Opinion on modded Super Famicom
8 years ago
Netherlands

A small introduction; I own a PAL SNES (as I am from Europe), but as it is known, some games are in a distinct disadvantage when ran on a PAL device. So, I've been looking for a NTSC SNES and ran into a Super Famicom with a Supercic chip. From what I understood, this basically removes the region lock of the games and plays them at the hz they're supposed to be played at (mostly a necessity for PAL, but I wouldn't use it for that since I have a PAL SNES).

What is the stance of the community towards a device like this? Would the runs be legit on it? Technically it's ran on the actual hardware, so it's not emulated, but I wanted to ask just in case before I'd purchase one.

Thanks in advance!

United States

If there's any noticeable advantage over unmodified hardware, it would be considered hardware manipulation and wouldn't be legal for nearly every game. If it functions identically like a normal NTSC or PAL SNES, then it should be alright.

Netherlands

Alright, apparently I didn't know too much about it (or well, about there not being a region lock for US/JPN), and will be going for the SFC without the chip, but just the case modded so it can accept US SNES cartridges. So it should function as a normal SNES :)

Thanks!

Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

It's basically the same for me. I play on a PAL PS2, but to play the often required NTSC games (eg. Sly 1) I needed to chip it. As long as gameplay stays untouched, you're good to go. Good luck mate!

Problem with modding and chipping of PAL consoles is that most of the times the frame rate won't be the same as on original NTSC consoles and in the end it's still slower.

60 Hz modded PAL SNES for example runs at 59.56 FPS while original NTSC consoles run at 60.10 FPS (Source: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/important_analog_capture_frame_rates_and_mysterious_gained_seconds_25.html#important_analog_capture_frame_rates_and_mysterious_gained_seconds_25).

Region-free modded PAL Playstations also seem to have frame rate inconsistencies for NTSC games (Source: https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Sony_Console_Region).

I guess it's better to get true NTSC consoles to be safe.