I remember when the 3DS was region locked (cartridges can only be read if the console is bought in the same country those games are from) meaning it’s a headache having to switch between two variants of the handheld (I had a Japanese 3DS XL and an American 3DS regular back then, alternating on each one depending on which game I wanted to play). The switch alleviated this by making the cartridges / console region free.
For the most part I only bought imports on systems without region locking or ones where it was trivial to bypass the lock.
One of the main reasons I hacked my 3DS was to make it region free (and custom themes and game mods). That having been said, I have exactly one import game for the system (it’s Picross 3D: Round 2 which received a physical release in Europe, but not North America).
My Dreamcast is a MIL-CD compatible model, so it’s possible to get past the region locking with a burned CD-R. I don’t have that many games for the system, but most of the ones I have are imports.