01 · Stage 1

The cliff: two screens above the sea

The hero climbs up onto a cliff path with Mount Fuji behind it, and guards come out of the gates along it one after another. The path is two screens long, and the first one ends at the cliff's edge.

The first screen scrolls with the hero, its scroll ($52) running from $30 at the cliff's edge down to $1B, and a hero who steps back off the edge falls to his death ($BA91). With a guard on his way, a hero who reaches column $21 takes the scene on to the second screen ($B2EC), and at column $2A of the second screen the stage ends and the palace is loaded. Between fights the game cuts to Akuma sending the next guard, and the camera runs to the gate ahead while the guard comes out of it (cut_gate, $B40C).

02 · Stage 2

The palace: one hall, from its doors to the portcullis

The stage opens on Mariko in her cell. After it comes the hall, which scrolls 228 columns from its doors to the portcullis, with a window post every 48 columns and Mount Fuji in the windows.

The hall's scroll counts down from 0 at the doors, through $FF, to $1C at the portcullis (scroll, $B400); a hero who walks through the portcullis, at column $2A, loads the dungeon. The portcullis falls on a hero who stands under it, and the hawk comes from the second guard on (How it works, and Discoveries). The two places in the middle of the hall are reached by setting the scroll and the window posts' column together, as the stage's own scrolling leaves them.

03 · Stage 3

The dungeon: the stairs, then four rooms behind doorways

After the same scene in Mariko's cell, the hero comes down the stairs onto a screen that scrolls 32 columns. Beyond it are four rooms of one screen each, each with a guard and a doorway that stays shut until it is kicked open.

A room not yet opened has its doorway shut, and the hero bounces off it until a kick opens it ($73E4), which counts a room in $C5. Once he is seven columns into room 1, a door shuts behind him and he can no longer go back. Kicking open room 4's doorway brings in the hawk as his last opponent of the stage, and with it beaten Akuma's chamber is loaded (dungeon_end, $BB14). The rooms here are reached by opening every doorway at once ($C5 = 6) and putting the hero at the column where the stage moves him on.

04 · Stage 4

Akuma's chamber: the last three rooms

The last stage picks up in room 4, where the dungeon left the hero. Room 5's doorway must be kicked open, and in room 6 Akuma waits, with Mariko held behind him.

Coming into room 6 brings Akuma in, and his first moves are kicks sent every frame ($B368, $B895; Discoveries). Beaten, he lets Mariko go, and the hero must come to her standing up. The closing words are drawn by the stage's own ending, akuma_end ($B810), which the last place here runs directly; the closing tune then plays under them over and over, until CONTROL-R.