Cyber-Lip question

I had a post earlier asking about some Cyber-Lip glitches (namely getting stuck on walls and having the game freeze at a certain magazine reload). From your responses here, I found out that that wasn't a known glitch with Cyber-Lip and there was something wrong with my cartridge.

Well, I ordered another Cyber-Lip cart and it worked fine, but it brought up some different questions. Namely, why the game was slightly different than the one I had before. The new one I got was definitely the USA release, it had the USA case and manual. The one I had before was a loose cart but I'm assuming it was the Japanese release since the sticker on it was a little different.

Now both should play the same since the carts are all the same in both regions, they just play differently on different regioned AESes. I have a Japanese AES so they both should play with Japanese text and whatever else. Well, they both play in Japanese text, but there are differences in the gameplay.

In the original glitchy one, there weren't the big red jumping robots that came around midstage in a few levels. I never saw one of those. I was only introduced to them in the working copy I just bought. Also not in the glitchy one were the normal enemies that did handsprings around, all the guys that looked like that just walked normally. In the new working one, some guys do that. In the glitchy one, the bosses were: pink blob with giant head, green machine on wheels, floating white and yellow star-thing, line of connected white things with the one red one. The new working version had these bosses: pink blob with giant head, green machine on wheels, red thing with giant green eye that is always below you, line of connected white things with the one red one, then the floating white and yellow star-thing (followed by more bosses, I never got past stage 4 on the glitchy one since it always froze at that point). Also, in the working one, the President talks to you in between some levels. He never did that in the other one. Other subtle differences too.

Some of the levels seemed switched around too, but playing through multiple times on the working cart resulted in slightly switched around levels for a few in the middle, so I guess some are kinda random with only the bosses being set.

Now how the heck can this be? I mean, I know the old one was glitchy, but glitches usually cause the game to freeze up, not make it into a slightly different version of the game. Were there multiple versions of Cyber-Lip?

I'm going to try to find a way to feed the video into my computer so I can save what's happening to show you guys, this is really weird.

This IS really weird indeed. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that maybe your original cartridge is a prototype. The odds of it being a prototype are slim indeed, but it could explain these striking differences in content. You say that the label on your original cart was different. In what way is it different? The only differences in the two version's labels should be the text on the very top part of the label. The JPN version should have katakana writing on it, but the art should be the same. I recently sold my US Cyber-Lip and replaced it with a mint JPN copy, and if I remember correctly, the art is the same on both version's labels. While only a few true proto carts have been seen floating around on the market, they usually have plain white labels with equally plain text adorning them, and nothing more.

The Meg count on JPN cart labels is usually just below the very top part. I have the US version and I can see the JPN meg count box faintly through the overlapped US label. Same goes for my US Baseball Stars and Top Players Golf carts.

I've played my US version to death and have never experienced any of the factors you described like the missing jumping red robots and the somersaulting enemey drones.

Your stage order is sometimes shuffled around in some of the areas where you take the elevators depending on the choices (up/down) you make. There is a bit of randomness there, as sometimes you have to fight through a mini-sewer level.

I would love to see a video of the glitched out version as this is one of my favorite games and I believe I've played through it enough times to be able to tell any differences between a working and glitchy version.

You may either have an incomplete prototype/beta, or perhaps one of your rom chips in the cart is bad and is causing these strange events.

[ October 07, 2002: Message edited by: AM-NeoGeo ]</p>