The only differences I noticed between this and the real deal is:
-no saving.
-no sound effect when you climb ladders in the mine.
-different and/or additional sound effect when you open the golden lion statue.
-curser position saving.
-if you don't tap a button to end a text box with an arrow, it eventually clears itself(these last 2 maybe menu options in the full version, but I don't remember them).
-when you select the "Finish/Stop" command at the end of the Kanbie battle, it keeps flipping and you have to use one more regular attack instead to get him to talk.
-when Jyoukou offers you the Demon Sword, he also drops a chest that has some sort of equipment in it(armor?).
-when you leave Jyoukou's mansion, you get a full screen ad for Kabuki Den, with Kabuki spelled in Hiragana, featuring the date and price. You have to reset to get rid of it.
-some of the sprites and or graphics looked a little different colorwise for the mostpart, with a couple portraits that looked like they were later touched up. This could just be from my seeing the game in S-Video for the first time.
-I'm pretty sure that there were one or two other minor (sound effect?)differences.
This is pretty much the same deal as the Tengai Makyo II demo that was on a disc with a Dragon Slayer demo to promote the Super CD format. In that game, the demo also ends after you beat the first boss.
Very technical! Especially the "no sound effect when you climb ladders in the mine" one.
Man, I've played this game like hundreds of times.
For the first few years that I was stuck at various points, I would play up to that point again and again. Of course, I did this with every new Turbo game, good and bad back in the day.
Now that I'm a self-sustaining adult, I don't have time for such luxuries.
One more thing about the demo, after watching the intro I noticed that the lip synch was way off compared to the full version.
During his close up, at the end of his scream, Kabuki's mouth is closed while they tweeked the final version to be perfect throughout the game(I thought that other voice sections in the demo were off too).
This will always be my favorite game.
Anyone else would've just said that its exactly the same but you only get to fight one boss.