This is a very simple patch that reverses the region lock out screen from (Europe) to (USA) which means that this game now works only on a PAL European SEGA Mega Drive console and will block anyone attempting to play it on an NTSC-U Sega Genesis.

As a bonus, I also reversed the region lock out screen in Europe’s official PAL version of the game (The New Generation) so it only plays on an American NTSC-U Sega Genesis console and is now blocked from running on a PAL Sega Mega Drive console.

There’s a few stories floating around about how the two different versions came about. One was that back in the day Europe and all PAL versions were meant to get ”Castlevania – Bloodlines” much like the USA but authorities in Germany complained about the blood and gore and threatened to ban the game if it had blood and gore in it (much like they did with Mortal Kombat a year earlier) they actually banned Mortal Kombat 1 despite it’s hidden blood code but with Castlevania… Konami obviously listened to the complaints and modded the game to have no blood in it, no self impaling of Eric’s spear when he dies and no blood red on the title screen, instead, the title screen is blue and features water. Well at least that’s the story I heard, I also heard that ”Castlevania – The New Generation” was actually first and then modded to be ”Castlevania – Bloodlines”. Who even knows anymore?

So in the ZIP file you’ll find two IPS patches:

• Castlevania – Bloodlines (E)
• Castlevania – The New Generation (U)

The games region locks are reversed so PAL regions can finally play ”Bloodlines” and NTSC-U regions can play ”The New Generation”.

NOTES:

If you have the Genesis cart of ”Bloodlines” and you wanna play it on your PAL Sega Mega Drive running at 50Hz, just hold down the B button when powering on and the game will bypass the region lock and take you straight to the game’s title screen.

Both these ROMS are only soft locked from the ROM’s header rather than hard locked by internal ROM software like all the other Konami Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games. Because of this soft lock, it can easily be removed.

Music plays at the right tempo all the time despite whatever you’re running the game in (PAL/NTSC). There is no slow music for PAL.

Make sure the patches are patched to the correct ROMS – Bloodlines patch must be patched to the Bloodlines ROM and The New Generation patch must be patched to The New Generation ROM. Don’t criss-cross them.

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