PAL Exclusive Games - Why You Need Them - Adam Koralik 

FINALLY! AN ACTUAL PERSON ACKNOWLEDGED THE FACT THAT EUROPE EXISTS!!! LET'S GOOOOOOO

Adam Koralik, is the type of guy to open a glass door to see outside.

In Jamaica we're really a NTSC country but we kind of have a mix between NTSC & PAL b/c most things are just imported or brought over from people who travel to the US, UK, or Canada

I’m a GameCube collector, and the only PAL games that were “exclusive” were Doshin and Donkey Konga 1+2. Technically none are exclusives, however Donkey Konga has different songs in every region, and I wanted to play Doshin in English.

I think in general it's a combination of Japanese online sellers being cheaper and more willing to send stuff to the US vs European sellers, and people going for Japanese exclusives will gravitate to the kind of packaging Japan uses, especially for Japanese made games. Japanese goods have a kind of exotic feeling to many, even these days when we get original Japanese artwork on the cover most of the time for US releases.

As an Indonesian, my country doesn't really have official release by xbox and nintendo. So my collection is a mish mash of asian release, us release, jp release and pal release. They're not necessarily exclusives either lol.

MediEvil 1 & 2 were developed in Cambridge England. They made the game for Pal systems so the game runs at the appropriate speed on Pal. I've tried playing the NTSC version and found Dan's movement to be unwieldy due to the faster game speed.

A good heads-up here is that PAL games can also come with an added obstacle though. I'm Dutch, so I grew up with PAL systems and PAL games around me, and still had to look very closely at the boxes because of the language the game is in. Many German and French games (so beware when you follow Adam's tip for Paris!) only have German or French on the cart/disc. I once bought Illusion of Time on SNES (called Illusion of Gaia in the US), it was advertised as English, but once I popped in the cart it greeted me with a message that said "Drücke Start", so it was German with no other language available. Super Metroid has a German/French release, but that only affects the introduction and the rest is still in English, so even if you know there's a language difference, a game can still be playable to you. But it can go even beyond those languages, for instance, Lufia 2 on Super Nintendo was released in several languages in PAL territories, and it's one of the few games that got a release in Dutch. That sadly means that about 90% of the copies you can find in the Netherlands are Dutch - which is something I despise (I simply refuse to play games in Dutch and have, in fact, returned games because of that and imported them from the UK - looking at you, Beyond Good and Evil on GameCube!) Luckily, most of that went away around the N64 era, but even then some games still had this language barrier. GameCube versions of multiplat games seem to suffer most, because the discs were smaller they simply cut some audio tracks to make it fit (again, Beyond Good and Evil is an example of this). I also ran into this recently with the Dreamcast versions of Tomb Raider: Chronicles (German with no language switch, even though all the box and disc art is in English) and Shadowman, so check before you buy. Another good thing to keep in mind when importing PAL games is that both Germany and Australia (used to) have a ridiculous censorship system, meaning any game with nazi references was forbidden in Germany for instance, and blood has to be green for some reason on some games.

Also, always worth mentioning The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and Xenoblade probably wouldn't exist in the US without Europe 🙊

I have sega rally n-gage all these years and this is the first I've heard about its value.

I am located in PAL territory. I only orders games from Japan where language barrier isn’t an issue, like fighting games, race games, etc. Everything story based and where reading is important I exclusively order from my own region and sometimes from US.

I like turtles

I can’t imagine collecting the Sega Master System and not getting European releases

The PAL market is a Paradise for Collector's Editions. A lot of games with normal releases in US has Collector's Edition in Europe. Metroid 2 Remake is an example of that. In Europe they released a Collector with a keychain, ost, poster, digital code for gameboy game, steelbook and artbook.

Good PAL physical exclusives seem to be becoming more common too.

Australia has an exclusive version of beetle adventure racing (called hsv Adventure racing) for N64.

