Hey! Wanting to pick this game up and wanna know if there are any differences between the versions of the game. Would love to know, thanks!

Here's some i know of,

Pass codes

USA Release

Woodpuppets stage code: 9663 Killer department store codes Vault 1: 1863 Vault 2: 2161

Japan Release

Woodpuppets stage: 1564 Killer department store codes Vault 1: 5271 Vault 2: ????

No idea for anything on the Taiwanese version. Haven't played it a lot in all honesty. I'll be playing through it eventually with a friend of mine who knows Chinese. Maybe there will be differences.

These are important for 100% runs

But for emulation if you want to know at least my experiences, USA release and Tawain release versions of the games if you're wanting to use ReDream, don't have wide-screen support. The Japanese version does. It's not much of a difference aside from visual. But Taiwan's version appears to have a much more consistent load buffer than the other two versions.

Plus, some books/dairies/newspaper clippings/notes take longer to go through depending on the version as in the Japanese release some entries are shorter. Same goes for other versions. Idk which one would be fastest to go through.

Toy Hunter: USA release has the main character known as Cork, Japanese release has him known as Inda.

As far as I know, these are the only differences I have been able to find.

That's great to hear that there aren't any major differences for the speedrun since this game is super pricy online. I'd like to buy the Japanese version since it's the "cheapest" of the versions. Thanks! I'll be on the lookout

Update

Since then, I've found out that there's also a Russian Release called Illbleed Final. And I have gotten to play the Taiwanese release on some free time I had recently. Turns out that the Taiwan release uses all the same passcodes as the Japanese release of Illbleed.

I have no idea about anything with Illbleed Final as I've not found a copy to play personally. But, I hope that this helps any future runners!

Other notes though, burned copies of Illbleed are easier to come by, and are allowed for runs of this game to my knowledge. Though I would recommend a physical as it's more accurate and has less load time issues and is generally more friendly to your Dreamcast.