@Yawackhary: Music does play inside the mansion, but it's different from the US version. (And there actually is an opening cutscene.)

It depends on how much of the game is altered. If it's a completely different game (like Yo Noid/Masked Ninja Hanamaru) we make different sections because it would be too cluttered and confusing otherwise.

Coulda sworn we had games in the exact same situation that just have the (three letter region identifier) on the individual sheets.

Ok. If most of the graphics are different between versions, it's probably worth keeping the sections separate.

No... no... no... Nearly everything is different. Different title screen, no opening cutscene in the JP version, no warning for the save feature in the JP version due to using passwords, different graphics, no music in game (instead there's some sort of attempted chirping, I can't get very far if any music does play inside the mansion) even different menu/text system.

This is what the beginning looks like in the US original (after the cutscene) and on the JP version.

Besides it had different developer despite being both published by the same company. The US original was LucasArts (or LucasFilm Games at the time), same as the PC/C64 versions while the JP version I'm not sure but is one of those outsourced developers that were often used like TOSE.

Is everything else the same, minus the playable characters?

I get that the only reason this is split is that it's been that way basically since the site's inception (and is such an artifact of nearly 20 years ago), but this should honestly be merged with the western version's page.

there was a japan version?