As a serious gamer myself, I love to see games before they hit our shores here in North America. But more than that, I am always looking for the hottest and most unique games I can get my hands on. Unfortunately, many of those games just don’t come to our side of the ocean from Japan. Typically, since the days of the original Nintendo NES, Japanese gamers have enjoyed much more unique and often times much better games than their North American Counter Parts.

I’ve been very fortunate to be able to play many of these Japanese games while I was living in Japan, but when I returned back home to Canada, I simply could not find many of the games that I had played with such pleasure while in Japan. So I searched and researched and found exactly what I needed to be able to just put those Japanese APK MOD into game console and really start playing again. What I found was a Mod Chip, for my PlayStation console. And I’ve been using mod chips ever since then. Having most recently purchased and installed my Xbox 360 Mod Chip into my system – and I’ve got games from Japan on the way.

So Just what IS a mod chip? Let me explain. A modification chip or mod chip is a device used to play import, backup, or home brew games. Mod Chips first came into “fame” when die hard, hard core gamers who were tired of the slim offerings that were made available for them in the USA, wanted to get their hands on the often better and more unique Japanese games that were coming out for their game console. This is nothing new, even the Nintendo NES has a device that allowed gamers to plug Japanese Famicom cartridges into their USA NES system so that they could play those really unique Japanese games, or the latest Mario offering that was only available (or came out much sooner) in Japan.

Mod chips are available for all the major video game consoles, including the Xbox 360, Xbox, Sony PSP, PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Almost all modern console gaming systems have hardware-based schemes which ensure that only officially sanctioned games may be used with the system and implement regional lockout similar to the scheme used in DVD movies. The specific technical nature of these DRM systems varies by system, and may include cryptographic signing (Xbox), intentionally unreadable sectors (PlayStation, Sega Saturn), custom optical media (GameCube, Dreamcast), or some combination thereof. Modchips are available also for some DVD players, to defeat region code enforcement and user operation prohibitions.

Mod Chips first came into “fame” when die hard, hard core gamers who were tired of the slim offerings that were made available for them in the USA, wanted to get their hands on the often better and more unique Japanese games that were coming out for their game console. This is nothing new, even the Nintendo NES has a device that allowed gamers to plug Japanese Famicom cartridges into their USA NES system so that they could play those really unique Japanese games, or the latest Mario offering that was only available (or came out much sooner) in Japan.