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Part 10- Red Dragon

The final showdown, and the Japanese Red Dragon is somewhere in (over?) South Africa.

Starting around Africa, poison pellets took your health away. But in the JP proto, they look identical to regular power pellets! Assholes!

These laser beams are merciless in the proto! They all shoot about 2 a second simultaneously making this part tougher than the NES version by far.

Layout differences aplenty!

The proto has a doctor that gives you some advice, while he's missing from the NES ver.

His advice is, "There's a wall here that we can't destroy, so you have to deftly get around it."
The NES version has Matic talking to you over the PA system or something.

This guy's a bigger bitch in the proto. When you enter the room he's there in the centre, but invisible, so you have almost no choice but to take a large amount of damage before the fight even begins. His attack method is also different. He'll walk towards you, then start hopping up and down in one place in front of you. You have to jump towards him and time your attack just right so that he takes a hit and not you.

Blue flashing light in the proto, red in the NES version.

I think this enemy wasn't programmed into the JP version yet.

Hmm, wow, differences aplenty in this part! It's an interesting diagonal slide in the proto, but 2 boring small rooms on the NES.

OK, but there's no Cipher in the proto!

Here's an interesting guy that I don't think ever appears in the NES version!

He just stands there, sometimes making a ring of fireballs and makes to shoot them at me, yet I take no damage. Well, I guess he was incomplete at this stage. I killed him easily and moved on.

The boss glitches out when he jumps out of the water... leaving behind those midget things...?

Here is an example of shitty, shitty collision detection in the proto. I'm, oh, 48 pixels away from the enemy, yet I'm getting killed. The enemy can be damaged from 49 pixels away.

Needless to say, this got fixed in the NES version pronto.

Yep, there's a bigger risk of falling all the way to the bottom in the proto.

The 3 power systems on the Red Dragon all appear 1/2 a screen too early in the proto, making impossible-to-hit bosses a risk.

And the proto actually stopped all scrolling at this point! Nothing to do but reset the Famicom and try the other way!

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More nasty laser traps litter the FC version.

And this rotisserie too!

This room's empty in the proto.

"We'll invite [everyone?] to celebrate your death!"

Interesting barrier over the elevator... which does nothing.

And the damn invisible ninja is back too.

This guy too. He doesn't move at all and is an easy kill again.

Matic is much less threatening in the proto. He does run and wait for you to attack like in the NES version, but he hardly does any damage when you slash at him with your regular cipher (ie: the usual way before you learn the proper strategy for killing him.)

And here we have our final boss! Nothing happens past this point, however.  If anyone knows how to watch the ending, let us know...