You might be thinking I know everything about the game there is to know right? Well, not yet... There's one or two rumours about Rygar that I heard from various people while playing in the arcade over the years that you may find interesting. I never saw any proof about some of them which could be just a load of rubbish like the bobbins people made up about Mortal Kombat II. But who knows??? When I started this guide I thought I knew all there was to know but since then I've learned about twice as much!

If you've heard any wierd rumours or know more about these ones, even if you can't prove it, email me. Either way the rumours still make interesting reading...

Cheating Death: I often had mails from people that reckon they've killed Death, in fact it's one of the most popular rumours. Originally, I heard some guy say you can kill Death if you have the Tiger power and jump on him 20 times in a row (but he never provided any evidence of this). At first this load of rubbish seemed unlikely as the whole point of Death is to stop players staying on the same level indefinately and also to trick the players into dying over a few thousand more points (not to mention saving the arcade money). But when Filipe Estima reported the Snake-Bug we talked about this rumour too and we both decided the most likely explaination is that some player jumped on it a few times with the Tiger Power, then died, and next life when he got to the snakes bit discovered the bug but didn't understand what had really happen and thought he'd killed it! However, no player has ever mentioned the snakes in their "killing Death" story though. The Armour: Some guy in the arcade once told me there was a hidden suit of armour on one of the Griffin stages which made you invincibile for 5 rounds. When collected the "armour" was said to look like a different colour of the Rygar graphics. I added this because I believe there may be an undiscovered glitch that gives you invincibility unintentionally. I don't believe there is any armour in the game though... Pete Harris wrote to me about this one recently. He said he saw it once when he was killing the Griffins on round 20, but couldn't get to it. I had a look around level 7. I jumped on one of the Griffins heads and it turned in what might be part of the bug I was told about all those years ago. It can't be collected though and just looks to me like another stun glitch.

Fire Pits: You know those fire pits (pictured above) that shoot out Firestones? Sometimes they seem to shoot out stones like mad, other times only fireballs. Does anyone know if there's any factor influencing what appears?

Unfound Objects: I had a look through the graphics in the ROM's and I came across a few objects that I don't think I've ever seen in the game. Are these items hidden somewhere in the game? Maybe they're part of what is known as an "Easter Egg"? It's not unusal for a company to make at least three releases (US release, Japanese Release and then usually a World Release for all other countries). As some gfx are only used in releases in certain countries maybe there a World version that I don't know about? If they were never used I wonder what they were intended for? Were these the original objects which got replaced? The below items might not be in the correct colours...

The one's to the far right seem to be more interesting as they have some Japanese writting on them. Paul Black translated the Japanese symbols for me and he shared this info. Thanks Paul! - "The three Japanese symbols on the right read "hazure", which translates as 'an end, extremity, a miss, a failure'. The one on the left reads "atari" (as in the company), but also has various other meanings, including 'a hit, success'."

I heard more about what the symbols meant from J.Kitkowski a while back. He Said: "...Atari is "You win" and Hazure is "You lose". Essentially, these words are used in lottery scratch-off cards and the like.  That ball thing that the message comes out of is the Japanese equivallent of a Pinata- you pull the string, the ball opens up, and if it's Atari you get showered in confetti and win something.  If it's Hazure you get jack.

So what this leads me to believe is that at some point in another version of the game there is either a place where you get to choose a fortune (maybe at the end of the game), or just get your fortune told.  I've seen this with arcade games here in Japan - I played a new version of Gradius only to, when I died, be told my fortune ("lucky", "really lucky", "normal", "unlucky" and "really unlucky").  I assume that other games do the same thing, particularly one-player adventure/shooting games like Rygar. Again, in summary, either there's a place (maybe a special stage or maybe at the end of the game) where you get to choose between two balls, one is "You Win/Lucky" and the other is "You Lose/Unlucky".  This probably has no bearing on the game, though- it probably wouldn't give you powerups or the like.  The other thing is that at the end of the game it just might choose randomly weather to show the Atari or Hazure ball... (J.Kitkowski)."

More Strange Occurrences: Here's an interesting story sent in by "Martian" which is similar to another story that's been reported by another Rygar fan from Spain. With two sightings does this mean it could be possibly another graphics glitch like the armour or an easter egg? Martian wrote -

"I used to play rygar with a friend every day many years ago after school, we'd worked out the free credit trick so I suppose it was the first US release. Now we'd worked out the stars in level 13 but hadn't worked out the parchment yet, now I had gotten onto the tree shooting wildly and suddenly what looked like a spaceman appeared above the tree, it was out of reach but we sat there until death got us thinking we'd stumbled across a new secret. I have never seen this again, this is seriously a true story so if anyone else has mentioned it apart from me I'd like to know."

Hidden Level: The wooden well above was found amongst the background graphics along with one or two other used pics. Perhaps there's a hidden round yet to be discovered? Or maybe a 28th round was made but not used? I read on a bulletin board that this was the case with Shinobi - there's gfx for an entire level which were left in the Shinboi ROM's but they never made it to the "final cut"... David Glasson reported that he'd found a hidden level years ago... "I own a Japanese Rygar, which I love and have loved since the first day I played the game 12 years ago.  I can get the Tiger Power on the 21st Level, it is there every time I get to level 21.  I also remember many years ago playing a version of Rygar which wasn't the Japanese version and in Australia we don't get US versions.  I think this was the World version, on round 26 the was a hidden level which I have only once been to and was only there for about 20 seconds.  It looked like round 26 but it was twice as hard.  I entered it by jumping and shooting around the second last arch way on round 26, a weird symbol appeared I collected it and then at the end of the round I went to a round 28 which when I died I went to the start of round 27, very cool, but I only did it once, which many startled witnesses and I have never been able to do it again, and have never ever seen that version of the game again either, but if I do I will buy it."