Sega Megadrive/Genesis and Mega CD Switchless Region Free Upgrade

Available now (handled by our partners BetaGamma Computing in Greece). Please allow for shipping and processing delays due to bad weather in Corfu. UK customers MUST e-mail us first about ANY upgrade/repair work (except NI).

All repair/upgrade work is carried out subject to our terms and conditions. Once you have placed your order, details of where to ship your hardware will be sent to your e-mail address. Prices do NOT include return postage.

Make your Sega Megadrive/Genesis and Sega MegaCD/SegaCD into a fully region free console without ugly external switches! The switchless region free upgrade allows you to set region and choose between 50hz and 60hz modes all by pressing the reset switch. To operate the upgrade, simply hold the reset switch down for the required time. Less than 0.5 seconds – Resets the console as normal. 0.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds (until power LED is extinguished) – Change between 50hz and 60hz modes. More than 1.5 seconds – Change region. The LED will flash and change colour indicating the region. Simply let go once the correct region is selected (actual LED colours may vary). For the MegaCD, we use the 100% compatible multi-BIOS mod that allows all games from all regions to load. Just select the region with the reset switch and the correct region BIOS is selected for the MegaCD. Please send us both your Megadrive and your MegaCD for this procedure, even if you have had your Megadrive region free upgraded in the past.

Note:- We strongly recommend playing your Sega Megadrive console using an RGB cable. On some televisions, import games may appear in black and white when using composite or S-Video connections.

For full region free compatibility, the cartridge slot on European and American consoles must be widened. Alternatively, an import adapter such as a Honey Bee adapter can be used.

For Model 1 Megadrive consoles we can also optionally perform a free “jailbar fix” while fitting this upgrade. This works by lifting Pin 6 on the CXA video encoder and connecting it to ground. In most cases this significantly reduces the jail-bar effect in the consoles RGB video output. Be warned that performing this fix disables the consoles composite video output however. This fix is not required for the model 2 Megadrive/Genesis.

Due to minuscule differences in video timings between PAL and NTSC consoles, users connecting upgraded PAL consoles to HDTVs (either directly or via an upscaler such as an XRGB) may experience stuttering/juddering during scrolling in games when playing in 60hz. This is not a fault with our upgrade process (we’re just the only website honest enough to tell you it could happen). This does not affect CRT users, see this page for more information.