Australia is pretty on par with having their own identity with gaming releases now, but I remember a time when the shelves were lined with European and Asian copies of games mixed with Australian versions. It wasn't fun hahaha

I find in Australia you don't see much american stuff for sale, but then where I live there aren't a huge amount of retro game shops. But I'm so glad someone is talking about pal ! I feel like we miss out alot 😅

As a French person that works in the industry it still blows my mind to know that everytime a NEW Astérix game gets released digitally the studios are always recording a solid 250 000 copies sold in North America where the sales aren't Canadian - so U.S and Mexico sold copies - and yet Limited Run never reached out to the studios to try and see what a FIRST EVER U.S collectors edition of an Astérix game would net them ... (I guarantee you that rabid Astérix Euro fans would also probably try to snatch a copy) All I am trying to say is the following "Over the years of retro gaming youtube Astérix has gotten U.S and Mexicans fans it didn't have before maybe it's time for game studios and publishers to try again at least games wise"

Brit here. When I was young, I had an orange swirl Dreamcast that somehow ran our entire PAL collection flawlessly, only hiccup was that it was composite AV only as the RF aerial connector was stuck in grayscale. But the only time I've seen anything from other regions not work personally is trying to use either an NTSC or PAL game on a french SECAM TV where it just wouldn't post after powering on. in terms of retro gaming at least. The only real issues I've found in terms of regional issues, which really shouldn't have been since we're both PAL regions, is that my Xbox 360 absolutely refused to acknowledge any disc, whether it was a game, CD or DVD if it was from Germany. Content from everywhere else in Europe worked fine, even a few NTSC games, while small in number, worked(I'm assuming it was a DRM, region lock slip up or something) but this only ever worked if I booted up the game without a connection to Xbox Live so I can't really say anything about that. Still, it's good to see a western youtuber who remembers that we exist lol.

RU-vid is so heavily dominated by US creators that us in Europe get the impression that the US thinks what happened there is universal. Which is absolutely stupid. There are thousands upon thousands of games released in Europe that never made it to the States, mainly for computers. We also got a lot of computer ports for consoles that the US never got.

I was never sure if PAL games would work right on my TVs or thought that they ran slower.

Great video. Here in Brazil I used to import games all over the place, but right now, with our troubled economic situation and undervalued currency, it is hard to import anything, because 1 brazilian reais is worth of 0,15 dollar and the euro is even more expensive at 0,18, so we have to wait for a increase in value of our currency to have a chance to import anything in a fair way.

My one tip for US collectors: If you can't get a PAL game to run at 60Hz then be wary of games(like RPG's) that contain an abundance of text. As the difference between reading lots of text at 60Hz, or instead at 50Hz can kill the experience of some RPG's. As you slowly wait for the text to unfold, and compensate by elongating your reading technique. Sometimes there's a get around if a developer was foresightful/generous enough to give multiple speed options for the text. Or maybe "quick unfolding" of text is possible by pressing the X button on every speech bubble. But sometimes this wasn't the case with older RPGs. Great vid, and wonderfully explained. 🤓

Conan 2004 is a good example of a PAL exclusive

This is a good video, I'm from the uk and before PS1 (where we got treated to FF7, Suikiden, grandstream saga..everything) Japan didn't release JRPGs in Europe for some reason. We didn't get Earthbound, the original final fantasy's, lunar, lots of great stuff. I've been pretty tempted to get foreign game's as my collection grows, so far I've gotten suikoden 3? (NTSC, weren't PAL released), and on NES, the 3 ninja gaidens plus two Contra's. Because Germany thought the word 'ninja' was too violent, along with humans shooting each other. Europe panicked and Contra was changed to Roboprocter with robots or some nonsense, and ninja gaiden to shadow warriors. Also love foreign peripherals, got a white 3D saturn controller and virtual stick I think, from Japan. Oh and the reason I didn't get foreign region game's was, I need to build up my own region first haha plus would need to get around some locks which shouldn't be hard.

Thankyou Adam, giving Pal the love it deserves

Ok, Doshin the Giant is THE ONE exception to my previous comment

I’m in Scotland, this was a very interesting topic. Would like to see further videos on your PAL collection. I bought Deep Fear on launch mainly because that was billed as the final release game for the Saturn here. It was an ok & fun Resident Evil style game, let down only by the added “air supply” mechanic.

I never new. But now I know. I'll look out for PAL games

Glad you shouted out Quest for Booty. :)

Only thing i know is that PAL games often have better cover art.

