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General Sprite Changes
Goemon
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Final
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Goemon has a slightly darker palette in the prototype, which is especially noticeable with the shades of red. Goemon's default expression changed from looking like a frowning cat to a frowning man, and his arms were put at rest. In the prototype, his face is a bit fatter in his W/E idle animation, and a few bits of hair here and there were deleted from his south-facing idle frame.
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Final
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In every single frame of Goemon's piggybacking animations, Goemon's ears are drawn smaller and with less detail, and he's missing the part in the middle of his hair; both of these issues were fixed in the final version. A few tiles were later taken out of his swinging sprites to save space, but since Goemon is always overlapping with Ebisumaru's sprite in these animations, it's not actually noticeable in-game.
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Final
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A little hard to see, but in Goemon's flying sprites, they remembered to add the part in the middle of his hair.
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Final
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Fixed the part in the hair, made the ears consistent with the rest of the sprites. The usual.
Ebisumaru
| Prototype
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Final
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Two of Ebisumaru's idle frames are drawn off-model, i.e. not fat enough. Even his hands got rounder!
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Final
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The back of Ebisumaru's head is drawn differently, with a smaller mask and what seems to be black hair underneath. In the final game, the mask covers the entirety of his head. Note that later games in the series use the prototype's design.
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Final
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The first two sprites saw the sash on Ebisumaru's gi reduced in size, while the third sprite had a bit more pudge added to it.
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Final
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Ebisumaru's shurken use a different, brighter palette in the final game.
This frame from Ebisumaru's Sakura Dance technique isn't used in the prototype and was deleted from the final game.
Both Players
There are three hurt frames for both Goemon and Ebisumaru that were deleted from the final game. The second frame, meant to be used while crawling, isn't used even in the prototype...
...but the other two are! In the final game, getting hit while flying simply cancels the technique, and getting hit while facing north displays the standard W/E hurt animation. It's likely that all three sprites were cut just to save space.
General
Title
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Final |
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- The password and stereo/monaural options are missing from the prototype's title screen.
- The option text is dark blue instead of reddish pink.
Game Intro
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- Both the sky and Goemon's house are brighter in the final game.
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Final |
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- The large font in the prototype uses a basic thin typeface, while the final version opts for a more calligraphic style.
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Final |
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Stage Intro
Font
| Prototype
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- The digits in the game's basic font were updated to match the ones used in the HUD.
- These red and blue arrows are exclusive to the prototype's font. These are presumably early cursors for Goemon and Ebisumaru respectively, but by this point the cursors had already been changed to sprites.
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Final
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- There a few other characters that are prototype-exclusive, but the only ones the game uses are the quotation brackets. The final game adds an asterisk and a left-facing arrow.
HUD
- The text in 2P's message box prior to joining in is different:
| Prototype
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Final
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| Aぼたんで ふっかつ
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Press A Button to revive.
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Aで とちゅつさんか
が できます
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You can join in with A.
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- The prototype has HUD graphics for both a single scroll and a set of three scrolls, neither of which are used. The existence of these is a little confusing; even if the game did list how many scrolls the players had on the inventory screen, why would there be two different graphics?
Items
- The prototype has sprites for an "up" graphic, which would have been used if the player could ever earn a 1up on the field. As it is, there are no 1ups in the prototype, and in the final game, all 1ups are either purchased in the shop or found in the Maze minigame.
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Final |
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- The Korezou-kun checkpoint item is more heavily shaded in the prototype, making it appear much shinier.
- In the prototype, all Korezou-kun items are gold, while the final game color-codes them based on their checkpoint number. This change is why the the statue was redrawn - the older sprite didn't work well with the new palettes.
Continue Point
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Final |
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- This is a very simple text-based screen in the prototype. The final game adds a border of an unrolled scroll.
- The first line in the prototype screen says, これうぞちゃんの こえ, "The Voice of Korezou-chan". Korezou is the name of those elephant statue checkpoints, though they're called Korezou-kun in the final game.
- The final game rewrites this to the the simpler どこから はじめますか, "Where do you want to start?"
- In the prototype, players can either press the A Button to start off at the last checkpoint they reached (そのまま つづける, "Continue where you left off"), or press the B Button to start at the beginning of the stage (たぬきに あいにいく, "Go to the tanuki.")
- In the final game, players can start off at any checkpoint they've reached or the beginning of the stage, necessitating a cursor on this screen.
Game Over
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Final |
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- Like the continue point screen, this is just white text on a black background.
- There's no option to quit the game (and receive a shortened password) in the prototype.
- The old message, もういちど するなら すたーとばたん おしてね, translates to "If you want to try again, please press the Start Button."
