Why are these Mega Man X's different?

[girlracer]

I got one of these at the local pawn for $2 then I got another today at goodwill for $1... one says made in japan and the other says assembled in mexico on the label

[benderx]

Sometimes its cheaper to make in mexico as to japan. I have Mortal Kombat for sega genesis and it says made in mexico. MK was bought at target when it was released. Or it could be in spanish language. You just got to watch out for pirate copies because sometimes they don't save your gameplay.

[Ziggy]

I can answer that for you...

It was already stated in another thread what the difference is between Japan and Mexican made carts. I forget the exact answer, but in a nutshell it's this: Later in the SNES's life Nintendo gave permission for a third party company to produce copies of some popular titles. Mega Man X being one of them, apparently.

The reason why the PCBs look different is also a simple answer. Games larger than 8Mbits use to come on multiple mask ROMs, but around 1995 (exact time not confirmed by me yet) they started making games larger than 8Mbits on a single mask ROM.

So the one on the right has two mask ROMs. Those other two 16 pin IC are the lockout chip and MAD-1 address decoder. Since the one on the left was made on a later date, the game was fit onto 1 mask ROM instead of 2. It's also missing the MAD-1 chip because it only has 1 mask ROM and thus doesn't need it. You can also notice that the two mask ROMs are 32 pins, while the one on the left is 38 pins.

But other than the way they looks, there's absolutely no difference between them.

[Ziggy]

To provide more info, I found the thread I was referencing. Some one posted a thread asking what the difference between Made in Japan vs Mexico carts were...

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... =2&t=19728

Troglodyte provided a very thorough answer...

One is not really rarer than the other... you haven't discovered anything special really.
In the later years of the SNES, Majesco Sales Inc. picked up the rights to re-release certain popular SNES games. These games, although not extremely popular, sold well enough and had distribution rights that were obtained easy enough; to warrant the effort to get them re-released. They also released the last licensed SNES game in NA: Frogger. In addition, they are the company that released the Genesis 3, as well as the last version of the Game Gear. Here are but a few that I can confirm and remember off the top of my head:

1. The Lion King
2. Scooby Doo Mystery
3. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
4. Monopoly
5. Championship Pool
6. Goof Troop


These software revisions of these games are no different then the original re-releases. The only visible difference on the inside, is that the EPROM is masked with a Majesco Sales company name and part number.

And I can see in the picture that the mask ROM on the left says Majesco on it, so this confirms it.

[Anapan]

There's also 2 versions of the Megaman X ROM, 1.0 and 1.1. I don't know if the first was a bad dump, but the 1.1 rom is the only one that will play correctly on SNESAdvance.

[Ziggy]

No, that doesn't mean it's a bad dump. It just means that Nintendo and/or Capcom made a fix in the game. This happens to many games, usually to fix a bug. Some times, in the case of older games, to censor them. For example, Ocarina of Time gold cart is version 1.0 of the game. Later versions (released on grey carts) censor some things in it (examples would be turning Ganondorf's blood green and removing the chanting in the Fire Temple). The later versions also fixed some bugs (like the 'swordless Link' glitch).

But anyway, a bad dump would have a at the end of it. v1.0 means it's the original release, and v1.2, 1.3 etc mean its a revised version of the ROM.

The Made in Japan Mega Man X cart could be v1.0 or v1.1, really hard to tell unless you know what to look for. But you can be sure that the Made in Mexico cart is v1.1, unless there was a later version released.

[Jrecee]

In the mexican version megaman has a mustache and all the robots are made of tacos.

[GSZX1337]

In the mexican version megaman has a mustache and all the robots are made of tacos.

Zero also wears a sumbraro.

[Ziggy]

And Wily is replaced by El Mariachi, and there's a code to replace Zero with Emiliano Zapata.

[robb_0909]

Good find for $2 and $1. My goodwill never has anything of value and when they do they over price it. Lucky you.