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Blades of Steel (NES, Famicom Disk System)

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Regional Differences#

The disk version of the game is majorly cut down in comparison to the cartridge release, losing practically everything that made the game so iconic in the west.

Title Screen#

Japan

US

Europe

The disk version's title screen is much more detailed than the cartridge version, featuring an overhead view of a hockey rink with an animated crowd. (This is perhaps the only thing the FDS version has over the NES version.)

Additional Features#

The following list of items are exclusive to the cartridge release, and are completely missing from the disk version:

  • Digitized voice samples
  • A fighting minigame
  • Penalty shots, incurred by fighting in front of the net, which recycle the minigame for tiebreaker shootouts
  • Two unique intermissions:
    • The first features a Gradius minigame, plus advertisements for Contra and Jackal
    • The second features an animation of a cartoon polar bear hitting a slapshot through a goal net

Intermission#

US

Europe

What an exciting gameFantastic graphics, awesome music

The European version of the game omits the aforementioned adverts for Contra (known as Probotector over there at the time) and Jackal (unreleased in Europe), and instead advertises... Blades of Steel.