You’ve just upgraded your PAL SNES or Japanese Super Famicom with one of our top of the range switch-less SuperCIC mods and you’re all set to do some region free gaming. Your excitement is soon cut short however, when you realise that your collection of US SNES cartridges is just too wide to fit in your PAL SNES or Japanese Super Famicom! You could go ahead and cut a wider cartridge slot. This works, but it will devalue your classic console and spoil its aesthetic, as well as leaving a big, open gap around the dust cover flap. You could take your classic game out of its cartridge shell and plug in the bare PCB, but this isn’t terribly convenient. Neither of these options is very appealing, but luckily there’s now a third option in the shape of the “Protection Socket Slot”.

Square peg meet round hole

The Protection Socket Slot is marketed on eBay as a way to preserve your SNES/Super Famicom’s cartridge slot from wear and tear. It performs this function, of course, but it also works as an import adapter when paired with a SuperCIC. Since the Protection Socket Slot fits all models of SNES and will accept any SNES cartridge from any region, it’s all that is required to adapt a US cartridge to physically fit in your European or Japanese console.

The adapter is completely plug and play, just pop it into your SNES and pop the cartridge you want to play on top, then just power on and play. If you have a SuperCIC installed the game will start automatically, regardless of region. The adapter itself seems to be of perfectly good quality, its colour even matched our console, despite the pictured item on eBay being a baby blue colour. At $44.90 it’s a little pricey, but there’s no better solution for preserving the aesthetics of your SNES while still maintaining full region free capability.

You can get the Protection Socket Slot adapter from Hong Kong Style 2014 on eBay.com.