TMNT: Return to New York (NES) Updated (v1.81)

[guitarpalooz]

Hello, I've put up an updated version of my TMNT NES hack from a few years back.

You can get it here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3486/

Edit:  Version 1.81 has been uploaded! General info and latest changes in bold below:

        Attack   1/2 Health  Speed  Jump  Defense  Special
Leonardo     12     12         1.0x   1.0x  1.0x     1.0x
Raphael      16     24         1.0x   0.88x  1.5x     0.5x
Michelangelo  10    12         1.22x  1.0x  0.8x     1.2x
Donatello    09     10         0.88x  0.63x  0.8x     1.2x

Enemy List:  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Set 1: Purple Foot Soldier, Mouser, Tubular Transport
Set 2: Orange Foot Soldier (Chainsaw), Foot Mystic (Water), Drone Robots
Set 3: Foot Mystic (Fire), Green Foot Soldier (Whip), Helicopter Missile, Utrom
Set 4: Foot Supersoldier, Rat King, Blade, Balloon Missile
Set 5: Yellow Foot Soldier (Boomerang), Flyborg, A6 Annihilator
Set 6: Gray Foot Soldier (Wall Crawler), Flying Mouser
Set 7: Roadkill Rodney, Foot Mystic (Earth), Excavator, Mine
Set 8: Blue Foot Soldier (Jetpak/Laser), Foot Elite, Technodrome Sentry
Bosses: Bebop, Rocksteady, Slash, Metalhead, Baxter Stockman/Giant Mouser, Technodrome, Shredder

Version 1.81 (9/8/2022) Updates!

• Fixes/improvements to swimming mechanics
• Small improvements to April and Splinter sprite
• New April portrait at game end
• New overworld turtle sprite
• Konami logo restored
• Fixed Raph's overworld sai
• Improved pause menu portraits

Also, please check out my other hack based on this one, "TMNT: Attack of the Grem."  It's an aesthetics hack featuring the four female turtles from TMNT history, Casey Jones, and a new story and ending.  Find it here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6066/

[G30FF]

In the past, people have suggested changing the enemies to those seen in the cartoons/comics, but there arent many generic foes and it'd be strange to have three krangs come on screen at once.

Not if they were generic Utroms. 

[guitarpalooz]

Edit:  there we go

I'll need to find how to get the legs on the same pallete as the head (would welcome any guidance), but this is krang's TMNT3 sprite altered to fit the legs of the walking eyeball guy. 

Here's a list of other enemies in the game:
https://therobotmonster.tumblr.com/post/162603477934/obscure-enemies-of-the-nes-tmnt-game

I always thought the robo knight would be easy to make into a triceraton, but not so much with the flying head and fire breath...

[G30FF]

If you were going to make any of the enemies into a Triceraton, the chainsaw maniac would probably be the best choice in my opinion.

One minor thing I noticed while playing, you added a ladder to the Bebop miniboss room to deal with the jump height issue, but since you can't really jump off of ladders in this game, it's not that easy to fall from the ladder to land on the ledge. I tried doing it with Raphael and had to try it about 5 times before he finally got up onto the ledge via the ladder.

[guitarpalooz]

If you were going to make any of the enemies into a Triceraton, the chainsaw maniac would probably be the best choice in my opinion.

One minor thing I noticed while playing, you added a ladder to the Bebop miniboss room to deal with the jump height issue, but since you can't really jump off of ladders in this game, it's not that easy to fall from the ladder to land on the ledge. I tried doing it with Raphael and had to try it about 5 times before he finally got up onto the ledge via the ladder.

That was actually the hardest part of the game to repurpose.  For whatever reason bebop cant run through ladders, only jump, so adding one anywhere in the middle didnt work.  And adding any ledge made the fight far to easy, as you could just hit him from the ledge.  Plus, he maintains his y position when running, so if he jumps to the ledge and runs off, he floats. 

Edit:  after giving it some thought, it seems like the best thing to do would be to make most of the enemies different iterations of foot soldiers, like the later games.  At the time of the game's release, only 19 issues of the mirage comic had been released, and only four seasons of the 80s cartoon, leaving only a few characters that make sense to use (no wonder they made so many up):

Mirage:
Utrom
Triceraton
Foot
Shredder elite (will probably replace the dinobot with him)
Shredder mutant
Baxter stockman (human)

Cartoon:
Krang
Bebop/Rocksteady (in game)
Stone warrior
Baxter stockman (fly)
Punk frogs (in game)
Pizza zenomorphs
Rat king
Leatherhead

Edit:  Reading more into it, the game started development in 1987, so they really only had a few cartoon episodes and comics to go off of.

Some updated foot soldiers and turtles with darker shells.  For some reason i really dig the idea of a buff foot ninja as the chainsaw guy:

[guitarpalooz]

Sorry to double post.  I've been working on new sprites for the game and would appreciate feedback, as I've not done much spriting work before.







I'd also appreciate some suggestions for the remaining enemies.  Here's what I was leaning towards:
-Dinosaur robot: Foot Elite
-Frog:  Green foot with a whip
-Hedgehog/Firefreak/stone guy:  Earth, Fire, and water Foot Mystics
-Sentry in level 6:  Need to fix propeller, might make it a searchlight since it already has wings
-Boulder bird from level 5: ???
-Roof leaper from lvl 1-2: Some kind of drone copter that drops down on you
-Fleakid from lvl 3: Blade from TMNT 2
-Jellyfish from level 5: ???
-Wall Crawler from level 5: ???

