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F-Zero Breaks Freeloader - Intentionally?

Posted by simoniker on from the doorknob-came-off-in-my-hands dept.

Thanks to Gamers.com for their article pointing out that the Japanese release of Nintendo's hotly-awaited F-Zero GX is partially incompatible with the Datel Freeloader region-free disc for the GameCube, which "normally allows players to run Japanese games on American or European Cubes without difficulty", as it "refuses to display the select screens or the in-game interface overlays (such as the speedometer, placing indicator, and so forth)." Since this a major Nintendo-developed title, and one of the first to sport notable incompatibilities with Freeloader, could it be that Nintendo are deliberately releasing games to break region-free circumvention, or is this just a coincidence?

3 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Sound like a localization bug... by jordanda · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It sounds to me that they were trying to do language detection for the interface so they could release the same disc to several regions. Freeloader probably sets some language flag incorrectly which caused the text display to fail. Isn't it curious that the failure occurs just in the menus and in the speedometers? I would speculate that you can't see a single character of text. If they were purposely trying to break compatability then the failure would have been a lot more dramatic.

  2. Re:Why region-lock? by bigbigbison · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As I understand it, generally it is because a subsidiary of a company in another country is basically a seperate company. Nintendo of America has their own production schedual and own profit margins and whatnot. If Nintendo of Japan released a game that wasn't region locked, it would hurt Nintendo of America's bottom line.

    --
    http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
  3. Just wait for the damn game... by Man+In+Black · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No offense or anything, but I don't see much point in importing a game that is guaranteed to be released in North American anyways. Instead of spending twice the price and sitting through japanese menus and cutscenes, you could just wait the month or so and get a copy that has no compatibility issues whatsoever.

    Of course, in Europe where everything seems to take forever to come out, I can understand it a little better.

    --
    -"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH