Regions

As with most digital media, Nintendo games have different regional formats to discourage importing and to fit the corresponding region's video formats.

Older consoles which took cartridges simply had cartridges of different shapes. For example, Japanese Famicom cartridges were much smaller and had fewer pins than American NES carts, though convertors were made, not to mention older NES carts with convertor boards in them were used to adapt games.

Disc based media starting with the GameCube has been made with different region codes based on the country's video format and region, similar to DVD/Blu-Ray region codes. Circumvention of these regional barriers was slightly easier due to devices such as the Action Replay and Freeloader which simply disabled the lockout on the GameCubes made importation favorable to some. A region code disabler through the Homebrew Channel is available on the Wii for playing import games.