Una de las cosas que no sabía y he aprendido gracias a este último número es que había dos versiones diferentes del Shock Troopers:
Yo en recreativos, MAME o FBA y ahora en el NeoSD siempre he jugado a la que denominan en ese post versión A (una única barra de energía para los tres personajes). ¿Sabéis alguien si existe dump de esa supuesta versión B?
You are incorrect.
There is no way to toggle the changes between the two versions of Shock Troopers. It is an actual change in the program roms. Here is the lowdown between the two versions, I shall call them Version A and Version B.
Version A
-The player's lifebar consists of 128 "points". (whenever you pickup a life-restoring item, the number of points that it adds is shown. The first-aid kits are worth +64 points)
-When a new credit is started, the lifebar does not start fully filled up at 128 points. In Lonly Wolf the lifebar starts at 112 points, and in Team Battle it starts around 90-96 points (I do not remember the exact amount right now, but it's somewhere in that range).
-At the start of each level, it will show you each character's "rating" for the level. They will be given anywhere from 0-3 stars for the level. The higher the star amount, the faster that character will be able to move ON THAT STAGE ONLY. In addition to this, if a character is rated 2 stars a +8 life bonus will be added, and if they are rated 3 stars they will get a +16.
-You are given only one life. If you are playing in Team Battle, all three characters share that lifebar, so once it runs out it's game over.
Version B
-The player's lifebar consists of 64 points, which means you can only take half as much damage before dying.
-Lifebar starts at 100% in both Lonly Wolf and Team Battle modes.
-There is no display of the star rating inbetween stages, and no life-ups are given for characters that are rated 2 or 3 stars on the stage. However, THE STAR RATINGS ARE STILL THERE EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED TO THE PLAYER, so characters will still move at different speeds depending on the level.
-By default the game is setup to give you 3 lives in Lonly Wolf, and a 3-character team in Team Battle. This setting is changeable in the soft dips under "HERO" to be a number from 1-8 (Yes, this means that if you change it to 8 and select Team Battle, you will all have 8 characters on your team). The "HERO" setting is absent entirely on Version A.
-Also worth noting that in Team Battle if the game is finished after 1 or 2 of the characters die, those characters will not be present in the ending. In Version A all 3 characters will always be there (since they all share one lifebar, naturally).
That's pretty much it. It's still unclear as to why there are two different versions in the first place, considering the game only saw an MVS release. I have a US cart and a Japanese cart, and they're both Version B. No serial number is given on the Japanese cart, the US one is 011XXX (all my carts are in a box right now). I'm pretty sure somebody here had a Version A cart with a low serial number, so it seems to imply that the Version A carts are in fact earlier. Strangely though, there are some screenshots of Shock Troopers contained in the Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad Original Soundtrack booklet, and they are clearly screenshots of Version A. Hmmmm.
Oh, and just as a correction in this thread (although Shito already pointed it out), changes in stuff like intros from AES to MVS do *NOT* count as a separate version of a game. All the data is programmed onto every game, it just depends on which format the game is running in of course. Magician Lord IS a game with two separate versions though, the MVS carts are programmed with the smaller lifebar and the "respawn where you died" function. The AES carts are programmed with the larger lifebar and the "restart the level when you die". If you somehow played the MVS version on an AES, you would get the extra AES-specific intro AND be able to play the game in the "respawn where you died" format.
![[snif]](/images/smilies/nuevos/triste_ani1.gif "llorando")
![[triston]](/images/smilies/nuevos/triste_ani2.gif "tristón")
Son muchos los kioscos que he visitado y la tienen en casi todos, pero solo el primer número. ¿Algún sitio de Madrid donde sepáis que sí está a la venta? 
![[carcajad]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani2.gif "carcajada")
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![[+risas]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani3.gif "más risas")