Playing Imports
The Gamecube comes region locked from factory, and the region lock is governed by the IPL ROM (Gamecube "BIOS").
However the hardware is mostly 100% identical across regions (apart from perhaps some NTSC/PAL hardware differences in the Video Output chip).
Due to NTSC-J/NTSC-U being so similar, you can perform a Region Switch mod to get it to play Japanese on NTSC-U and vice-verse.
Gamecube Regions | Where is it for? | What is needed to play Imports? |
---|---|---|
NTSC-U | USA | Switch for NTSC-J, Freeloader/Modchip/Homebrew for ALL |
NTSC-J | Japan | Switch for NTSC-U, Freeloader/Modchip/Homebrew for ALL |
PAL | Europe & Australia | Freeloader/Modchip/Homebrew for ALL |