I recently got back into collecting megadrive stuff, in the process I have aquired a a number of joypads. There are 3 different black types with different start buttons. Red, white and blue/purple. Can you tell me what these represent (assumming based on different region?) Also I have what I believe is a Japanese megadrive - the rf output displays in black and white. I believe this is meant to run in 60hz. Would connecting to the other port bring it into colour? How do I check confirm that the Jap megadrive is a Jap megadrive (I can post pics). Thank you in advance
Don't know about the colours, but to check the region, look on the bottom- it should have a sticker bearing an region code- NTSC-J for Japan, NTSC-U for US/Canada, PAL for Europe and others. Also normally if the refresh rate is different you'll get screen scrolling. AFAIK it doesn't affect colour.
Japanese will play full screen. No pal borders. Quackshot, Flicky, Ghouls N' Ghosts, Streets of Rage 1/2, and many other games change language. Try rgb scart output. Megadrive like Saturn and SNES has video mode set internally. Neither NTSC/PAL color or 50/60hz may be toggled by software. Any cartridge based method (Action Replay is one) of breaking region check will force games to run in a mode they may not be meant for.
The Japanese Mega Drive has a red part near the cartridge slot: while on the European one it's white: (and the 16-bit text is different, obviously)
With US pads at least, early ones had Red accents on controllers. Later ones don't. I don't know if that's true with the JP and Eur ones though.
Japanese Megadrive does NOT have a RF out at all.. Only sega special DIN connecter on Megadrive 1, and Mini DIN on Megadrive 2, if you have a japanese looking Megadrive 1 with RF its a PAL Asian one, not an NTSC Japanese. As for the joypad START buttons, the PAL 3 button pads for the Megadrive 1 have white/light grey ones, the 3 button ones from Megadrive 2's are red. I think American buttons are all dark grey for models 1 and 2, and the Japanese are blue. PAL 6 button pads have red START buttons, US have dark grey, and Japanese blue again... phew..
