[RHDNBot]

Update By: sics

The latest update to Sonic Improvement Vol.2 for NES is now ready, and incorporates a stunning new title screen based on the Megadrive version, which takes the console's graphics capabilities to the limit.

In addition, more bugs are fixed and work continues to improve the mechanics of the game, starting with editing some rules in various jump states, which although not yet ideal, let you see the great improvement potential that this game has to offer yet.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[Griever_GF]

Any plans to improve "Super Sonic 5 (1997) (Unl) [!]"?

I need it improved like this Sonic, but:
1) Because it starts from Spring Yard, then Labyrinth Zone...
Make Spring Yard 1st zone, Labyrinth 2nd, Green Hill 3rd, Marble zone 4th, Startlight 5th, etc.
2) Keep the original Sonic sprites, do not replace it.
3) Keep the original "Super Sonic 5" intro screen too.

I need this hack! It's my childhood game. But it suffers from ugly controls, no extra lives in bonus, etc.

[sics]

It really is a very far-fetched idea, it would require a great deal of effort and the results would hardly be noticeable, which is why I love it.

I cannot promise anything, but I will do my best to make your request come true

[SuperStarFox]

Any plans to improve "Super Sonic 5 (1997) (Unl) [!]"?

I need it improved like this Sonic, but:
1) Because it starts from Spring Yard, then Labyrinth Zone...
Make Spring Yard 1st zone, Labyrinth 2nd, Green Hill 3rd, Marble zone 4th, Startlight 5th, etc.
2) Keep the original Sonic sprites, do not replace it.
3) Keep the original "Super Sonic 5" intro screen too.

I need this hack! It's my childhood game. But it suffers from ugly controls, no extra lives in bonus, etc.

(To Griever_GF): Don't forget the "5" on the title screen as well. Trust me, one hack of Sonic The Hedgehog for the nes had a "5" on the title screen, but someone said it's extremely rare and hard to find since it can only be found on an NES Multicart.

[Nosuch]

That title screen is beautiful.

[Griever_GF]

I cannot promise anything, but I will do my best to make your request come true

It will be great if you'll do it. Best wishes to you.
I dreamed to reach Green Hill in my childhood, but never can pass through Labyrinth... But I saw it in preview, when no buttons pressed. Same for Marble Zone.

(To Griever_GF): Don't forget the "5" on the title screen as well. Trust me, one hack of Sonic The Hedgehog for the nes had a "5" on the title screen, but someone said it's extremely rare and hard to find since it can only be found on an NES Multicart.

In my childhood I had this game on multicart, yes (with TMNT 1 and Race America), but I'm sure it existed on single cart too. Now I have singlecart with this game, it looks simular to this:

But the game itself doesn't contain "Super Sonic 5", its name is "Sonic & Knuckles 5".

I wish to keep this intro screen. Well, maybe a little improvement in terms of colors or animation will be ok.

P.S. I've made a little research and discovered another "Sonic 5" hack, but it's really different.

[-pepodmc]

Looks really good, sounds really good and it is quite faithful to the original version.

The only thing that this game needs for me is trying to replicate the sonic jumping physics as faithful as possible.

If you can improve that more, it would be perfect.

[sics]

Griever_GF
Bad news, it seems that at the moment I will not be able to fulfill my objective, since I could not decipher how to establish the changes of graphic banks necessary to be able to correctly display this title screen or, failing that, how to port the changes of my hack to the version requested, although I have not yet exhausted my ideas

P.S. I've made a little research and discovered another "Sonic 5" hack, but it's really different.

Doing something like that would take months, I don't know if it's a good idea, I have to think about it

Nosuch
Thank you very much!

-pepodmc
Currently I would like to look for people interested in participating in the project, since I believe that I am close to reaching the limit of what I can deliver on my own

[Griever_GF]

Griever_GF
Bad news, it seems that at the moment I will not be able to fulfill my objective, since I could not decipher how to establish the changes of graphic banks necessary to be able to correctly display this title screen or, failing that, how to port the changes of my hack to the version requested, although I have not yet exhausted my ideas
Doing something like that would take months, I don't know if it's a good idea, I have to think about it

Oh, ok. I still have hope though...
I know that romhacking is a hard job, I worked on PCE Necromancer partial translation a while ago...
But it will be great if you can fix "Sonic & Knuckles 5 (Super Sonic 5 1997)" somehow, because I love this game, this variation of 8-bit Sonic...

[Arcade-Elite]

Nice update to sonic, onlything missing is Robotnicks chain to the ball in the first boss fight, i read some where you took out content from the rom that was not needed. So is there room for a chain sprite to finish the first boss?

[sics]

The NES can only draw 64 overlapping sprites to the screen, so I don't see a way to add something like that and have it work well without doing extensive reprogramming of the game.

