Celebrate the holidays by dancing on the grave of region-locked consoles
A history of violence against importers.
The Video Chronicles series steps back from its tireless weekly march of documenting ancient video game releases in order to look at a larger issue affecting classic game fantatics: Region-locking. While region concerns didn't affect Game Boy fans (beyond the fact that you needed to be able to read Japanese to appreciate all those import-only role-playing games), it definitely affected those brave souls who like to mix-and-match their Famicom/NES and Super Famicom/Super NES software. While this video overview is hardly comprehensive, it touches on the hows and whys and even the wherefores of region-locking:
It's an unhappy subject — one that I've spent a lot of time grappling with through the years. But there's a happy ending, since the only console currently on the market to inflict regional divisions on its customer base is the 3DS. Who knows how much longer the 3DS has to live (a few months? A few years?), but once it's gone, we just might be rid of the bugbear that is a divided global games market once and for all. At least on consoles, anyway.
