When you're about to buy a console, or game media (CD, Cartridge, DVD, etc) you might wanna be careful on your selection, especially when you buy from overseas.
Always ask the seller and yourself regarding the console's or the game's region. A game or console is usually coded according to the region where it is manufactured, and this prevents it from using other region's media or vice versa. You can still use a console from any region, but only use the SAME REGION'S games.
When I first start retrogaming, I managed to get a PSX, but it only plays NTSC-J games. If I insert games from other regions, it will not be able to read them.
This page is a very simplified information page on what you need to know, but if you want to read the whole story, you can check out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_lockout
4 regional coding exists for consoles and games, and usually they are written somewhere on the box, manual, or otherwise you need to ask them from the seller.
The regions are:
NTSC-U (North America, South America, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines)
PAL (Europe and Oceania)
NTSC-J (Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan)
NTSC-K (South Korea)
Apart from game medias, the same goes for some extensions and peripherals. Another way you can find them out is by googling the console serial number or look them up in useful pages such as:
1. https://segaretro.org/Main_Page
2. http://www.nintendo.com/
Lastly I would like to share my experience, this is my SEGA 32X which can only run on an NTSC-J Mega Drive. I first tried it on a PAL Mega Drive and it didn't work at all.
That's it from me, hopefully you won't make the same mistake I did. Game Doc just left the building.
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