In fact, Europe (Australia sometimes too) even got different console versions of some games that were released in the US, like: Sonic Gems Collection (USA only has it on GameCube, but Japan and Europe also got it on PlayStation 2, which is also the one I have), Donald In Maui Mallard (other versions were released in the US as Maui Mallard In Cold Shadow, but Europe and Brazil also got a Genesis/Mega Drive version), and Shenmue 2 (although the Xbox version was released in the USA and even with English voice acting, Japan and Europe also have a DreamCast version but still with Japanese voices with subtitles), although I bet you might know this one anyway, since your mainly a DreamCast fan, I think.

Yes, I recall back in the day of the Sega Mega Drive that retailers would also sell Sega Genesis titles as the PAL territory did not always get a local PAL release. As part of the 'grey market' it was frowned upon as the local distributor did not get the profits, but retailers still sold them (usually cos they never came out or there was a significant delay between NTSC and PAL release dates)

When thinking about the whole 50/60hz situation, at least for like 6th gen on, I think (but could be and probably am wrong) that it was mostly an issue of loadtimes since developers knew how to compensate for the difference by that point. For example, years ago I watched two people livestream a race of Sonic Heroes. One of the players was doing legitimately _much_ better, but the second player was able to keep up and it was found that they were playing in different hertz (which probably should've prompted a restart of the race but that's aside from the point). In actual gameplay it wasn't noticeable, but the other guy was able to keep himself in the race because his levels were loading in ever so slightly quicker.

honestly, people always overlook how much cheaper certain games are in the EU. XC2 Torna (used): 80$ in the EU (brand new): 30€ That's a huge price difference

When You Showed the PS2 game I was not expecting 7 Sins, I was expecting something like Resident Evil Survivor 2 or World War Zero

I create a lot of pickups videos and am from the UK so I collect mainly PAL games. What I have found and what I have seen on fellow UK collectors channels is that the odd American who leaves a comment will often ask why we collect the PAL stuff and not just import the NTSC. They usually say something about how the NTSC is always superior and more valuable and its what real collectors want. To me it makes no sense. Thing is I import a lot of NTSC stuff but only the exclusives which a lot of people don't even realise didn't come out in Europe. Its always good to see someone who's willing to actually show PAL gaming in a positive light.

There is a weird nationalism between some North American collectors where they are only willing to collect NA titles and refuse to get other region games because they aren't part of an American library...

Strangely, the same situation but in reverse happens where I live, i've been to a lot of conventions and there's plenty of our PAL copies of games and usually a Japanese section, but never a section for American games, I always have to go out of my way online to track down American exclusives that i'd like.

Thank you for your very good time.😊👍

Terranigma was not only one of my favourites growing up, it's also one of my most favourite games of all time. And I didn't learn until later that it never even released in North America! BTW The Wii/X360/PS3 was generally the point where games that didn't support 60hz became the exception rather than the rule. A super rare exception at that. Games in general started supporting 60hz around the Dreamcast's launch but only for 6th gen games onwards

Adam, at least all of us have that one PAL game in our collection because it was the only way to play in English, Shenmue 2. 👍🏻

I remember I picked up Truxton for the Mega Drive/Genesis in Paris and was surprised it worked when I got back home. I also somehow got some review copies for PS4 games by accident.

A lot of pal games from the 8-32 bit era run at 50hz as you mentioned, the problem is a lot of these pal games have optimised sound and music for 50hz, so while you can indeed play them at 60hz do bring the game up to full speed and without borders the music will play too fast (because it’s pal optimised) Another issue with a lot 32bit pal games is quite often they are either pal optimised or “part” optimised for 50hz. The Saturn is notorious for this , in fact there is a dedicated wag page showing showing you every Saturn games and if it’s either fully optimised , part optimised or not optimised at all, only games that are not optimised at all will run properly on a 60hz NTSC system . Running a pal optimised games such as Sega rally will result in a large chunk of the bottom of the screen being cut off for example Very interesting look at the list here So in my opinion i think US collectors avoid European games as it can be too much of a mixed bag. You can buy a JPN game and know for a fact that it’ll run properly, the only thing you have to worry about is any potential region locks www.google.co.uk/amp/s/randomisedgaming.tumblr.com/post/146372446412/the-complete-european-sega-saturn-60hz-guide-to/amp

The PAL regions used to get games a lot later than the US back in the day. As a result PAL versions would sometimes have extra content/bug fixes not present in the NTSC versions.

