first one!

I'd say it's very much worth doing. The extra screen real estate is nice, but the increased speed is awesome. Word of warning though due to the crystals used in PAL machines you do not get true NTSC speed of 59.91 HZ. Modded PAL MD's run at 59.36HZ when set to NTSC. It doesn't sound like much but can cause stuttering and synch problems when using a device such as the OSSC or even some modern TV's as this is outside optimal settings. Some devices just don't recognise it. Older CRT's have no such problem though. One way round this is to get hold of an Asian PAL system with a HA serial number on the bottom. These appear to be true Japanese machines with cut traces to make them run at PAL speeds. When you mod these they get back their full true NTSC speeds...... luckily this is exactly the case with my early import before the MD was out in the UK , and this is still my main used machine :)

i 50/60 modded my Saturn and got a modified action replay that can be used to play backups and any region.

I imported one before it launched in the EU, from japan, those Magazine reviews were to good. When the PAL Version arrived 90% of my friends cuttet the trace on the pcb and where done with it, no soldering required.

It's nice to have a sort of semi automated system to switch between regions ..... But it is so much simpler to just use a manual switch

Great video but I just couldn't focus on what was going on with the Falcon 4.0 box in the background..... It was calling to me.

I'd get one of those new combination consoles or an NTSC console rather than mod an original MD. The slower gameplay and music has its own charm.

I have a region modded PAL Mega Drive 2 and while it's great to have games display fullscreen at 60Hz, the cpu is still clocked lower so the timing is still around 1% slower than a NTSC console, which isn't noticeable in the vast majority of games, but caused audio issues in games with FMVs