Region-free Consoles
While many games consoles do not allow games from other countries to be played on them (mainly due to voltage, localization and licensing issues), some consoles (often handheld, due to the universal nature of batteries) are not necessarily restricted to a certain locale. Some of these include:
- 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
- Atari Jaguar
- Atari Jaguar CD
- Game Boy/GB Pocket/GB Light
- Game Boy Color
- Game Boy Advance/GBA SP/GB Micro
- Sega Game Gear
- Neo Geo
- Neo Geo CD/CDZ
- Neo Geo Pocket Color
- Nintendo DS/DS Lite
- NEC TurboGrafx-CD/PC Engine CD-ROM2
- Master System
- PlayStation Portable
- PlayStation Vita
- PlayStation 3
- Super Game Boy
- Super Game Boy 2
- Virtual Boy
Note: Pre-third generation consoles are not listed because at the time there was little to no importing and consequently there was little reason to introduce regional lock-out. Sometime importing difficulties may still arise (e.g. Atari 2600 games from regions the console is not from may introduce some glitches, such as missing colors).
Most handheld video game systems are region free due to most of them having a built in screen, run on batteries and being much cheaper to produce if they do not have a region lock on the system or games.
Read more about this topic: Parallel Importing In Video Games
Famous quotes containing the word consoles:
“The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)