Currently I am playing Dragonslayer IV, Drasle Family on an MSX2 emulator. I found a nice shrine on this site about this game with a walkthrough and maps and all. (here) Very cool, but… those are for the NES version. Not a problem you think, but it seems that the NES version has some major differences with the MSX version. For instance, the items that are inside the “secret” treasure-boxes are different in my version than from what is described in the walkthrough. Even some large areas of the map are completely different, as well as some details that are important to solve the game. I encountered these differences only after a while, so at first sight, the game looks virtually the same.
I was wondering if anybody knows more about the changes that were made in NES version (I assume MSX version was the first one?) and moreover, why?
I tried looking for some good MSX sites dealing with this game, but found nothing useful.
Anyone got some idea’s?
Thanks in advance.
Cya later,
Heinz.
PS, I can try to post my screenshots to illustrate what I mean, but those will be in bmp…
Funny thing, I just started replaying this game today. I had no idea there WAS another version…or, until recently, that it was the fourth one. Have you any clue what system the others were on?
And it’s easy enough to save a bitmap as a JPG or GIF in MS Paint with not much of a quality drop.
The MSX was simply a much more advanced gaming platform than the Nintendo was. There were probably hardware issues that caused the maps to be changed. The content could be because of Nintendo’s super anal censorship policies of the era.
I know that Maniac Mansion, for example, was completely redesigned from the ground up because of the graphical limitations of the Nintendo, and some of the content was either dropped or changed as per Nintendo’s censorship. It’s probably a similar case for your Dragon Slayer IV.
I don’t know much about the other games of the Dragon Slayer series. The only other one I know that was on MSX is Dragon Slayer 6, but I’m not 100% sure about that.
On this link you can see how an MSX would look like. There are many different Brands that produced MSX, so they didn’t all look the same.
I think the main reason to add changes to the game was difficulty level.
For instance, something they changed was the ability to buy a “Dragon Shield” from a certain shop that is on a spot that you can’t reach in normal ways. You need the Dragon Shield to protect yourself against Bosses attacks. In MSX version you need to obtain several “Crowns”, which you get by killing bosses. But getting to those bosses is a lot of work and requires some experience and skills. With those Crowns a certain character is able to teleport to the blocked area where the shop for the “Dragon Shield” is located.
But in NES version this shop is reachable just by breaking a Stone. This would only require a “Pickaxe” which is -relatively- easy to get, in comparison with killing the first bossen and obtaining those Crowns.
It’s kind of strange to change these kind of things, since I don’t see how this would improve performance, or lower the system requirements for the game. Thing’s aren’t really left out, but are simply moved to different locations or moments in the game. Like the teleportation feature I described is also used in Nes version, but only in later part of the game.