Friday, February 26, 2021

I Finally Bought myself a Japenese Playstation 2 Console

 I am a HUUUGE Robotech Nerd, I mean Fan, have been since 1985. I remember I lived in California at the time and I would come home from school everyday to watch it on TV. I also remember that every week I would also go to the local Comic Shop and pickup the Comic Book Adaptations of the episodes as well. I even remember going to a Robotech Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center as well. Robotech was adapted from three separate Japanese anime cartoons, brought over and redubbed into English, and told as 3 generations of earth soldiers defending against alien invasion. There is a long and storied history there that can be found online, so I won't get into it here.


Everything in one awesome package


The first 36 episodes were called The Macross Saga, adapted from the Japanese Anime  Super Dimension Fortress Macross. We did not get a lot of Robotech games here in the US, Just Battlecry and Invasion during the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era. In Japan there were numerous Macross games. I do have one for the Sega Dreamcast, one for the Sega Saturn and three on the Sony PSP that I can play since the PSP is region free, there is also one for the Super Nintendo I intend on getting, but there were four on the Playstation and one on the Playstation 2.



Since I am not familiar with modding a console to bypass the region locking on games, I would love for someday to just be able to put any game from any region in a single Playstation 2 and just play them. But at this time the easiest thing for me is just to buy a Japanese console. Since the Playstation 2 plays both original Playstation and Playstation 2 games, I decided to finally get one. Japan also got several different exclusive colors and editions of the console so I decided that if I was going to get one, I might as well get something different than just the plain old black version.


So I got the Ocean Blue version
Which is a Cool Transparent Blue


NTSC-J is the Video Gaming Region Code for Japan, South East Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau & and the Philippines.


 I am going to use the Transparent Island Blue Memory Card I already had



So much cooler looking than the standard PS2



Of course the biggest hurdle to using this system would be the Japanese language. But I found this website (HERE) that shows how to switch a Japanese Playstation 2 into the English Language. Then the only other thing you need to get used to, like I had to do when playing the Japanese Macross PSP Games, is to remember that the O button is confirm and the X button is go back, or cancel which is the opposite of their functions on the standard U.S. Consoles.


I finally get to play my Japanese Robotech, er, um I mean Macross Games!







The awesome Veritech/Valkarie fighter