Metroid 2 - Suitless Samus Special

[dACE]

A new twist on a old hack...in color...

Background
When receiving the Varia suit on the NES version, the developer could simply swap the palette to visualize that Samus changed suit and can now sustain more damage. This technique was not used on the GB version - propably because of the very limited palette available. So, instead the developers added a second set of sprites for Samus equipped with the Varia suit.

There is a hack, called Metroid II DX by Redrum that utilizes this feature of the GB version in a clever way:
The second set of Samus sprites is that of a suitless Samus!
With that hack - you can play the first part of the game as regular suited Samus and the last part as suitless Samus.

So I thought - why not add this feature to the most acclaimed colorization hack, the one made by Dan Davis?
In addition, I wanted a different palette for suitless Samus and also to recolor tiles and sprites that didn't look spot-on.

After hours of gaming and work - I finally reached a point where I'm pleased with the result.

The patch is tested and will work properly (that is, GB colorizer-properly) on:
- WIN emulator VisualBoy
- DS emulator gameYob

Features:
- Better looking sprites (Suited and Suitless!)
- Rebalanced palettes
- Numerous palette-swaps for sprites and tiles
- Proper colored Metroids!

Known issues (inherited and caused by the coloring by 'GB colorizer'):
- The rom will (most likely) NOT work on real hardware
- The rom will NOT work properly in WIN emulator 'Bgb' (probably because it is more accurate to the real hardware than VisualBoy)
- Temporary screen artifacts when passing from one room into another that uses a different tile-set. Sometimes the artifacts can form a 'wall' behind you - but they will disappear as soon as the screen rewrites.
- Flickering when fighting the last Boss (at least in VisualBoy)

Since I don't want to spend the rest of the day uploading the patch to ROMhacking.net (wait until approved, getting it rejected, do it all again, wait some more....) - I uploaded it to FileTrip (in under 2 minutes)

Get the patch from FileTrip: http://filetrip.net/dl?bYrq9hFOAc
Wait for the download file button - don't press anything else...
Apply the patch to the rom 'Metroid II - Return of Samus (World)' CRC32: DEE05370

Here are some screen-shots:











[ REMOVED ]

/dACE

[Seihen]

Finally - big thanks to KingMike, who made it clear to me that helping others (by suggesting Google search-terms) are against forum policy. I have learned my lesson - and I will refrain from helping people on this forum in the future.

/dACE

This looks like an awesome hack... but don't let a little sourness ruin the whole experience. This last little tagline does a disservice to all the hard work you've done. Let's make this about all the good that people can do on the board and not have the in-fighting, huh?

[dACE]

So I played the game from start to finish again - and realized how much I had missed to 'fix'.

Updated a lot of 'misplaced' coloring and made sure all the pickups now have nice palettes.

Cleaned-up Title Screen:


Nice looking Space Ship:


Noticed that the Missile Launcher was shared between the Suited and Suitless sprite.
So I did my best to make it blend into the different palettes as good as possible:
(The gif-animations seems to have messed up colors - still you should get the idea what I am referring to)



The original game has a blocking wall in the final Boss room, and to counter the flickering - part of that wall is a sprite (probably painted there after the Boss). Since I didn't have any matching palettes (background/sprite) - I decided to remove the wall entirely.

The palette for the final Boss had a overhaul - I think he/she? turned out nicely:

Spoiler

[close]

Fixed the palette when beating the game and receiving the Best Ending screen:

Spoiler

[close]

Here is the new updated (and final patch): http://filetrip.net/dl?BskFHrR73x
(Again - wait for the download file button - don't click on anything else...)

/dACE

[SCD]

I checked out your hack. You did a great job on it, especially the new colors you used.