Mega Man World 5 DX (Game Boy to Game Boy Color hack)

[marc_max]

Mega Man World 5 DX

This hacks turns the original Mega Man V Game Boy game into a full Game Boy Color game!

Features

• fully colorized game, trying to make it as faithful as possible to NES games
• making the most of CGB double speed mode thus getting rid of almost all slowdown in the original game!
• NES styled pause screen
• some game original code parts rewritten
• some tilesets modified in order to take advantage of all available palettes
• works in real hardware and emulators
• renamed to Mega Man World 5 DX (the original japanese name)

History
After releasing Dr. Mario DX, I really wanted to try on a bigger project. Work officialy started on December 2020 and a lot of progress was made in very little time.
However, the game code is very complex and sadly found a lot of obstacles that slowed everything down.
On November 2021, the hack was fully rewritten from scratch, hoping it would help to revive the project. But it wasn't until May 2022 when I finally overcame the biggest challenge on this hack and resumed work at last!
I don't really want to know how many hundreds (maybe thousands already?) I've spent on this. But in the end, I hope it will be worth it! :-)

Teaser

Download
Download at RHDN

Hack authors
kensuyjin33 - graphics & palettes
marc_max - coding
based partially on kindlypatrick's work

Screenshots





















Common questions and issues

• Darker colors in non-backlight real HW
  Dealing with GBC palettes and make them look good in any screen is not as easy as it sounds, specially when the main aim of this project was to make it look like a NES game.
  
  My first idea two years ago was to add a palette selector in the game's main menu. But, honestly, at this point I'm so sorry to say this but I'll be only touching code if it's strictly necessary.
  
  But don't worry, we can still find an easier solution together :-) Please, anyone who is willing to help with this, PM me! I won't guarantee a fast response nor an immediate patch, but we can discuss and see what can I do.
  
• Sunstar's original final dialogue
  Honestly, I wasn't expecting people complaining about this!
  I mean, I also like the original dialogue more than the english one. But this project wasn't a retranslation (the game title was changed in order to differentiate it from the NES game, that's all). So, anyone is free to make an addendum if they really want (as long as they keep credit for the original patch). I want to keep all dialogues, weapon and boss names in their english translation. I hope you understand. I repeat: this is not a retranslation.
  
  However, I'll be happy to discuss further about changing that specific Sunstar's dialogue. Only that one. I won't change anything else. Please, post here publicly your suggestions on how you think Sunstar's new dialogue should be.
  
• Regional versions
  There won't be a patch for the european or japanese versions.
  
  An european patch makes no sense since the ROM has only a few differences in the boot sequence. The rest of the game, is exactly the same.
  
  On the other hand, making a patch for the japanese version is not possible. But that doesn't mean we cannot release a japanese version. In other words: it would be much easier to retranslate the DX hack into japanese rather than making the whole code compatible with the japanese ROM. Someone PM'd me some weeks ago about this, I'll discuss with them.
  
• Translations
  Once again, anyone is free to do a translation to their language as an addendum :-)
  
  But keep in mind the patch will receive updates in a future, so you might prefer to wait until that.
  
• The stardroids don't look like their original artwork
  I really appreciate everyone who tried to give solutions here about that. Unfortunately, none of them is possible. Trust me: we did our best.
  
  I'd really like to write a long technical explanation, I'm sure it would become a very interesting reading for some of you here, you would understand why you were wrong with your suggestions ;-) Unfortunately, I have no time for that.
  Long story short: it's not due to the palettes (because GBC has twice the palettes the NES has!), it's because of the sprite limit. The Terra intro cutscene with Rock and Roll, believe it or not, it's pushing the console to the limits. It was one of the hardest cutscenes to colorize, if you look at the VRAM and OAM during that cutscene you might spot the many tricks that are done to make it happen without flickering. I still can't believe how it runs myself.
  
  
  
  NES Robot Masters were designed with NES color limitations in mind, that's why they could fit them into NES sprites.
  However, MMV Stardroids were not. The DMG had no color so the creative designers made complex and colorful designs. Heavy sprite overlaying would be needed if we wanted to achieve it, and that becomes impossible when there is 40 sprite limit onscreen and, the worst of all, 10 sprite limit per scanline.
  
  Again, please believe me. We did our best.
  

[Supergamerguy]

Oh my God. Its finally happening. I cannot thank you enough for starting work on this project!

[Metalwario64]

May I just suggest you use deep, saturated and contrast-y colors? Lots of GB colorizations tend to use more pale or muted colors which looks really bad on a GBC screen. That's why nearly every GBC game was so saturated and high in contrast. You can always see roughly how it looks on a GBC in BGB with the GBC LCD colors mode. If you'd rather focus on making it look good on backlit screens and emulators, that's okay of course, since it's your project.

