Along with the name of the game being changed from Gimmick to Mr.Gimmick and minor alterations to the music in the European version, the player starts out with 4 lives in the Japanese version while in the English version the player starts out with 9 lives due to the intense difficulty of the game. However, it is easier to get lives in the Japanese version where if the player scores 10,000 points another life occurs at every subsequent 20,000 points, rather than 25,000 points in the European version.