Thread: Foreign Games Guide (PAL)

Imagine this: you find yourself in a game store during your vacation and see a fantastic PS3 game for the right price. You want it, but what are the chances you might just waste your money on a game only playable in a language you don't understand?

Here's a guide to help you along to make sure that your game is English.

Lesson Number One: It's all abut that disc
So what are you looking for on the game disc. There's 2 kinds of ratings you will grow to like. German and GB.

The blue icon is this disc is a German rating. Which means it's a universal European disc or a BeNeLux version. A BeNeLux versions contains at least 3 languages: English, German, French and sometimes Dutch.

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The red cirlce with the white 18 is the real 'sight for sour eyes'. A GB rating which instandly means: English.

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Lesson Number 2: Game Boxes always LIE

I catch stores slipping sometimes, selling their rare games for bottom low prices because they think they're french.

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Le Pouvoir de Force - Version francaise integrale.
Tell you this: nobody cares.

What did I just teach you, the German rating:

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Lesson Number 4: No rating, don't risk it.
If the game is one of the older PS3 games (with the red logo on the spine) and there's no rating on the disc, don't take it when you're talking real money. This is a French/German game, it does not have the English version and is therefore worthless to most of us.

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Lesson number 5: Cardridge based are a danger zone.
NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy… nearly all retro cardridge based in countries like France, Germany and Spain have only their primaty language. Some games allow you to choose a language in the beginning of the game, but a fair amount doesn't. Nintendo DS games, however, are the same story as the disc. If the boxart has a translated title, make sure the game cardridge still has the original title. If there is no translated subtitle: look for the text: 'freigeben ab' on the cardridge.

Lesson Number 6: You don't want 360 games.
The Xbox 360 doesn't use BluRay discs, therefore a game often uses 2 or more discs for one game. Like the PlayStation 1 used to do. Games like Mass Effect 3, Final Fantasy XIII or other big RPGs have only the primary language of the country they were sold in.

Lesson number 7: Dutchmen are your friend
Find yourself in Amsterdam or anywhere else in The Netherlands, our games always have the English version on disc. Except one PS3: inFamous 1/2. It's save to purchase any game for any platform. Same rule applies to Luxemburg and Belgium.

Lesson number 8: ESRB ratings are foolproof
Find a PS3 game with an ESRB rating, they're American (NTSC)! You can play these in your PAL PS3 as well, because they don't have a region lock. But beware, you will not be able to play downloaded DLCs.

Hope that helps, happy hunting!

To any of you who are currently (or looking forward to) traveling in Indonesia, don't worry. Most of games here use ESRB rating, so it's safe!

But, you're buying games on older consoles, I recommend only to buy it on major game stores (if available) because if you buy it in small game stores, they are oftenly fake. But for PS3 or PS4 games, as we know, they use Blu-ray discs, so no need to worry. Also, games that uses Indonesian will always have "Versi Indonesia" (Indonesian version) written on the cover, although I assume that they are fake. I would also like to say that one of the best cities to buy games would be Jakarta, but in the metropolitan area.

If anyone wants a fake retro game guide, I can do that too. emoji