Hello,

When I put my japanese Metal Gear cartridge in my Philips NMS8280, the game doesn't start. The MSX keeps resetting. (european version works correct)

So I tryed it with my USB Gamereader. With MSX-PLAYer no problems.
With BlueMSX, if I select "MSX2 - German" the game keeps resetting, when I select "MSX2 - Japanese" the game starts, but to slow, +/- 5 frames/second.

It looks like the japanese version doesn't work on a european MSX, or am I doing something wrong?

Does anyone know a solution?

PS: The metal strips of the cartridge are clean!!! It is not a contact problem.

Sorry to inform that you are correct. It sounds like a blueMSX problem.

The Japanese verison doesn't work on a European MSX indeed.

wow.. they also added a REGION protection on msx games..

...so tell me, there's a European version than?

Right.
I had no problem running MGII (which is ofcourse JAP) on my European (tho Sony is Jap) MSX back then (sony hitbit 700D, eh.. german msx)

I've never heard about troubles using japanese Konami's in european computers... so, games like Quarth (just released in japanese/korean) will not work on a european MSX??

Niles, in almost all cases the european and Japanese cartridges contain the same code. They just check the landcode in the machine to display another title screen and other minor details. Try it with some good emulators, take for instance 'penguin adventure' and start a Japanese machine, and then use thes same rom and start a European machine....
In case of Metal Gear, the cartridges are actually different (probably too much text ), so there you have two different programs in the cartridge.
It might just be that it is a bug in the Japanses game code that keeps it resetting.

ro, yes there is a European version but the translation is not that excelent.
There is someone who retranslated the entire thing and created an IPS patch for the japanese game code. I suggested that you use that version...
http://www.geocities.com/nekurahoka/

As far as I know the problem is only with Metal Gear (RC750)

You can tell if it is the japanese version because the text on the radio is in japanese. The european version has english text. The carts look exactly the same (outside), but have different roms!!! (inside)

I've got a spare japanese one, so if anyone is interested? (but it won't play on philips MSX2 machines)
Can anyone verify if the problem only occures with Philips MSX2, or that, for example, Sony computers which were sold on the european market do have the same problem?

Yes, it only happens with the Japanese version of Metal Gear (ro, I think you are confused with MG2). The Japanese version actually checks if the machine is Japanese and if it's not, it hangs up/resets on purpose (according to BiFi who analysed the code).

oh, I misread. I thought we we're talking bout MGII, my mistake. Indeed there's a Euro version of MG1 ofcourse
haha, yeah the translation is buggy.

Quote:

wow.. they also added a REGION protection on msx games..

Dexx is right. It really IS a region protection.
That's not nice...

Does anyone already know if it works on a european Sony MSX2 ?
I only tryed on Philips.

AFAIK it looks at the normal region data, so it will not work on any MSX with a non-Japanese BIOS.