>>149420628Itโs some weird shit about manufacturing rights and PAL lockout chips. IIRC the Nintendo Entertainment System was divided across two regions in Europe: PAL-A (which was comprised of just UK and Italy I think) and PAL-B (which was everywhere else in Europe). The main difference between these two regions was the lockout chips, PAL-A couldnโt play games made for PAL-B and vice versa, other than that they were pretty much identical. PAL-A NESes were called "MATTEL VERSION" on the box because thatโs who had the distribution rights for them at the time, while PAL-B units were labeled "EUROPEAN VERSION" (except for Spain where they had this written in Spanish). later, Nintendo took over distribution from Mattel and relabeled PAL-A units as the "NES VERSION", which is why youโll see that
>"This Game Pak cannot be used with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System"warning on Euro copies of NES games sometimes. Incidentally, as far as I can tell, there was no real reason to split the European market into two different reasons like that, they just did it because fuck bongs I guess. I should mention Iโm not European myself so Iโve probably gotten a few things wrong, but I believe thatโs the general gist.