I apologize for the confusion. The manual has a typo which mislead me.
In the settings screen, they show (in the manual)
7.2 Players
2 Players
This implied a setting for # of players, but what it should say is "2 lives". This setting is for controlling lives.
So you are right, there is a completely different board if you want 2 players.
Humbly,
Ray B.