What I mean by 'the dos version had worse graphics' is that some of the levels like Anything But Tangerines and The Flying King looked worse than the SNES versions, like anything but tangerines had a simpler background and the flying king had these cutoffs on the sides. Even the level intro screens looked worse on the dos version (don't have a pic of it)
PICS vvv

From the screenshots it looks like the SNES version just has less space on the sides of the picture, so you can't see the border.
Personally, I prefer the sunset background.
But does the DOS version have the transparancies in ISO 9000?

Wow, you were right. the flying level actually looks far worse than the the MD version. The water effects are completely missing and items sometimes get clipped off by the border.
and the intro screens do look terrible.
Screenshots attached.

It's been quite a long time since I played the first game on the Genesis/MD, so I could be completely wrong about this, but I seem to remember that it had no save/continue option. That meant you had to play the game for ridiculous marathon sessions just to get through the whole thing (pretty common at the time). Does the PC version offer any kind of feature that allows you to either save your progress or pick up at the beginning of the level you left off at?

EWJ1 has a password feature and EWJ2 you have to collect the 3 flags in every level to play them again from the main menu

Good to know, thanks!

an important question:

Does the GOG version have the "you're the best" speech when you complete the game on difficult?

I was afraid that that speech was SEGA CD exclusive...

oh well the gog.com version is still great

No, it was on the PC port of the Sega CD version.
I wish GOG had that one.

ah, thanks for letting me know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0DagHVOapU

the endings are quite hilarious, the Sega CD was really something special :)