Hello! Something I've just noticed is that different regions of this game appear to have different puzzles at some of the levels. EUR/PAL has different puzzles than JPN / NTSC.

Maybe I'll make something comprehensive, but you can see very different puzzles on Levels 2, 4, 7, 51, and 77 (just the ones I saw at first glance).

I think it would be prudent to have these as different categories. One for each region, considering the differences. I'd be curious to run them both and see the time difference.

Additionally, has anyone found any difference between Easy and Normal difficulty? At a glance, I don't see any differences between puzzles or lives. Can't find any answer online. Wondering if those need to be separate categories.

Hi there!

I don't think there's been a comprehensive comparison of level design between regions.

Since there's only 1 PAL region run and it was done on Easy mode, I don't think it's a fair comparison of level layout to compare a PAL Easy to a JPN Normal.

However I do know that Easy Mode has a more forgiving number of shots before the ceiling drops. These couple of extra shots before the ceiling drops allows for more missed shots and recovery, which potentially leads to less continues, and less continues means more time save. So I think the difficulty separation is warranted.

I personally have a NA NTSC cart I could compare with but I would love to see a comprehensive comparison. If it's substantial, I'll be happy to bring it to the mod team for consideration

THANK YOU for finally helping me understand the difference between Easy and Normal. That was driving me bonkers. Yes, I think that's a good separation to have!

I compared the difficulties on PAL and I didn't see any differences in puzzles -- again, only a brief glance at it.

I'll do a full comparison of all the levels and find discrepancies between the regions! I'll put together a slide deck or something :)

Ok, here are all the differences in puzzles between Rounds 1-51. This took me quite a bit of time, so hopefully this is sufficient :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gWzCmaicIqwxi4ekhJ6lt0GmVMJdxSmx/view?usp=sharing

It seems like the EUR/NTSC version tends to be more difficult than the JPN version. In some cases quite significantly.

Interesting. I'll take a deeper dive comparison with my NA cart through the week.

Thanks for putting this together!

Keep me updated! :)

Hey there @AdrianSimple. Sorry for the delay.

I have gone through the game on my NA cart, as well as reviewed the PAL run on Easy. I reviewed my NA cart on both Normal and Easy difficulties, and even swapped which player I was to see if it mattered.

I can confirm your findings that NTSC-U (NA) & PAL do indeed have different layouts from NTSC-J (JPN) versions.

Based on these findings, I'm comfortable enacting a Region Split for this game

Thank you for your work in this and bringing this to our attention.

Glad I could be of help :)