Topic: Haunted Castle revision differences?

[LuxKiller65]

We know there are at least 5 revisions of Haunted Castle:

Japan: 'N' version and 'P' version
USA: 'K' and 'M' version
Europe (or is it "rest of the world"?): 'E' version

But no website/resource lists the actual differences. I believe they are not known in detail, unless someone was crazy enough to analyse all of them, but didn't post his work.

We know M is ridiculously hard, but that's mostly all we know. I've also read that M is the original USA release, which means K was released later, I guess for obvious reasons, since M was just too hard, literally unplayable.

Calling out to anybody who can share any details about this mystery. A few questions:
- What do the letters mean?
- Was E for Europe or for 'everywhere except Japan and USA'? Or, was it instead a 3rd release for USA?
- And of course, what are the actual differences between N, P, K, M, E?

[Lelygax]

Its just a guess, but maybe M is for Mature since its harder and K is for Kids? xD

[zangetsu468]

I thought M was generally tougher, you lose more hp and you get 3 continues only?

I've definitely played 2 distinct versions which I believe were M and K. I also thought in K you had 5 continues rather than 3.

[KaZudra]

M and K I remember... Arcade versions though.
M is brutal, K is playable.

But it's Quarter munching game so I never bothered to beat it.

[Dracula9]

The difference is that one makes you cry harder than the others.

[X]

I thought M was generally tougher, you lose more hp and you get 3 continues only?

Even the easier version still has limited continues, no matter how many quarters you pop into the machine    The game is tough, no question. I've only ever beaten it twice. The first being sheer luck as I didn't know how many lives I had left in reserve.

[zangetsu468]

Even the easier version still has limited continues, no matter how many quarters you pop into the machine    The game is tough, no question. I've only ever beaten it twice. The first being sheer luck as I didn't know how many lives I had left in reserve.

It was either 3/5 continues or lives. It was a long time ago (14 years) so it's hard to recall.
I know the first time I played it I breezed through it until around stage 3 (version K).
Later when I tried it out again it must've been a different rom (I had doubles sometimes) which would've been version M, that was tough as nails and I remember continues being very limited. 

[Lelygax]

They added more enemies, they do more damage or both?

[zangetsu468]

They added more enemies, they do more damage or both?

I only remember stage 1 of HC in detail. From memory the enemies were the same, but they took way more hp off the player.
It may be my imagination, but those blocks that fly at you before the medusa fight were harder to dodge and attack in one version, which I'm assuming is M. I recall they were moving faster than the previous version (K) I'd played before it.

[LuxKiller65]

forgot to thank you for the answers

what's funny is that not only are there two revisions, K easier and M harder, but also you can adjust the difficulty in detail through dipswitches

http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/hcast/manual-jhcast.htm

so i'm more confused, does that mean M and K are just the same board, set to different dipswitches, or are they different software revisions which can be FURTHER finetuned with dipswitches.

if i were rich id buy both boards to find out, but this isn't going to happen

here's what the switches do
adjust coins for player1/2 (1~4 coins for 1~7 plays)
adjust difficulty (easy, normal, difficult, very difficult)
adjust player strength (strong, normal, weak, very weak)

now if i have an M version and a K version both set to the same switches, you can do a comparison to see what's been altered
i suppose there are more alterations than the dipswitches, like enemy respawn, speed, etc.

whew

[Super Waffle]

Is there a version where continues actually work like continues instead of "We're just going to throw you back to Stage 1 with all of your leftover Continues"?

Who the f ever thought that was good design for a coin-op arcade game

[X]

Who the f ever thought that was good design for a coin-op arcade game

Konami. 

In fact the two Contra arcade titles pull the same s@#t.

[LuxKiller65]

Yeah I know it's necromancy, but I'm playing the game again on the Hamster PS2 release. So I'm just hoping someone has more information about the 5 different releases.

There's a guy on YouTube which gives some info, but not very detailed, and he doesn't say anything about what the differences betwen N and P; he makes them sound like they're the same, but they must have differences.

<<
This game have a lot of versions: Two Japanese (N and P), Two American (M and K) (that one Is unfair) and One European (E):
The US M version is the mostly hated due to his unfairness. The enemies are overpowered (this is ridicolous every enemy (except regular bats) and boss can easily defeat Simon in 2 hits) and less Power-Up appear on the game.
The US K version luckily take down the Unfairness of M version. This version Is the same of the two JP versions, now Simon take 1 damage every hit and more Power-Up (like JP version) appear on the game. Now the US version is (literally) playable. The EU E version is the same of 2 JP and US K version.
The Japanese Version have an advantage that the International one gets lacked: When Simon falls on a bottomless pit, he respawns on the last checkpoint at cost of half your health, in the International version when Simon falls on a bottomless pit the game is over.
There's a trick that increase your health: Insert 4 (or more) Coins and start the game, skip or watch the the beginning cutscene and when you are on stage 1 press start 3 times and your health will hugely increases (visibile in numbers near the health bar) (Ex: 64, Max)
WARNING! Using this trick and lose the game you won't able to continue, since to increase the health cost your three continues.
Here's all the difference of this game.
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