PAL Import Games on US NTSC Xbox

[The 1 2 P]

I recently won a demo disc off of ebay only to find out it was a European PAL demo instead of a US/Canada NTSC one(the odd rating number should have gave me a hint but I am admittedly slow at times). Since it was still factory sealed I contacted the seller and told him about this. He told me to try it out because he had one like it that worked on his NTSC Xbox(he lives in Canada). So taking his advice I opened up the factory seal and placed the demo in my Xbox. To my surprise, not only did it work, but there was no lag in the refresh rate to slow gameplay at all.

This had me thinking: if this demo was able to work in my US Xbox with no problems, how many PAL import full games are capable of doing the same thing? I received a similar surprise a year ago when my Japanese import copy of Ninja Gaiden played in my Xbox without any region locking issues.

So does anyone else know of any PAL games/demos that run problem free on US/Canada NTSC Xbox's? If so this could open a whole new segment of Xbox games to collect for.

[Vectorman0]

There are very few PAL games I have encountered that do not work on NTSC Xboxes. I would say you will most likely fine with the games you choose to import, but every once in a while you will find a game that doesn't play properly on your TV.

EDIT - Looking at graciano's post, I realized I assumed you had a modchip. My statement doesn't pertain to region locking, but proper video output.

[smork]

I don't, but I am not surprised. A fair amount of my 360 games are PAL releases, and my console is an NTSC-J.

I'm still trying to find a list of bilngual/english switchable original XBOX games, and a good region free list for the NTSC-U ones...

[graciano1337]

here's a helpful thread...

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=11110

i don't know how complete the list is, but there are quite a few titles on it.

soft mod your box and you don't have to worry about regions.

[The 1 2 P]

here's a helpful thread...

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=11110

i don't know how complete the list is, but there are quite a few titles on it.

soft mod your box and you don't have to worry about regions.

I never modded my systems. Thats why this was such an important discovery.

[The 1 2 P]

That list wasn't very complete at all, but it's a good start for someone trying to reserch compatible game titles from foreign regions.

[The 1 2 P]

Anyone else know of some Xbox PAL games/demos that will work on a US NTSC unit?

[Leo_A]

Didin't see it mentioned, but Taito Legends 2 works fine in unmodded US Xbox systems. Its one of very few that do that I believe.

[The 1 2 P]

Cool. Thats another title to add to the list.

[The 1 2 P]

Bump for interest check. Any other PAL xbox games that are region free?

[dj898]

with Xbox the region coding was kind of optional rather than mandatery and some studios opted to leave it out on their PAL/NTSC release. Still there are few titles that will work at specific frequency - i.e. 50/60Hz.

Also being demo there's a chance that the studio hasn't applied the region locking yet...

[davidbrit2]

From what I've heard, the PAL version of Outrun 2006 works perfectly fine on a stock North American XBox, which is fortunate, considering how insanely rare the US release of the game was.

[The 1 2 P]

with Xbox the region coding was kind of optional rather than mandatery and some studios opted to leave it out on their PAL/NTSC release. Still there are few titles that will work at specific frequency - i.e. 50/60Hz.

Also being demo there's a chance that the studio hasn't applied the region locking yet...

Yeah but that demo was a nice surprise. And although PAL region-free exclusive xbox games would be nice to collect, I'd even be interested in non-exclusive PAL xbox games as long as they are region free and have alternate/variant cover art different from the US cover art.