Revision A

What is Revision A?

There are two versions of Mach Rider for the NES. The original release, and a later Revision A. The revision appears to have had a small North American run, but was the standard version released in PAL regions in 1987. All reissues of Mach Rider have used the original release.

The most obvious difference in the revision is that courses appear in different colours to those in the original release. The background and sky also change colour from course to course, while in the original release every level background shared the same palette.

There appear to have been some other minor tweaks to the game. If you try and run an input recording from one version in the other, they play identically for a while but will eventually fall out of sync. These changes are not well recorded. If you are able to dig any deeper and find the differences between versions, contact NinDB and let us know what you find!

Version Timeline

VS. Fighting Course was released in Japan in August of 1985.
The NES original followed shortly after: September 1985 in North America and October 1985 in Japan.
The North American release of VS. Mach Rider arrived in January 1986. It's not known which version this was.
NES Revision A was available before September 1987, in time for the PAL release.

If the 1986 VS. release was released internationally as the Endurance Course version, then Revision A was likely updated to appear more like the second arcade version. We can't be sure this is the exact timeline without an official source, but it would make sense.

Course Colour Comparison

The original NES course colours are similar to the VS. Fighting Course version, while the colours for the first 10 courses in Revision A are closer to the VS. Endurance Course version (which only has 10 palettes repeated).