The Video Game Critic

I just had a strange this happen. I was trying to play X-Kaliber 2097 on my Retron 5, when I see this message:

THIS GAME IS NOT DESIGNED
FOR YOUR SUPER FAMICON OR
SUPER NES.
ACTIVISION

WTF? Do the cart have some kind of check to see if it's not on an authorized console? Strange.

Try setting the region manually. I had an issue once where it was defaulting the region to Japan for a Genesis game. I don't know if your issue could be caused by that but it's worth a try.

That was a really good idea, but it didn't help. I tried all the regions. Thanks anyway.

I found a list suggesting that a few games may not play nice with a system whose lockout chip is disabled or out-of-spec. Could you try Killer Instinct, Maximum Carnage, and/or Rise of the Robots and see if they work?

Sorry for the double post -- can't edit my previous post -- but another possible candidate for trouble is Donkey Kong Country 3. How does that one do on the Retron 5?

Given that I don't see anything out there about this game not being compatible with the Retron 5, try cleaning the contacts.

I triggered a similarly odd warning screen in Yoshi's Island 20 years ago on genuine hardware, telling me that it was illegal to copy cartridges (Much like the Super Mario All-Stars example that I've inserted below). A good cleaning of the contacts on this used cartridge cleared the issue right up and it never came back.



I suspect that you may have gotten an incomplete rom dump on your Retron 5 that was intact enough to boot the software up and for the Retron 5 to determine what game it was, but messed up just enough that it confused the program in some way and made it fail an internal region check, triggering this error screen that you saw.

Okay, I have an update for you guys.

First, X-Kaliber definitely does not work in the Retron 5. I cleaned it really good (again) and it works in my normal SNES. I tried Killer Instinct and DK3 and they worked fine. I assume the reason you haven't heard about X-Kaliber is because it's not very popular. I'm probably the first to try to play it on the Retron!

I also tried a few other Genesis games (like Streets of Rage and Sonic 2) and no sign of the slowdown I saw with Sonic 1. Isn't that odd?