Rodland

Rod Land, known in Japan as Yousei Monogatari Rod Land ("Rod Land: A Fairy Tale") was released in 1990 and developed and published by Jaleco. Originally a coin-op arcade game, it has since been ported to virtually every platform around in the early nineties, the first being the Amstrad CPC version in 1990 and the last being the Nintendo Game Boy version in 1993.

The home versions of the game were created by the Sales Curve Ltd from their London development office. The Amiga and ST versions were coded by Ronald Pieket Weeserik and John Croudy, the Commodore 64 version by Steve Snake, the Spectrum version by Jason McGann and Shaun McClure, and the NES version by Simon Pick Jools Watsham and Steve Snake. The NES version was only released in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Japan.

All of these versions differ in some way — particularly the NES version, which adds some new platform stages and allows the player to jump — but by far the biggest difference is that the arcade version includes a totally different 'sequel' (with new graphics, levels, bosses and storyline) on completion of the original game. The enemies in the "second story" are more robotic. This sequel can be accessed directly at the start of the game, if the joystick is moved down three times between inserting a coin and pressing the 1P or 2P button.

In the Game Boy version specifically, the player can strike enemies with the wand even while climbing a ladder, making the game slightly easier to play.

The controls are as follows:

Up/Down - Climb up/down ladders, create own ladder (in combination with A/B).
Right/Left - Move sideways
A - Confirm selected option (title screen); fire button, attack enemies or create ladders (in combination with Up/Down on the D-pad)
B - Same as A button.
Start - Confirm selected option (title screen); pause and resume the game (during gameplay).
Select - Toggle between options (title screen).

*TIP*

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