Castlequest (NES)

Castlequest
Also known as: Castle Excellent (JP) Developer: ASCII Publishers: ASCII (JP), Nexoft (US) Platform: NES Released in JP: November 28, 1986 Released in US: September 1989 This game has regional differences.

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

To do: Unused graphics, at least in the Japanese version. Also, explain the Famicom Data Recorder support.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

In the Japanese version, the top and bottom areas contain small graphics of a UFO, a spaceship, and some fish. These cannot typically be seen on regular NTSC TVs, however, and the US version removed all of them.

Japan	US

Map Screen

In the Japanese version, the top and bottom areas contain small graphics of a spaceship, a witch, a skeleton and an owl. These cannot typically be seen on regular NTSC TVs, however, and the US version removed all of them. The Japanese version of the map also has a more detailed castle, with trees in the background.

Japan	US

Miscellaneous

• The original Japanese release starts the player with 3 lives, while the US version increases the amount to 50.
• Pressing the A button on the 2nd controller opens up a menu. In the Japanese version, you're able to save and load the game, which, oddly enough, uses a bog-standard cassette tape. In the US version, you can just restart the stage.

Source Code

The game's music in MML (Music Macro Language) format is stored as ASCII characters. MML was commonly used in games, but because of memory inefficiency, it's less common to find uncompiled MML being played directly from ROM. In the US version, this music data is located at $BBE7-$C209.