Mega Drive identification

landsleaving

I've a Mega Drive up on adverts at the moment and someone told me it might be a Japanese mark 1 model and rare? I don't think it is, but thought I'd just ask here. As far as the interwebs have told me it's probably an Asian PAL model and common as muck.

Here's a pic:

Chaotic_Forces

According to Wiki it is the Japanese one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_of_the_Sega_Mega_Drive#Japan

o1s1n

Easy way of solving if it's an Asian PAL or not. Does it display in 50hz PAL letterbox format?

CiDeRmAn

Surely the European pal MD is common as muck and the Asian pal MD only as common as, say, shale ?

unky chop chop

It's a Jap alright.
Like the first MD I ever owned. Blue button tells you.
It should also have/or had little locks either side of cartridge slot that prevents european carts being played.
I remember you could just break them off

Jack burton

It could be either asian or Jap, test it out with some PAL region locked games

I forget exactly what but the back of the console will tell whats what, theres a thread on sega-16 for this but i cant find it

Edit*

Heres your answer

Ian explains it all!

CiDeRmAn

Mine has a blue reset button and it's asian, so thats no indicator.
Nope, it's the model number that gives the game away and a simple google will find the rest out.
Seems the only downside is the 50hz output so gonna get that fixed for starters.
Are they otherwise "region free" though?

o1s1n

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Nope, it's the model number that gives the game away and a simple google will find the rest out.

Or as I said, the output frequency?

If it's 50hz letterboxed, then it's PAL Asian
If it's 60hz full screen it's NTSC Japanese

I've heard they're region free...and I can't remember where I read that (sega-16 maybe?)

only way of testing it out is to put in an NTSC region locked game if you have one.

If you're stuck, I have a region locked NTSC copy of Gunstar Heroes.

landsleaving

It's Asian PAL, cheers for the help lads!

It runs games at 50hz, and has an rf socket.

It also says in big letter on the bottom 'PAL'

Duuuhhh. Facepalm moment.

CiDeRmAn

That vid was very useful, thanks for posting it.