Love the thumbnail Much love from your fans across the ocean!

I feel that it is lack of knowledge. The sad part is, that many gamers don't even realize these PAL games exist. In recent years, some of these games have become more well known within the gaming community, thanks to the internet, but I do remember a time when people didn't have a clue. I remember playing Headhunter (Dreamcast) and Deep Fear thinking they were amazing back in the day. For me, I could care less about box art or the fact a game might run a bit slower. For me, it is about high quality games, that never had an official US release. The fact that some of these games exist, and I have a chance to experience them for myself, is what I care about the most.

Outstanding video Adam. Finally someone else talking about Chaos Break.

The PAL version of Resident Evil 4 on GameCube has a really dope cover where it has a red and black forest with Dr. Salvadorian in the background.

I had no idea there was such a stigma attached 😂 I’m all about them region exclusives. Love from London ❤️

Once I collected most of the games I wanted, I got interested in PAL imports because they’re in English. I currently have 47 PAL games, mostly for PS2 and a few PS3 and PS4. I have 11 JP imports for multiple consoles. I first dabbled with imports on PS3 and PS4 since they’re region free. Once my PS2 was modded, that opened up a lot more opportunities. I initially found out about imports from Radical Reggie and bought PAL exclusives. I bought a few because PAL copies are much cheaper (eg., PS3 Painkiller) but tried to focus on PAL exclusives. I think the more exposure RU-vid content creators that I follow give to imports, the more I get interested because that’s my main source of information. Great video, Adam!

I import some games mostly a mix between PAL & Japanese Games but I don't focus on it more for financial reasons!

I've imported PAL games. If it's pre 7th gen I usually do research to make sure the game runs at 60hz. My go to for imports are actually Asia/Hong Kong releases because they are practically English releases down to the boxart and title spine.

As you said, PEGI is used by a lot of European countries (not only E.U.). It's a system created by video game publishers to take the lead on child protection before countries worry too much and do it their way. They preferred to do their thing first to make sure it wasn't too offensive to their market. In Germany (USK rating), it's different because it's in the law and german laws rule out PEGI system : Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Article 5) + Protection of Young Persons Act, Chapter 3: Protection of young people in the context of media (§ 12 Data media with films or games, § 14 Labelling of films as well as of film and play programmes, § 15 Date media harmful to young people). Unlike PEGI, USK is both run by a mix of video-game publishers, parents and government officials. I think it's healthier than our PEGI even though their warning logos are even bigger than ours X-D

Adam, I would love to own a PAL copy of Deep Fear, but it costs like 300+ EUR compared to importing a JP version to Estonia.

I'm glad you made this video Adam! I hadn't considered what PAL games I missed until playing Pop'n twinbee on SNES virtual console via switch.

As a person living in PAL we frequently have to really on NTCS imports. Namco didn't seem to know Europe exsisted until 2005 with most PS1 and PS2 games being NTSC only. So I guess NTSC importing isn't super uncommon here.

I’d also like to add: - if I heard correctly, New Ghostbusters 2 was released for the Famicom in Japan - We Dare was also released on the region free PS3 - Captain Planet was also released in Asia

I can't believe you were in Blackpool! I'm based in the North of England and would have totally tried to meet you if I knew you were in the North. The trailer for We Dare was hilarious IIRC. The Xbox tank game probably had no issues with licensing in order to enable back compat, and I can imagine there were no issues when they recompiled it for x86 and tested it.

Not too much to say about this video, but leaving this comment mostly for the algorithm as suggested. As far as PAL games for the Dreamcast, for some games they may have been the only ports of the games that had an English interface (until they got released on other systems). Shenmue II, for example, was only released to the West on the Dreamcast in Europe, ditto for Rez. Despite Rez being widely available as Rez Infinite on PC, the Dreamcast versions NTSC-J, and especially PAL, still go for very high prices on the used market.

