Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari Malarkey?

[Smashed Brother]

Hey, so I've playing this game solo for the past week or so and enjoying every bit of it.  Well, my buddy came over today because he really wanted to check it out for himself.  We were playing for about 20 minutes when we entered the first candy store that you can visit when you come across the shopping areas (forget which one).  We each bought a few items and then proceeded to enter the inventory screen so that we could use them.  I 'consumed' my items with no issues, but after he did the same, the game froze while showing his stat increases.  Not just any regular game-freezing; the screen got all fuckered up and this incredibly irritating noise was coming out of my surround sound.  I couldn't even soft reset back to the bios screen!  So, I turned off the Duo-R and restarted the game.  Yeah, we hadn't saved either...

We got back into playing the game and managed to make it as far as we did before in less time.  Now we stopped at the bookstore and grabbed some magazines.  We entered the inventory screen again and I 'read' my mag with no issues.  My buddy proceeded to do the same, and once again the game completely froze on us as his stat increases were being displayed along the bottom!  WTF!?  Another restart, but at least I had the foresight to save our progress.

So we kept playing through the game and experimenting with different things to see what caused this freezing up.  We actually did manage to beat the game.  This is what we figured out:

- 'Consuming' anything from the 2-player's inventory slot would cause the game to freeze.  Now, books where techniques can be learned (Dragon Feet, etc) cause no issues, because the item 'stays' in the inventory.  Items that are 'worn' are also unaffected because they stay in the inventory slot.  It's only when the item disappears from the inventory that would cause the game to freeze up.  The first player can 'consume' items from their inventory with no issues whatsoever.  Eating food at a restaurant is perfectly fine with either player.

-  Also while playing, occasionally when my buddy died and I went to the next screen to resurrect him, his yen amount would be doubled!  Normally you're supposed to lose half of your money upon dying.  The 1st player will sometimes lose half their money and sometimes not, but it is never doubled.

My question is has anybody else experienced this weirdness?  For the record, I'm using the official PCE multi-tap, with a 6-button Avenue pad plugged into the first slot and a Duo-R pad plugged into the second slot.  Yes, the Avenue is on 'A' mode.  If this is not due to user error and turns out to be a glitch in the actual game, I'm going to be a little more than annoyed as this game wasn't exactly cheap to acquire.  Can anybody else help me out with this?  It would be much appreciated.

[Tatsujin]

Very strange behavior, but I have to confirm this first when time comes. By any chances, did you turned on the 6 button switch?

[Smashed Brother]

Very strange behavior, but I have to confirm this first when time comes. By any chances, did you turned on the 6 button switch?

No, the switch was in normal 2-button mode the whole time.  But I have noticed odd things happening in some games when I'm using the 6-button controller.  That'd be great if you could check this out when you get the chance!  Hopefully it's just a weird controller issue...

[spenoza]

What happens if you swap the controllers, avenue pad in port 2 and duo pad in port 1? Does that change anything?

[Smashed Brother]

Hmmm...I'll have to try that out, probably on Sunday.  I'll post on here what I find out.