Mega Drive - The level of detail is very high and is quite comparable to the arcade original, there's some really nice water effects and level 2A has loads of fast parallax cloud scrolling. While boss fights are going on you can usually see a cave women trapped and struggling in the background.

SNES - A pretty high level of base detail, it's very comparable to the MD in this respect, however where it comes to the effects I would say that as an overall experience the water effects look better in the Mega Drive version, though this version does have spray and foreground water animation not apparent on the MD I feel that as an overall experience the SNES waterfalls look worse, The river on stage 3 looks substantialy worse here with no splash animation and an unrealistic look. There are fewer layers of parallax cloud scrolling on level 2 and what there is moves a lot slower. No cave women are apparent during boss fights until after the boss is defeated.

Amiga - Very inconsistant, whilst the base detail of the Amiga version falls down a bit in comparison to the other versions (definately blockier) it does actually shine in other areas, it has a very nice water reflection effect in some levels which doesn't exist in the other versions, more levels with parallax backgrounds, some copper effect backgrounds, embers blowing in the wind on the volcano level, and probably the best waterfall effects out of all the versions, however on levels with a lot going on (such as the pterodactyl level) the waterfalls are downgraded to being a static picture which makes those particular levels pale in comparison.

Mega Drive - Pretty good use of colour, not up to the standards of the SNES version though.

SNES - Really great levels of colour that show to an extent the bigger colour pallet of the system, the bosses change colour as they take damage.

Amiga - Colour is noticibly more basic than the other versions, I personally do like the new pallet of the volcano levels a lot more though.

Mega Drive - very well animated for the most part, very few animations are missing.

SNES - The animation is below average compared to a normal SNES game, it looks a bit rushed, has fewer frames (take a look at the Joe pic above, the SNES version doesn't even have a standing still frame) and is missing loads of animations from the arcade version that were included on MD (such as the beat the chest victory animation)

Amiga - I think it's slightly better than the SNES overall but worse than the MD, there are however some animations from the arcade here that were not converted to the other versions, such as the enemies butt scratching animation

Mega Drive - Perfect multi-directional scrolling.

SNES - Nearly perfect, I found that the vertical levels were slightly worse in the scrolling department.

Amiga - Very good scrolling, though the vertical levels push scroll when you get to a certain height.

Mega Drive - a very good attempt, I don't think it's quite as good as the SNES overall but there is a certain element of bass not found in the SNES versions music.

SNES - The SNES music is fantastic, you can really tell the difference especially during the boss battles.

Amiga - Good attempt, all the versions are pretty good in this aspect.

Mega Drive - pretty well adapted from the arcade version, not bad at all.

SNES - Very nice re-done sound effects, though they do sound more reminiscent of the Mario games

Amiga - Very good, pretty accurate too.

Mega Drive - The MD version definately plays the closest to the arcade with all the elements included pretty faithfully, unfortunately it is however a bit too difficult, your weapons do less damage to the bosses and you also take less hits to kill and have one fewer life per credit, the difficulty curve is inconsistant, going back and forth between being too difficult to too easy from one level to the next. One thing that does need to be added though, easy mode actually plays quite faithfully to the arcade, though you take 1 more hit to kill now on average, bosses still take more hits to kill also and you still have one fewer lives per credit, so it kind of evens out somewhat.

SNES - This version plays a little bit turgid and is also extremely easy as it gives you much more health and allows you to re-spawn exactly where you died immediately, The controls are noticibly more floaty and less responsive. This version is missing many features, you can no longer kill enemies by jumping on them or charge shot your weapons (these were two very important elements to the arcade gameplay) enemies now take multiple shots to kill and you start off with no projectile (these changes cut into the flow of the gameplay and cause it to slow down substantially). In this version you cannot choose which route you want to take, in an effort to increase the games length it just forces you to play all the levels (this has the effect of making you repeat some boss battles) many of the levels have been downgraded (the pterodactyl level is now shorter and actually has no enemies in it, only falling rocks)

Amiga - The gameplay of the levels is iffy to say the least, the 1st immediately serious issue is that the Amiga version gives no invincibility after you take a hit, this means that you can get into death loops where you bounce back and forth taking damage with nothing you can do about it. other things worth mentioning are the slowdown (not too bad), and the hit detection (can be very bad). Where it comes to the boss fights though it really is a complete mess, not only are they not very faithfully programmed but there are multiple collision detection issues with many of them, the 1st level T-Rex for instance only seems to register a hit when you hit a certain section of it's back, all the bosses also take too many hits to kill to the extent that many of the boss battles seem to go on forever.

Mega Drive - Great opening movie which is fairly accurate to the arcade, nice opening screen

SNES - The opening movie has been changed, the cave women are no longer kidnapped but are instead "scared off by the bad guys' bad breath" (due to Nintendo's family friendly image?), there is now an overworld map similar to those found in Mario games.

Amiga - Very nice levels of presentation, though it's missing the opening movie, it has a nice opening screen, the arcades' between levels map, and some fairly nice loading screen artwork.

The SNES version has an extra roll move which can be useful but I don't see that it particularly adds to the gameplay.

The Amiga version is the only one with the clone power-up

The SNES version has a fairly intrusive bonus round element, whereby after you break some eggs you have to wait around for a pterodactyl to pick you up and take you to relatively un-inspired bonus levels.

You can high jump charge shot on the Amiga version.

I noticed some missing enemy types on the SNES version (the helicopter guys for instance seem to be absent)

It's a pretty easy win to the Mega Drive here to be honest as it's the closest version to the arcade by a substantial degree and also the only version that manages to retain any feel of excitement (as opposed to the slow and meandering SNES version) I feel that the only problem with this version is the increased difficulty level but that can be rectified by playing the game in easy mode until you get to the level of confidence to upgrade to normal.

I think that the SNES version was quite simply a rush job with little effort put into it.

It's a real shame that the Amiga version turned out the way it did as the it shows real promise in many areas, It actually has the feel of a game rushed out to the shops before it had enough time to be finished properly, all the actual hard work of the programming seemed to have already been done only leaving a few major issues that probably could've been sorted out in quite a short amount of programming time.