My first PAL game was Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven for the PS4, only released digitally in the US and the JP version didn't have english subtitles so EU version was the only choice for me.

Dreamcast has different game case design for both regions yet somehow both are the most flimsy cases ever.

The only consoles that I ever imported PAL games for are the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3. I did it so that I could play some of the Buzz games that never came out in North America. Fortunately, the European Buzz games are compatible with the American buzzers, so I didn't have to import any hardware to play them. I also imported some of the PAL-exclusive Singstar games, as well as Hardware: Online Arena. (Unfortunately, I didn't find out that the master server went offline until after I bought it, so I was never even able to play it online.) The Playstation 3 plays PAL PS3 games just fine in 60Hz, (at least as long as you are playing on an EDTV or HDTV,) but I have run into issues playing PAL PS2 games on some American TV sets. On my parents' LG flat panel HDTV set, the colors looked really washed out, and on a friends' LG flat panel HDTV, the bottom of the screen got chopped off. On both of the Panasonic flat panel HDTVs I tried, the screen went completely blank once the game launched. Neither of my CRT HDTVs work correctly with PAL games.

Yeah, i've discussed Doshin The Giant with you before and i haven't got the chance to use it on anything newer than a 2008 samsung and Sony Trinitron CRT (99/03). I was using action replay on Gamecube and Wii but getting either a black and white image or fuzzy lines, both with sound i believe. A few other interesting PAL only gems are: Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (DS). (It was the last game by one of my favorite developers, Cing (Trace Memories) and was the sequel to the excellent Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Speaking of Trace Memories (DS), it's sequel, Another Code: R- A Journey into Lost Memories (Wii), was PAL only as well as Cing's point and click/ horror game Glass Rose (PS2). Another was Exumed (SegaSaturn). The US version, entitled Powerslave was pretty expensive, so i got the PAL version. The only problem i've had was the opening sequence and the few voice overs (the pharoh) were glitchy and out of synch (i assumed because of the 50hz/60hz). Otherwise it seemed to play fine. I really love the Siren series (PS2/PS3) and Siren 2 only made it to PAL. It's definitely on my list. Oh, and last but not least, Overblood 2 (PS1), the sequel to a very interesting Hudsonsoft game, Overblood (PS1). i enjoyed this video and thanks for trying to wake North Americans up to the PAL scene. Peace.

Spanish collector here and with a kinda reversed situation where people kind of prefer getting japanese stuff instead of US for the same nonsensical reasons. And I do share all the point you made in this video, I mainly get spanish distributed stuff to support the local distributors, then the other "PAL territories" stuff either to support regionwide distributors or for a financial reason (it's kinda ludicrous how much having the cover in one language or another might change the price), then I go for the US exclusives or titles we only got as a digital download but have a physical edition in the US region, then import Asia Pacific stuff since they often get games fully translated to english that ether are digital only in the West or don't even get any kind of release here and then, as a last option, japanese imports almost just for exxclusives. And my reasons for importing are quite similar as yours too, with exclusives being the main reason with getting digital only stuff in physical formats coming in a close second plus another one : censorship. The amount of censorship applied to games depending on the region can vary wildly, but like many 80s games were heavily censored because the UK laws forced them and they weren't going to make yet another version ,there's still a lot of stuff that suffered massive changes in Japan or the States after the mid 90s to nowadays that are fully uncut on PAL regions (and some cases were the US or the asia pacific/japanese versions were the "free" ones). This is even more of a game by game case and requires a bit of research beforehand but it still happens nowadays and might be a reason to want to get a different version of the game than the one they're selling you at your local retailer. And the funniest thing? All those people that give me weird looks when I explain this to them are exactly the ones the ask to borrow my "exclusive stuff" ALL THE TIME! xD

Man, the only experience I had with a PAL game early on was Shinobido: Way of the Ninja for PS2. The 576i resolution was a major barrier - even after copying and applying an NTSC patch to a copy I burned and used with Swap Magic, you lost like a third of the screen and much of the interface. :( Now that you mention the problem goes away on modern HDTV's, it might be worth re-visiting with OPL on my fat PS2.

