Region?

[reakos]

After installing Free MC boot on my PS2 will it allow me to play games from any/all regions?? (NTCS PAL ect)?

[TnA]

Yes, but only if they are ESR-patched and burned.
Retail-Imports will not work, only if you re-burn them as ESR-Imports.

[devilinops]

con some one help me with this iv tryed to patch some games i iported and the . hack ones worked but ico i only get sound and no video its pal but the patcher dident do the regin video patch like u said

[Gnom]

You don't need to patch the pal version of ICO since the switch is already included. Just choose the 60 Hz mode at the start of the game, and you will play with the original NTSC video mode.

[dlanor]

con some one help me with this iv tryed to patch some games i iported and the . hack ones worked but ico i only get sound and no video its pal but the patcher dident do the regin video patch like u said

No one here has ever said that the ESR patcher performs any video patch.
That is a function not even remotely connected to the purpose of this patcher.
It's purpose is only to trick the CDVD controller into allowing access to a burned disc.

The region problems exist in two varieties, and ESR itself is only intended to deal with one of them, which is that it should allow booting of a backup disc regardless of region, and this it does perfectly.

What happens after a disc has booted, and the software it contains starts to run, that is no concern of ESR, though it may be of concern to you. Especially if the software proceeds to use a game display in the video format native to the region the game comes from, when that format differs from the native format of your own region.

In some cases the game itself allows choice of either NTSC or PAL display, provided that you can even see this option when presented on screen. But if your TV does not sync at all it can be hard to choose the correct option. And in many games no such option exists, so then you need another method to fix the display.


One method to do this is to patch the ISOs before burning your backups, using various patchers made specifically to deal with cross-region video formats. If you do this then you must apply such a patch to the ISO before you apply the ESR patch. Because after the ESR patching the other patchers will most likely not accept the ISO as a valid PS2 game, and will be unable to apply the video patch.


Another method of dealing with the problem requires no extra ISO patching at all (just the normal ESR patch). But instead you use a special program named "GS Modeselector" (aka: GSM) to enforce the video mode you want (presumably NTSC), before you launch the game. That program then leaves a remnant of itself active as you proceed to launch the game or other homebrews and this resident remnant interferes with any attempt of those programs to set other video modes, instead forcing the physical video mode to be the one you chose earlier (again presumably NTSC).

The result may look a little odd, as GSM can not increase the number of lines NTSC can display (448 lines for a PS2 game) to accomodate the number of lines in PAL mode (512 lines for a PS2 game), but the GSM program does allow you to adjust the screen centering to suit your own TV and the particular games you use. the running game may still 'think' that the display is in PAL format, and will therefore continue to produce 512 lines per screen in the VRAM buffers, but only 448 of those lines will be visible on the physical screen when GSM enforces NTSC.

The visible result of such video enforcing is closely similar for the disc ISO patchers and GSM, though the difference in methods is huge. One major advantage of GSM is that you can experiment with various settings (screen centering etc) without having to burn a new disc for each test. And it also allows many things that simply cannot be done with available ISO patchers (like enforcing HDTV or VGA resolutions for some games).

You will find a thread dedicated to the GSM project in the main forum for Homebrew/Dev stuff.

Best regards: dlanor