What were they thinking?
Please note: This game isn't 2 player (but 2 can play with only 1 Light Gun controller back and forth).
Ever since the arcade version, nothing much has changed for the NES port (if it was ever approved by Nintendo). The violence was still the same, the gameplay was still the same, but the look and feel to this version changed dramatically.
The following events removed for the NES port:
() The nudity in the graveyard
() Shooting off the flesh of the people of the Rack Room level
() The monk pushing a cart full of body parts was changed to a monk pushing a baby carriage for the NES. Ironically, the monk can still be shot.
() A large amount of the body parts on the floor of Torture Chamber were removed
The Arcade and NES game differences:
() The NES version has a storyline, telling us what the arcade and this version was all about. "Back in the middle ages a castle on the outskirts of town has been invaded by an evil force which is causing the dead to come back to life! You need to stop this force before it can create a large army and take over the town. ...Each level also has 8 talismans hidden in it; you need to find and destroy these to stop the monsters from appearing."
() The horrific head seen in "Hallway" chasing a woman merely travels across the room in the NES version, with the Arcade's horrific head appearing from the end of the Hallway, coming quite close to the screen, then moving to the side, chasing the woman. This may have been because of the NES' lack of scaling features.
() There is an on-screen scoring system called the "Ectoplasmic Tabulator"
() The "items" used to play the bonus shooting stage in the arcade version are referred to as "Talismans"
() The levels are played in reverse to the arcade game
Even though all those changes were made for the NES port, it doesn't mean that the game is fun and playable. If the arcade version isn't a big failure, you'll find the NES verison no different than the 1986 release.