I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here, but this Famicom version was the closest I got to experiencing voluntarily pure misery in playing one of these Valis games. This was one of the very few times where I was thankful for the implementation of save states and rapid-fire add-ons to make this thing slightly less intolerable than it would have been had I played the OG Famicom cart. Absolutely dreadful.
By the way, if you’re keen on playing this, consider using this Valis++ hack that I mentioned once or twice.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/248/
dtm666 