But in theory, if a function was created to deactivate the useless parts of the hud during the battle against the final boss, Eggman's graphics would be handled as a background and not as sprites, and the chain pieces would use the blink effect, there is The possibility, although being realistic, that sounds like a challenge too difficult to face, even for someone experienced

[MadZiontist]

Thanks for sharing your work of this amazing mod. I have a request for the "Somari In Sonic The Hedgehog" patch. As it seems that this particular variant is essentially supposed to be a "vanilla hack" (for lack of better terms) of the original Somari The Adventurer, to make the original game more polished, my request is to see a proper title screen featuring the Somari/Mario character (rather than Sonic The Hedgehog). This would give it more of a complete feel to the hack.

[sics]

MadZiontist
First I want to thank you for your review, I am not lying if I tell you that I was very excited when I read it, since since I started I expected someone to really notice all the effort that was behind this work.

About the title screen for Somari, I had planned to incorporate it with the next update, I had even thought to add new additional content, such as a new version with Doraemon, but I was sorry I had not managed to fulfill the request of Griever_GF

So when sebastianangel asked me for help with his Street Fighter hack (Hummer game), I knew it was my chance to decipher the missing piece

Thanks to this project, my knowledge about SomariEngine increased a lot, but although I already have the tools to achieve my goals, I have committed to helping this hacker and until he does not comply with it, I will not be able to focus on my work.

But the good thing is that if everything goes well it could be the beginning of something bigger

[MadZiontist]

MadZiontist
First I want to thank you for your review, I am not lying if I tell you that I was very excited when I read it, since since I started I expected someone to really notice all the effort that was behind this work.

About the title screen for Somari, I had planned to incorporate it with the next update, I had even thought to add new additional content, such as a new version with Doraemon, but I was sorry I had not managed to fulfill the request of Griever_GF

So when sebastianangel asked me for help with his Street Fighter hack (Hummer game), I knew it was my chance to decipher the missing piece

Thanks to this project, my knowledge about SomariEngine increased a lot, but although I already have the tools to achieve my goals, I have committed to helping this hacker and until he does not comply with it, I will not be able to focus on my work.

But the good thing is that if everything goes well it could be the beginning of something bigger

Gotcha. Well at any rate I look forward to what you have next. 

You're welcome about the review. It deserved it. It's amazing how far Somari has come! I've been trying to make a point to start reviewing works more, rather than just "snatch & run". 

[MadZiontist]

I have a question about some of the optional/extra patches. Most of the patches are labeled preceding with a STH. Does that automatically exclude them from being applicable to Family Kid and Speeding Hummer? You had said that some older emulators might have problems if the Retro Scroll Renderer patch wasn't applied. So I'm wondering if that patch can also be applied to Family Kid and Speeding Hummer, for better compatibility with older emulators? This question goes for the other patches labeled with STH as well.

Another thing, I applied the Final Zone Gray patch to Family Kid, which already had a gray final zone, just out of curiosity, and it turned it teal! I'm wondering if it could possibly be a game breaking thing, and to avoid playing the game with it patched like that?

One more thing, after applying the Menu Code - Select (F.K.) patch to Family Kid, and warping to the Final Zone, there was "garbage" on the left and right sides of the screen. It was like this in every emulator I ran it on. Wasn't sure if you were aware of that, and thought you might want to know.

[sics]

Your comment is answered alone, you have arranged hacks in ways that were not planned, it is obvious that you will get unforeseen results, since although they are similar they are completely different games.

For example: Sonic Improvement Vol.2 is 256kb heavier than Family Kid and when you apply the STH - Final Zone Gray patch to the latter, it ends up weighing an additional 88kb, that's not a good sign

On the other hand, you must remember that the game must be patched using the following ROM:

Code: [Select]

ROM: Somari.nes (Sonic Retro Version)
File MD5      CB1D67E6455D2FA514B939817D64C9D2
File SHA-1    6CF18228CFB66D48B3642069979D4A5103CB8528
File CRC32    51589DAF

ROM MD5       55A6B56CBF201C1EEFEA7F476EF4892B
ROM SHA-1     BB618E17CD21EAA0185DE3A3BF0028DCBBA6A0C3
ROM CRC32     318658D6

A curious fact about this ROM is that the real name is actually Somari (Unl) [b3].nes.

And if anyone is still wondering why I chose this version of the game as the basis for my patch, the answer is that I ended up doing it out of fatigue.

I am not exaggerating if I say that I received many messages complaining that the game did not work when using this ROM, although clearly there was a readme file that specified that it was not the correct version.

I even tried adding additional patches so that people who didn't want to search for the correct version of the game could convert their version to correct it, but that seemed to cause more confusion.

At least in this case I appreciate that it was not another personal message

[MadZiontist]

@sics thanks for clearing that up.