Otherwise, I'm extremely hyped to have a colorized version of one of my favorite classic Mega Man titles. It being GBC exclusive is no problem since the original still exists.

[SuperStarFox]

Okay, this is incredibly awesome! Also, I have a little bit of some suggestions for the DX project...

1. Change the HUD / Fonts (letters and numbers) with the one from the NES Mega Man games.

2. Give the Title Screen a new look.

You're welcome to borrow some content from this colorized screenshot I did a while ago for the GBC project that you're working on. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll let everyone else give you some suggestions for the project and be on my way. Good luck and great job again for working on Dr. Mario DX! 

Link: https://www.deviantart.com/supastarfox/art/Mega-Man-5-Game-Boy-NES-Style-834815539

[NiO]

Im really interested on this one 

[Vanya]

Sick! I'll be watching this thread like a hawk.

[vhr2121]

Oh, man, so looking forward to this. I'll keep a watch at this, indeed.

[SCD]

This is a really interesting project, I'm definitely looking forward to this one.

[RealGaea]

This is one of my favourite MM games on GB, because it has original bosses. I'll keep an eye on how this turns out.

Mega Man Mania will live somehow!

[Da_GPer]

If I can find a way to be helpful, I would love to help.

[Googie]

marc_max: This is my favorite MM GB game, I'll be keeping an eye out for this thread to see more progress. This'll be awesome to play when it's done, thanks for working on this game. 

[Rabbid4240]

I was literally just doing this a month ago with gbe+ but yours is probably gonna be way cooler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4cMwS1GG5Q&list=PLKXRYtocy-QBm-QXW0ms2HIHGJj8eXm-W&ab_channel=aspai

[marc_max]

May I just suggest you use deep, saturated and contrast-y colors? Lots of GB colorizations tend to use more pale or muted colors which looks really bad on a GBC screen. That's why nearly every GBC game was so saturated and high in contrast. You can always see roughly how it looks on a GBC in BGB with the GBC LCD colors mode. If you'd rather focus on making it look good on backlit screens and emulators, that's okay of course, since it's your project.

I'm aware of this.
Editing the palettes will be easy, though I might implement a palette selector in-game since there's enough room to store all palettes twice. It's not a priority right now, though.

If I can find a way to be helpful, I would love to help.

I'll need a lot of help in the art part, as we've only got seven 4 color palettes available for backgrounds and I'm not very good at choosing colors haha
Also, we will probably need to repaint the stardroids sprites, so they look NES alike, without shading. Anyone can post their edits here (3 colors per stardroid body), and I'll see what can I do with them.
Is there any official artwork from the game's levels out there? Mega Man Mania doesn't count, the only few screenshots showed some questionable decisions.

[SCD]

I found this sprite sheet of the Stardroids in NES style colors on deviantART by a user named mike1967-now:

Maybe this will help you on what colors to give them.

I also found this on there by another user named Bongwater-bandit:

This could be useful when you start working on their portraits.

[Supergamerguy]

Here's some more art I found online that might ease the process:










Here's a video with edited screenshots of the game in color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-glzRshp7hc&ab_channel=Bonglorio

Here's a link to some Tilesets from Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch, including colored ones from Mega Man V: https://cutstuff.net/forum/index.php?topic=2703.0

[Heaven Piercing Man]

Okay, this is incredibly awesome! Also, I have a little bit of some suggestions for the DX project...

1. Change the HUD / Fonts (letters and numbers) with the one from the NES Mega Man games.

2. Give the Title Screen a new look.

You're welcome to borrow some content from this colorized screenshot I did a while ago for the GBC project that you're working on. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll let everyone else give you some suggestions for the project and be on my way. Good luck and great job again for working on Dr. Mario DX! 

Link: https://www.deviantart.com/supastarfox/art/Mega-Man-5-Game-Boy-NES-Style-834815539

I was expecting a "Megaman World 5" JP style logo, hehe

[marc_max]

I added a little video teaser.

[SCD]

I checked out the video, it's coming out pretty good.

I also found these for you as well:

This will be really useful when you start working on the enemies.

Tile set of Mercury's stage:

Tile set of Venus's stage:

Tile set of Mars's stage:

Tile set of Jupiter's stage:

Tile set of Saturn's stage:

Tile set of Neptune's stage:

Tile set of Pluto's stage:

[ShadowOne333]

Damn, Marc, you work wonders with the GB colorization.
You and toruzz are such beasts at hacking

[NES Boy]

The recent update to Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch features colorized Mega Man V graphics.

Oh, and get rid of the black outline separating Mega Man's face from his helmet. The addition of color makes it unnecessary now.