Once these are done, there will likely be another long hiatus as i learn how to make unique miniboss fights

Thanks for the help!

[Googie]

I love the sprite changes you did, they're pretty gangsta. I'll be looking forward to playing this when it's done, I played 1.3 and the changes are great, smooth work! 

[ShadowOne333]

Sorry to double post.  I've been working on new sprites for the game and would appreciate feedback, as I've not done much spriting work before.







I'd also appreciate some suggestions for the remaining enemies.  Here's what I was leaning towards:
-Dinosaur robot: Foot Elite
-Frog:  Green foot with a whip
-Hedgehog/Firefreak/stone guy:  Earth, Fire, and water Foot Mystics
-Sentry in level 6:  Need to fix propeller, might make it a searchlight since it already has wings
-Boulder bird from level 5: ???
-Roof leaper from lvl 1-2: Some kind of drone copter that drops down on you
-Fleakid from lvl 3: Blade from TMNT 2
-Jellyfish from level 5: ???
-Wall Crawler from level 5: ???

Once these are done, there will likely be another long hiatus as i learn how to make unique miniboss fights

Thanks for the help!

Man you really went above and beyond!
I actually had the idea of changing the enemies that seem to come out of nowhere for enemies from the actual comics and the cartoon series.
This page could help for a few ideas:
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Category:TMNT_Villains

Out of that, I'd recommend posting a side-by-side comparison here from the original enemy and the new one you'll be using for each one, so people can get a better idea of what enemies are being changed, and to what.
I'll be looking forward to the new enemies!

I'll see what enemies I can think of for the remaining ones.

[guitarpalooz]

Man you really went above and beyond!
I actually had the idea of changing the enemies that seem to come out of nowhere for enemies from the actual comics and the cartoon series.
This page could help for a few ideas:
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Category:TMNT_Villains

Out of that, I'd recommend posting a side-by-side comparison here from the original enemy and the new one you'll be using for each one, so people can get a better idea of what enemies are being changed, and to what.
I'll be looking forward to the new enemies!

I'll see what enemies I can think of for the remaining ones.

Good idea, the enemies in this game are so obscure it's tough to tell what im talking about.  Changes so far:



And here's the ones I'm still working on:


My goal is eventually to turn the main villains (rat king, krang, leatherhead, tokka, rahzar, slash, etc) into the game's various "minibosses" where youre stuck on a screen fighting a regular enemy, but that will take some time.

[guitarpalooz]

Sorry to bump, but version 1.6 has been released!  Here is an updated sprite preview for anyone who wants to have a look

[Googie]

I'm gonna give this a spin right now, thanks for the heads up. 

[Dantk]

May I suggest turning the Gunbot into the A6 Annihilator.
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/A6_Annihilator
The Sewer Bug into the Tubular Transport
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tubular_Transports
And turning Mecaturtle into Metelhead.
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Metalhead

[guitarpalooz]

A little preview.  That two part boss will be a slash/metalhead team up



I was hoping to give slash his pantera claw, but his sprites are straight leonardo with a palette change, so sword it is.

If I could figure out something for the last two flying enemies (in level 4 and level 6), thet'd be every enemy in the game.  But those are tricky because they face the screen at all times.
October 29, 2020, 06:32:35 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I've had an idea I've been toying with and was hoping anyone who has played the hack could provide some feedback.

Originally I avoided putting main characters as generic enemies because it wouldnt make much sense to fight 40 leatherheads, karais, etc.  But I think I found an exception for one in particular, since A. The enemy is rare and B. he doesnt really die the first time you hit him.



Again I'm new to sprite art, so hopefully this comes across as rat king who then disappears when you hit him and sics his rats on you.  Does this come across as intended?  Any improvements?

The original update of this enemy in 1.6 was kind of a mutated foot soldier, my idea being that shredder would test his mutagen gun on his own men.  Which should go into the next update?

[G30FF]

Neat idea with Slash and Metalhead teaming up!

As for the Rat King idea, I think it works if the idea is Rat King just sort of dissolves into rats when you hit him because it's not really him. A lot of iterations of TMNT sort of depict Rat King as a mythical being, the IDW comics in particular.

[guitarpalooz]

Version 1.7 is up.  See original post for updates, please leave feedback and hope you all enjoy!

[ShadowOne333]

Version 1.7 is up.  See original post for updates, please leave feedback and hope you all enjoy!

Awesome!
Do you have any pics of the new enemies that have been replaced?
I saw a few that got changed, and I'd love to take a peek at them without going through the entire game to pin them down

[guitarpalooz]

Sure thing.  New ones are towards the bottom but here's the big changes

[ratedrguy]

This looks really great. Has anyone been able to get it to work on an NES Classic? Any particular reason I may be having trouble getting it working?

[guitarpalooz]

This looks really great. Has anyone been able to get it to work on an NES Classic? Any particular reason I may be having trouble getting it working?

Unfortunately that's a bit beyond my knowledge.  A retired user named rainponcho helped with the ASM for this hack, and any other changes made were self taught (i dont have any programming background).

I imagine it doesn't work due to either the MMC5 conversion, retrorain's SRAM hack (unlikely), or rainponcho's ASM.  If anyone has experience with this, I still have his original work I could share to see if it could be fixed for regular hardware. 

That said, NES classic is emulator based, yes?  Does the file youre using work in other emulators?

[Googie]

I'm really enjoying 1.7, it's awesome.