Desert Road (also known as The Flash's Stage) is a location from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System version of Justice League Task Force, serving as the home stage of The Flash; it is replaced by the Flash Museum in the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis version of the game.
Set during a thunderstorm, Desert Road features a stretch of road situated next to a large chasm, with a dead tree occupied by two vultures and small patches of grass running alongside it, as well as two coyotes that can be seen sitting on a rock pile at the leftmost region of the stage, with one of them occasionally howling and the other panting; the other side of the chasm consists of almost completely barren land, save for a few mountains or hills that are scattered across it.
In M.U.G.E.N, Desert Road has been made by Cenobite 53 under the name of "The Flash Stage" and Reginukem under the name of "Desert Route"; an edit to Reginukem's version by Duke of Corvus changes the name to "Australia" and uses reflection tricks to give the illusion that the stage has been flipped upside down.
As with Cenobite 53's other conversions of stages from Justice League Task Force, The Flash Stage is fairly accurate to how it appeared in said game and naturally uses graphical elements ripped from it, while also emulating the stage's intermittent lightning flashes and the objects being blown leftward by the strong winds, though this appears far smoother than it did in the source game. Due to the original size of Justice League Task Force's sprites, the stage doesn't offer much in terms of width and lacks any vertical camera movement, causing characters to go completely off-screen while performing a Super Jump and impairing visibility of air combos.
Desert Route is a semi-remastering of the original stage as it appeared in Justice League Task Force that features much larger graphics to allow for greater camera movement, though certain elements of the stage are different, most notably that the weather is clear instead of stormy, the chasm appears less wide, the scarce clumps of grass have been removed and the coyotes are absent; in addition, only a single vulture is present instead of two, and it perches atop the edge of the chasm instead of the dead tree, flying in from the left at the start of the round and flying off after some time has passed. Owing to the increased size compared to the original, the stage's height allows for characters to perform Super Jumps and air combos while still remaining fully visible.
Duke of Corvus' edit is practically identical to the original version, though it is made to appear as if the entire stage is inverted in reference to the Meanwhile in Australia meme[1], which typically depicts everything being upside down as a joke towards Australia being in the southern hemisphere of the Earth. Outside of flipping each of the stage's graphics vertically, the inverted effect is produced by setting the stage's zoffset to a low value in order to place the characters at the top of the screen, setting the reflection intensity parameter to its highest value and disabling vertical camera movement; although part of the floor graphic was placed in the foreground in an attempt to hide the actual characters, it is still possible to partially see them in certain locations, especially if either character's sprites go below the stage floor. The vulture that was present in the original version has been removed, though its sprites are still within the sprite file, while a "CAUTION: Australia" signpost has been added that appears at the far left of the stage.
