Mega Man 2 and...REVISITABLE STAGES?! YES!!!

[Fellowzdoomer]

Cross-post from Board 2

Ever wanted to make the stages in Mega Man 2 revisitable? Well, now I just realized by changing one little byte will make revisitable stages in Mega Man 2 a reality. Don't believe me? Well, do as Bruno Mars says and just watch! (bad pun is bad :p)

First off, you'll need a Mega Man 2 rom. Don't ask where to get it, I'm not telling you. You'll also need a hex editor and an NES emulator. You have all that? Good! Now, in your hex editor of choice, in your Mega Man 2 rom, go to address 0x0340ec. You should see a byte "A5". Got it? Good. Now, change that byte from "A5" to "A6". Save your work. Run an emulator and beat a stage or 2 (Or enter A5 B2 D5 D4 C5 C1 B4 D3 E2 in the password screen to have all but Quick Man defeated) and then reselect the stage you beat.

Yes. It is possible! And the best part? You keep the weapons you gained! Don't believe me?


The Crash Bomb, in Crash Man's stage!


The Metal Blade... in Metal Man's stage!


The Leaf Shield...in Leaf, er uh, I mean, Wood Man's stage!

Special thanks to this link on Data Crystal for helping me realize this.

Edit: As stated by Zieldak (from Board 2):

Yes, they are still there, and the weapon get still appears.
However, I have some problems with this find. It's not necessary working as it is believed to be.

'A6'-ing it simply doesn't work, it doesn't let the player to revisit all levels sometimes. Try this for better results. Of course, this is still not the best way to do this. Especially if you don't want the intro, get weapon and the bosses reappear.

340EC: EAEA3900EAD0

So as of now, there are 2 ways: the original way and the improved way. The improved way makes sure you can revisit all the stages. It does display the boss intro and Get Equipped with screen.

[PresidentLeever]

Nice, thanks.

[Disch]

Cross-post from Board 2

Off topic, but....


...wow... board2 still exists?   Why?  How?  My mind is blown.

[Fellowzdoomer]

Nice, thanks.

No problem! :-) I'm working on how to stop the Boss Intro and Weapon Get sreens to stop showing. You can also actually change the stage select pointers ytoo, but that's unrelated.

Off topic, but....


...wow... board2 still exists?   Why?  How?  My mind is blown.

Its most abandoned nowadays, save for the Rom Hacking sections. Were you an old member there?

[Disch]

Were you an old member there?

Not on board2 -- but I was on the original Acmlm boards.  But that was like 13 years ago.

Back then there weren't really a lot of romhacking social circles, so Acmlm was sort of like the popular one by default... in fact I still don't really understand HOW it got so popular.  But after real rom hacking sites started cropping up I sort of lost interest.

[Fellowzdoomer]

Oh, that's cool. I joined 2 years ago lol

[Vanya]

There are still a few tidbits that drop on there that don't show up here on rare occasions.


I don't know if you saw my post on board2, but I mentioned using the flags that usually prevent you from entering the RM stages to instead prevent the RMs from appearing.
I figured that they might as well be put to good use.

[Fellowzdoomer]

Actually I don't think I saw that post. Can you link me to it? And what odd tidbits are there? I know that when you simply A6 it sometimes you can't go to Bubble Man's stage, but that's the only one I found. The improved version doesn't do that.

Edit: oh wait, I'm lying! Lol I did see that post. My only concern is that adding the flag that makes sure that the boss never reappears would cause some other glitches. I can't disassemble/reassemble the ROM either, I don'thave a computer ATM :-(

Kind of ooff topic, but regarding the legality of NES ROM disassembly code, is it Alright to ask someone for it or is that essentially pirating?

[kuja killer]

i think it's maybe easier in my opinion to check the weapons collected rather than the actual stages completed stuff.

That's how i did it on my game (megaman odyssey)
I check if the weapon from said stage is currently collected or not, and if it is, then ignore all that boss spawning stuff and set megaman's main "status" register to the "end stage" flag and the game automatically takes care of the rest.

So i'd do the same for megaman 2. but you'd probably have to make a "lookup" table thing to know which weapon belongs to which level.

[Bregalad]

Why should this post (the first one) have to read like an ad ? It feels extremely annoying, especially since it says nothing that special. Capcom just made a choice to have stages non-revisitable for some reason. If you want to re-visit them, just hit reset, it's that simple. I'm very happy you found another way to revisit them, but really it's nothing that impressive.

[Fellowzdoomer]

Why should this post (the first one) have to read like an ad ? It feels extremely annoying, especially since it says nothing that special. Capcom just made a choice to have stages non-revisitable for some reason. If you want to re-visit them, just hit reset, it's that simple. I'm very happy you found another way to revisit them, but really it's nothing that impressive.

Well, for the price of shipping and handling, you just might get some more mm2 hacks that have their stages revisitable! :p

Basically for anyone wanting to do this, really. I felt it was odd that Megaman 2 was the only Megaman game that didn't let you revisit stages.

[Zynk]

If you want to re-visit them, just hit reset, it's that simple. I'm very happy you found another way to revisit them, but really it's nothing that impressive.

But you can now use the weapon you get from that stage.. on that stage! Did you get it (weapon)?   

[Timaeus]

 That looks interesting , especially because of the fact that most of the enemies of one stage are 1-hit killed with the weapon you get in that stage , but the only usefull thing about this is farming E-tanks I believe

[RetroRain]

I felt it was odd that Megaman 2 was the only Megaman game that didn't let you revisit stages.

Megaman 3 doesn't let you revisit stages either.

[Bregalad]

Megaman 3 doesn't let you revisit stages either.

It appears that some versions of Mega Man 3 / Rockman 3 allows you to revisit stages (before you beat all 8 robot masters, obviously) and that some do not.

[Fellowzdoomer]

It appears that some versions of Mega Man 3 / Rockman 3 allows you to revisit stages (before you beat all 8 robot masters, obviously) and that some do not.

Yeah, I must have this version. Its kind of odd, really. Makes for some confusion.

[JamesSullivan3]

Wonderful work. Although, once you complete a stage after completing all of them, you go immediately into Dr. Wily's stages. Is there any way to get around that, making it work like Mega Man 1?