USA Roms won't run on USA Region Turbo Duo... wtf?

[markwolfe]

I have the latest PCE128+sav cart. It runs only (J) region games no matter what I do. I have an american turbo duo, a black one that I am positive runs US hu-cards. why is it that I can not run any USA based games?

hints, tips, advice?

I have indeed made sure I check the TurboGrafX option, not the PCEngine option. is there another setting in the software somewhere I missed?

[Ichiban Rei]

It seems for the most part, this forum has been abandoned for the more popular system flash cards.  I have the same problem but have found some success using PCETOY (Google it).  It hasn't worked on all my US roms, but it has on a few.  I wish I had a better solution, but I don't. 
There was a thread on here that mentioned that you can use a hex editor to modify a string of values on the US ROM, but I found most of the games I had did not have this string.
This is't the fault of the Romcart tho.  You can blame NEC for region locking the PC Engine.  If you were on a TurboGrafx, it would play all games without a hitch, at least my old one did...

[ChillyWilly]

Part of the issue is there aren't that many people with the TG-16/PCE. There isn't even much on eBay, and games are generally expensive... which makes the flash card more crucial, I guess. While the MegaDrive and SNES are cheap and plentiful, the PCE and derivatives are hard to find for less than $75 for the cheapest model... used. You don't even want to think about trying to get a new TurboDuo. 

[mic_]

Part of the issue is there aren't that many people with the TG-16/PCE. There isn't even much on eBay, and games are generally expensive... which makes the flash card more crucial, I guess. While the MegaDrive and SNES are cheap and plentiful, the PCE and derivatives are hard to find for less than $75 for the cheapest model... used. You don't even want to think about trying to get a new TurboDuo. 

If you're in Europe you can get a "new" (as in "boxed and unused", I'm sure it's been a while since they were manufactored) TurboGrafx for £49.90 from consolegoods. I think that's where I got mine, but I can't remember since it's been a couple of years.

[ChillyWilly]

If you're in Europe you can get a "new" (as in "boxed and unused", I'm sure it's been a while since they were manufactored) TurboGrafx for £49.90 from consolegoods. I think that's where I got mine, but I can't remember since it's been a couple of years.

I just checked - £49.90 for a PAL TurboGrafx. They also have a few other PAL units for higher prices. No NTSC, and only one Jap Core system. Oh well. If you want a PAL one, that's probably the place to get it. I got most of the stuff for my Saturn from consolegoods.

[Conle]

I've also bought stuff from Rob's wesite(The old one) and it has the best prices around 
Especially for Sega Saturn Modchips , it has those that fit in every model compared to the other 2 places i know of. (Both versions work fine anyway.I got both  ).

[markwolfe]

wow, I totally forgot I posted that back in march. been playing with this thing again and got most games to work. read the posts regarding the game headers and found dumps with removed headers and other hacks that made them work

I have to say the software is the problem here. it really is not up to the same standard as the hardware. Given that we know the entire rom library, the various hardware permutations, the software should know, identify and summerly hack each rom to run on any given system BEFORE it flashes the card. this is crucial and I hope the neo team takes time to make this happen. there really is no reason for these kinds of problems