GuestLog in

I played this version and the original NES game side-by-side, both for the first time. It's like night and day: this is the version to play.

With the engine, the major difference I noticed was the consistent ability to climb down. That alone makes this game actually playable! You can immediately tell the difference just in the starting room.

Other changes not listed in the description:

• The sword fighting is different (can't tell if I like it more or not)
• The level palette changes, similar to the 1.3 DOS version, are excellent and vivid, closely matched to the original NES game's colors (although maybe the changes to the palace make it less bright and luxurious)
• Poison potions are now dud potions (I only found 1), which is a great choice, if it can't bubble blue. New players won't be randomly poisoned!
• The hallucination potion was the feature probably hinted at in the description. It works really well, and it's a great idea! It does not, however, bubble green, or is marked in any way, so it's an odd choice to remove the random poison potions for new players, but let them stumble onto this one, and make all future tall potions suspicious.
• There is indeed fighting with the mirror image (unlike the NES original, that just forgets about him) - although it seems like the important lessons about solving everything with violence were not able to be added here :-)
• There's an extra level, and it's good.

So this version is indeed altered, but actually much closer to the original Apple II and DOS versions than the original NES port was. I'm thankful for this hack, because it let me play and enjoy the excellent graphics and colors of the NES port, that I otherwise would not have seen.