There's a few bugs and variations in Rygar. You would be forgiven for thinking that Rygar was the most glitched game ever! But to be fair I doubt there's been a game scrutanised as much as this one here! Here's what I've found out... and oh yes there's always more ;)

Differences Between US ROM Sets: There are two US ROM sets simply known as Set 1 and Set 2. Chris Moore had a look at the differences between them and he gave me this info. Thanks Chris!!

He said " 'rygar' and 'rygar2' don't differ very much at all.  It looks like 'rygar' is a bug fix release for 'rygar2'. I guess the original version was renamed to 'rygar2' when the new, fixed rygar set was found. But it is just a guess.

The differences:

1)  'rygar2' has a bug in the code which lets p2 start a game when p1 is already playing. You need to set a dipswitch to enable this behaviour (it is usually on by default). If you press '2' while p1 is playing a single player game, 'rygar2' will check that you have 1 or more credit before it registers that you're now in a 2 player game, but it won't deduct the credit.  That's a bad bug, and probably accounts for why a bugfix version was released.

2)  'rygar2' has some code that's not in 'rygar'.  It seems to be blanking out 7 characters on the screen.  Maybe it's removing the word 'player2' or 'player1', I'm not sure.  Not a big thing, anyway.

3)  In 'rygar2', if p2 starts while p1 is already playing, it says 'playre2' instead of 'player2' at the top right.

4) The first screen of 'rygar2' says "ALL RIGHT RESERVED" - missing an 'S' - that's fixed in 'rygar'

That's about it, I reckon.  I don't think there's any difference in the game itself - it looks like they just didn't want p2 getting all those free credits!"

Differences Between US And Japanese ROM Sets: Chris also looked at the Japanese ROM's... "Firstly, the demo sequence is different from the US one. The graphics ROMs are different, but you might expect that. The program ROMs are also different, but that might just be language related changes, and stuff about how they write up and down, not left and right.  Interestingly, the Japanese version shows the same 'free credit for p2, playre spelt wrong, etc' bug that rygar2 has.  It's hard to tell what else has changed, because with all the text moving around, all the offsets to the text strings have changed, too. " Objectwise, the Jap version seems to have more hidden powers, stars and an extra free life. The US version is more biast towards stars and explosions. Cheating Death: This is a cool bug sent in by Filipe Estima and dedicated to the talent of the Brazilian players who discovered it! Download his MAME inp here (for MAME 0.60.) then play it back. Be ready to take control when he stops throwing the shield on stage 15 (see the screenshot) - a few seconds after time runs out and night comes, you can hear Death roaring, but it won't come unless you kill one snake, or go to left side just enough to make the snakes disappear. Step on the rock on the left and walk a to the edge, this will be enough to make the demon head appear! Fantastic :-) You can do this on any other round where there's three snakes. Filipe also send in this info which he discovered himself: "Look at all these addresses simultaneously using MAME's cheat engine: c586 - c5b6 - c5e6 - c616 - c646 - c676. These six addresses are used to store some characters condition. They are shared by snakes and the demon head as well as some other characters in other stages. For the snakes, the game alternates these addresses contents between 03 and 01. For the demon head, the game alternates the same addresses between 09 and 01. The demon head will take the smaller address that has 00 content; if there's one snake activated, the demon head will use address c5b6. If there are five snakes, the demon head will use address c676 and if six snakes are activated, the demon head won't appear. To make the demon head appear, you must poke 00 into any of these addresses. rygar:0:C586:00:001: Force demon head take first snake's place."

Possible MAME Problems: I've heard about a few problems running Rygar on early versions of MAME to do with the sound. Firstly, the sound on some pre-0.35 versions doesn't work right and can also prevent REM's sound from working. However, you don't run MAME and first run REM, exit REM and then play Rygar on MAME the sound will work fine. I don't know why this is but if you do...

Blue Monkey Glitch: This is a funny glitch that can sometimes be done on round 5. When you climb to the top of the rope wait a second or two and then start to move back down (sometimes you need to jump off the rope and back on again first). A blue monkey will appear on the right hand side of the screen and charge at you! It can't kill you either (usually :) If it touches you it simply explodes and you get the pts. At the end of this level you usually see one or two blue monkeys on the ceiling who drop down and run off the screen to the right. Presumably, the blue monkeys where ment to move left instead of right then dive off the edge of the cliff to try and kill the player, but someone messed up the code abit... Ending Typo: This is a typo that strangely wasn't corrected on the "bugfix" release! At the end of the game the congratulations messages comes up the paragraph "A NEW RESURRECTED THREAT MAY AGIAN CHALLENGE YOU" spells AGAIN wrong. (thanks to Jim Flango for that one!)

Dragon Rider Glitch: In the Japanese version, when the vikings drop from the flying dragons, they're sometimes duplicated, one falls while the copy still holds to the dragon, and you can kill him as well, this was kind of fixed in the US version, where they removed the copy but left the collision!  So you can hit invisible vikings under the dragons sometimes! (thanks to J.M Leang for this one!) Stun Glitches: When you stun an enemy by jumping on them the game will sometimes replace the sprite with the wrong graphics! In the picture on the right a Dragon Warrior was stunned and turned into two different spirtes! When you stun the mutant with the tentacles it often turns a lime green colour. Another stun glitch is the mutants who run at you after forming a stack. The graphics will show them as stunned but they will continue to move off the screen! Dodgy Game Physics: The game sometimes lets sprites go against the "game physics". In other words you often see some enemies walking through rocks and over pits! This doesn't usually apply to you, but I once fell through the rock on round 20 after bouncing off a Griffin <groan>!

Repeating Round 1: Gavin Dunbar wrote to me about a glitch he heard years ago. He said that if you died exactly one pixel away from the end of a round the game would some times mess up and let you go back through that round...but with the round 1 graphics! This one is very hard to recreate because you usally go into the temple by accident. Gavin told me he was messing about one game when he managed to recreate it on round 4, but before he realised he walked into the temple! I suppose trying to judge 1 pixel isn't exactly easy... You can download his .inp (recorded on MAME 34 windows) and fast forward it to round 4. After he dies and continues at the end of the round you can see the background change into round 1 at the left side. Can anyone else recreate this bug consistently? Floating Stone: Another weird one! One round 23 there's a stone near the ledge before the rope. Walk over this but don't shoot it. Now when you climb down the rope the stone will float down after you!! If you shoot the stone and leave the object that will float down as well. Crazy... but at least it can't get any worse on the ropes...

Another Rope Glitch: Recently I found a non-important but interesting bug in Rygar (US Set 2). In vertical rounds, when you (well, Rygar is) standing in the top part of the rope and about to jump down to the floor, bat is probably getting ready to throw you a "biting-bomb". If it fires exactly when you are jumping, the bomb follows you! And dodging it when it's on your head is a lost battle. (thanks to Raul Estrada for this)...

"A wrong positioned Star..."

"This one is a funny death because of the low gravity :) I couldn't do it but I'm sure you could survive by stepping twice on the lava spit (loading the savestate)."

A dangerous axe, suddenly appearing in mid-air!