honestly man, I think you were a little too hard on Aliens. Sure it's not one of the best or most memorable games Konami's ever produced, but I enjoyed it at the time and I don't think it's a horrible game now either. Sure it takes a lot of liberties with the plot and enemies, but think about it... if the game didn't introduce different kinds of enemies, wouldn't it get really boring killing the exact same enemies over and over? How would you differentiate those aliens, and what would be used for bosses other than the Queen? etc. etc. Hell, when I first played it I didn't think much of all the new enemies, I just thought "Why is Ripley's hair blonde?". (well, except for those creatures that instantly turn big when you shoot them and then go back to normal size until you do enough damage to make them permanently big. Seriously, what the hell?)

the Japanese version is missing the driving stages because Newt was cut out of the game entirely. I'm not exactly sure what the reason was for that, I thought Japan loved loli.

oh and kudos on the Lightning Crashes reference.

yeah the game isn't particularly long, but then again it was one of those arcade games that was mostly meant for a quick playthrough by casual players instead of having deep replay value.

In regards to weapon placement, I could've sworn that the weapons show up in exactly the same places in all the romsets, but I could be wrong. The major difference with the Japanese version is that you get to keep your weapon between stages, so you never have to lose the flamethrower (definitely the best weapon) unless you die. The Super Bombs do only appear like twice though. As for the food, it definitely appears in the same locations on all romsets, but it only shows up when you have a certain amount of health. I think on the Japanese version food will start appearing if you have 5 hit points or less, on the World version it's 4, and on the US version it's 3. So it'll seem like the Japanese version gives out food more often since you don't need to have lost as much life in the first place. Also, I think the game awards a 1-Up after you kill the dandelion-shooting boss on the World/Japanese romsets, but not in the US one.... yup, US version is clearly the hardest.

And actually, most Konami games that were released around the late 80's / early 90's were made harder for the US market. Like, the Japanese version of X-Men actually has enemies that will award life-up/extra mutant powers, which were completely absent in the US version. Japanese version of The Simpsons lets you build up a "second" lifebar and has a better scoring system. The worst of all though are Crime Fighters and Metamorphic Force, where they gave Japan regular lifebars but then for the US they implemented lame Gauntlet-style numerical lifebars that tick down over time, basically making it impossible to play as long on one credit. To think I never would have known all these things without MAME...

Murdar Machene wrote:

The US version of Contra hard corps is supposedly harder, you can get hit 3 times before dying in the japanese version. Any support for this claim?

100% true.

Moral of the story - Konami fucking hates America.