3:35 If you use American hardware, Japanese stuff is generally easier to bypass because it often uses the same code as the US. You can play Super Famicom games in a US SNES simply by pulling out the security tabs. For something like a PlayStation or a Genesis, you may need some extra tools to get around region lockouts. Djclyve and I recently did a whole series on Ranma characters exclusive to the video games, and each profile had a dedicated tech segment on how to bypass the region lockouts.

Cool vid. I'm an Aussie and Id like to see a video of US (NTSC) only games us PAL guys should be importing.

North America & Japan: NTSC territories Australia & Europe: PAL territories 🇮🇹 DENIED territory

Another thing that people usually forget to mention is that 90% of pal Dreamcast games have the option, at the beginning of the game, to choose between 50 and 60hz. And our jewel cases are beautiful (incredible fragile though).

There are some games that were released in a physical copy only in pal regions, and for some reason they are also playable on US consoles aswell. The game Ratchet and Clank: Quest for booty was released in a physical disc in Pal regions and I have heard rumors that that disc is also playable on an US console, why? i don't know and have not tested it. Only heard about it.

As someone who lives in PAL country, I just collect PAL versions of games mainly because they are nostalgic to me. For example, I want my PS1 games in those cases they were in my youth as I remember them, not regular jewel cases like NA and Japanese stuff. Of course, I import stuff we never got and there's a lot. That being said though when I actually want to play something I'll go all the ways to play them in the developer's intended way and YES in some cases the PAL 50Hz version is the one that runs correctly but yeah mostly with old console stuff the 60Hz stuff is the correct one. Also, surprisingly lots of stuff was actually PAL optimized against common consensus. Adding to that during the 6th generation lots of PAL stuff also offers the 60Hz mode.

A lot of the AmigaCD 32 games are Amiga games already on the Amiga computers, the console did not go too well. Some are worth getting though. And the Amiga in general has a huge catalogue of games worth getting.

Hopefully this Comment is high enough for people to read. First, most European Video Games were either released here in America, or whatever European Exclusives they have, we don't really care for here in America. When it comes to Japanese Games, there were between hundreds to thousands of video games that were released in Japan, that were not released in America. Europe, not so much. I'm not saying there are no PAL Exclusives that I want to own, but it's literally a list of less than 10 games, and I own those 10 PAL games that I would want to own. Second, just ease of access; this one is weird, but I'll try to explain. Most people who love video games, when they travel, they go to Japan, pick up a bunch of random stuff, bring it back here to the US, and sell it here in the US. When I go to a video game swap meet, I only see Japanese Imports. I've bought PAL games, but very rarely. If I had more opportunities to buy PAL games, I would, but I do not have those opportunities. A lot of the reason (I think at least; these are not facts) is that Americans do not really travel to Europe in General, or if they do, they don't buy video games and bring them back to the US. When people travel to Japan, there's this mindset of (What came out in Japan and not in America), when people travel to Europe, there isn't that mindset. It's usually "Most games came out in America anyway," so they end up not bringing anything back to the states. So, if I want to buy the PAL version of Donkey Konga 1 and 2 (Which had way better soundtracks than the US), I have to pay the price of the game, plus another $20 for international shipping! So I just end up running the game off an Emulator to play it rather than owning it.

Awesome info. Did not know how easy it can be. Thanx.

Check Neng,a spanish game released for the PS2 based in a sketch comedian from early 2000's.

To be fair, most of my friends (I'm European as well) that collect retro games have PAL games and sometimes Japanese imports, so it kind of goes both ways in a sense. I think this is partly because a lot of people mistakenly believe that only Japan had exclusive games not coming out here.

Quest for Booty also got an Asian release which has complete English support.

Yep I live in the UK and I was plagued with 50hz so I bought me a Japanese super Nintendo aka super Famicom and continued to do the same with many other home consoles

Hi, great Video. But i have one Correction: I am from Austria and we also use the PEGI Rating System. If you go into a random Store here you will only see PEGI Stuff. USK is Germany Only. However if you buy something from Amazon Germany you might end up with the USK Version. I dont like the USK Logo either so i stick with the PEGI Stuff.

