Vulgus

The first of many, many Capcom games.

Unused Graphics


Unused point values of 8,000 and 50,000. The only monster that could be worth 50,000 points is the Vulgus itself, but it only gives 10,000.



A full set of lowercase letters which are used anywhere, even in the high score screen!



Found at the tail end of the game's font are graphics of a tiny man and woman. These later appeared in Pirate Ship Higemaru's font as high score characters.



Stored with the rest of the object graphics are two Kanji tiles.

得郎 would refer to Tokuro Fujiwara, this game's director.

Title Screen
The presumed Japanese versions of the games (vulgusj (Japan?) and vulgusa (Set 2) in MAME) allow for up to 10 characters in the high score list and give the full last names of the game's staff.

The other version cuts off the staff names and only allows 3 characters per name, presumably to prevent people from writing something filthy in there.

Graphics Memory
For whatever reason, the graphics in Set 1 are rotated 180° compared to how they're stored in other sets.

Revisional Differences
Set 2 is assumed to be a Japanese revision of the game because of its 10 character high score entries and because it doesn't store the graphics backwards. There are also code differences that support this being an early version of the Japan set.

Vulgus Exploit
This game has a looping set of stages: Desert, Space, Jungle, Space, Arctic, Vulgus.

In Set 2 only, there's an exploit/bug the player can use to fight Vulgus multiple times. If the player dies after fighting Vulgus but before entering the Desert area, they will spawn in the Arctic section instead. From there, the player is just one stage away from fighting Vulgus again. This trick can be done multiple times provided that the player has enough lives.

All sets besides Set 2 have an additional counter,. This is initialized at at the start of every life and will change to  when the player enters a new area. When the player destroys Vulgus, is added to the counter. So, if the player goes from the second Space stage to the Arctic stage without dying and defeats Vulgus, the counter will overflow to.

Now, if the counter is and the player dies, they will immediately start at the Desert part of the stage loop. This ensures that the player can only fight Vulgus a maximum of two times per loop.

Game Demos
All of the gameplay demos from Set 2 were rerecorded for Set 1 / Japan.

Demo 1
The Set 2 demo is slightly longer than the new demo.

Demo 2
The old demo is barely 10 seconds long, while the new demo lasts 1 minute and 20 seconds!

Demo 3
Neither of these demos is really that long, but the new demo is still twice as long.