Milon's Secret Castle (NES)

Milon's Secret Castle
Also known as: Meikyuu Kumikyoku: Milon no Daibouken (JP) Developer: Hudson Soft Publisher: Hudson Soft Platform: NES Released in JP: November 13, 1986 Released in US: September 1988 Released in EU: March 19, 2010 (Wii VC) Released in AU: March 19, 2010 (Wii VC) This game has unused graphics. This game has regional differences.

To do: Document the prototype.

An exercise in frustration. The Japanese only sequel for the Super Famicom fortunately ditched the "puzzle" elements for a more enjoyable platforming experience.

Unused Graphics

Unused alternate graphics for the Honeycomb item, including an outer-lay design and a bee's nest.

Inaccessible Violin

It's unclear how many items you must have collected to trigger this, but you must enter the room on the 3rd floor (2nd door from the right), the room with the elevator. Then exit back out to the castle. Drop down to the first floor and bump your head on the 8th ceiling brick. A violin will appear, but there's no way to get to it because once you enter any room to reach the 2nd floor, the item will disappear. Using a moon jump cheat, you're able to jump to the 2nd floor though. If you touch the violin, it will take you to the music bonus game exactly like how regular music boxes do. The appearance of this violin sprite is most likely a glitch, because the violin sprite is the same one the musicians use in the bonus game. Also, there are only 7 music boxes in the entire game, each time you find one, the musicians get a new music instrument. If you do this glitch after finding the 7 notes and having all musicians with their instruments, a glitched Tuba will appear on the top-left of the screen. Most likely because you are not supposed to enter the bonus game an 8th time.

(Source: Zephi)

Regional Differences

Turbo Test

The Japanese title screen contains a number that increases as you mash the A and/or B buttons. The number reverts back to 0 after a few seconds and seems to max out at 326.

This is a tool used to measure how fast your trigger finger is, as popularized by Takahashi Meijin. He was the spokesperson for Hudson Soft in Japan, famous for being able to press the "shoot" button on a controller 16 times per second. Curiously, if the player starts the game with this number not being zero, when the player reaches the first bonus game, the number becomes the initial score value, making it much easier to buy items onwards.

This little feature was removed from the US release.

Secret Ending

Beating the game a few times in a single power-on can unlock a secret ending screen with a message "'This is the end of Episode 1' 'See you again!'". To unlock this message, one must beat the Japanese version 8 times in a row, or the US version twice.