You and I both ponder that. It seems like PAL imports get overlooked, I have a PAL SNES to go along with my US SNES and Super Famicom. Wanna get a PAL PS2 and Dreamcast too. Also bought the physical copy of INfamous First Light from France.

I usually don’t import games, but I made an exception for Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty because it’s Ratchet & Clank, which is my favorite games series of all time.

The console the game is being played on is what determines what Hz mode the game will play at. A PAL console outputs a PAL50Hz signal, an NTSC console outputs an NTSC 60Hz signal, regardless of where the game came from.

I have a few Japanese games, a few European and two from Hong Kong. It boils down to price and accessibility for me. Gravity Rush Remastered, for example, is crazy expensive if you want a hard copy in NA, but I got a French copy for a much more reasonable price. Plays in English. Edit: I am Canadian. I've also found that sometimes local gamestores have weird random imports which I almost always buy.

I like to think that in an alternate reality, I was born in an earlier decade, lived in North America and ran my own game store. In addition to domestic games for all consoles, I would sell Game Boy and Game Gear games imported from Europe and Japan AND also sell some copies of the Sonic The Hedgehog books published in the UK which were written by Martin Adams!

The Ratchet and Clank collection for the Vita only has a physical edition in PAL (I believe). At least if you want an accessible physical version in English, the European version is the way to go. It's one of a handful of PAL Vita games I have.

The financial part is also true the other way around, I live in Belgium, besides LRG and Amazon US I have only imported a few games from other places because shipping and taxes are in many cases more than the game. I used to work for a US company a few years back and my colleague had to travel alot to the US so I ordered games and had the seller ship them to his hotel or to our office in Florida. So I totally agree with your take on this.

Me who lives in the UK and gets PAL games...

Deep Fear was a PAL/European game I was curious about, but at the online asking prices I just saw, I’m gonna steer the ship back towards Japan. I do have a PAL copy of Shenmue II and it was easy to boot up with my cheat disc.

The pal version of futurama on xbox is also insanely cheaper the the us counterpart. Huge savings for just a small label

Uforia: The Saga is a great NES PAL region game. In Japan it was originally released as Hebereke. Some sprites, including those of 2 playable characters, were changed for cultural reasons, but it plays the same. In general it seems that Commodore 64 and Amiga got a lot more love in Europe and probably many exclusives too, so that is definitely a world to look into if you already haven't.

This is a good video. I agree that more people should look into importing European/PAL games. I just wanted to correct one minor detail. New Ghostbusters II was not released in Europe exclusively; it was also released for the Famicom in Japan. This is worth noting because it does not require one to remove or disable their NES’s lockout chip, which I’ve heard can cause problems when playing unlicensed games.

Austria doesn't use USK, we also use PEGI, it's just that we get the Germany-German games here since it's easier to translate most games once, which is why we sadly get some censored games from Germany here like Wolfenstein, even tho it doesn't have to be censored here.

Ratchet & Clank Quest for Booty was also released in Asia (not Japan) as physical.... and AU according to Wikipedia

Being and European, it's very interesting to see the USA/Canadas perceptive of our video game market. I never thought much about our exclusives, but after this video I'm more interested in knowing more about our games. About the exclusive games per country, we have some physical games that where released exclusively in some European countries, for example: Strickers Edge(Portugal), El Toro(Spain), and more that I'm not remembering. There are some odd balls that like "Alarm for cobra 11" for PS2 or "Fimbul" for PS4.

My main concern with the consoles is that the power systems are different, and I don't have a converter yet.

I just ordered the first Little Nightmares on Switch from a PAL region because we never got a physical release here in the US. I never took the time to research PAL exclusives before because of the financial aspect, I knew it cost a lot and I didn't see the value. That's slowly changing though, and I've made a few friends in PAL regions in the last couple years so we exchange lists of stuff to keep an eye out for.

I can vouch for Sega being huge in the UK. Nintendo while around in the 90s everyone was a Mega Drive Kid turned Sony Teen while playing Nintendo handhelds the entire time... That was the wave

Hi I’m from the UK and I own wipeout 2097 for the Saturn which was never released in the US, good video