ROM Hacks: Super Mario Bros. 2: The Beatles Adventures in Pepperland

[RHDNBot]

Update By: NesDraug

STORY

Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland. The protectors of Pepperland, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band have been captured by the music hating Blue Meanies. Their plan is to ban music and steal all colour. Old Fred in his Yellow Submarine recruited The Beatles to be the new protectors, bring back the music and the colours. Only The Beatles can save Pepperland!


The hack was recently updated to v1.2 to fix some bugs and includes minor level changes.


BACKGROUND

The Beatles Adventures in Pepperland is a NES hack that transforms Super Mario Bros 2. into a Beatles-themed game with new levels, enemies, graphics and of course The Beatles music in glorious 8-bit. Play as John, Paul, George and Ringo each equipped with unique abilities. The game is loosely based on the 1968 film Yellow Submarine. which actually had it's american release on Nov 13, 53 years ago this week.

THE BEATLES

- George is an all-round character who can float in the air for a very short time.
- Paul can flutter jump and can jump pretty high from a stand still, even without a charge jump.
- Ringo is really fast but can't jump that good. By pressing jump again you'll give him a small boost.
- John can float in the air for quite some time, but he is the most hesitant to pick up stuff to throw at enemies.

DEVELOPMENT

This hack has been the passion project of romhacker Nesdraug for quite some time. Development started January 11, 2019. One year later Shauing joined Nesdraug to function as the music programmer and that's where the development really began.

Over the course of the production many fans of The Beatles and romhacking in general joined and helped with adding graphics, codes and feedback. MednaTheGreat helped to make the sprites look more professional and Iridium_ionizer designed some of the Bosses. Shauing also designed the Submarine on the title screen and the Bulldog boss.

SMB2Edit was used to create the levels and previous SMB2 hacks by GlitchCat7 and Ridley X where used as inspiration for some of the levels.

The team learned a lot, much thanks to The SMB2 Discombobulators who helped with questions about ASM and provided a full disassemble of SMB2 https://github.com/Xkeeper0/smb2.

PAL VERSION

There were requests of a PAL version of the game (The Beatles are a European band after all) in order to play on PAL hardware. The team only worked on a NTSC version, but in on the download page there's link to a speed up version of the game but it has not been tested on PAL hardware.

BEHIND THE SCENES

- A making of video is in the works but yet to be announced.

Now, there's only one way to go out. Singing!⠀⠀⠀⠀
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DOWNLOAD THE GAME
- Download: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6311/

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[jacklin]

Can't get it to work on any copy of smb2

[NesDraug]

Can't get it to work on any copy of smb2

It says in the description:
"Use the ips file to patch your rom of Super Mario Bros. 2 (U) (PRG0) [!]"

GLHF

[StratosVX]

Can't get it to work on any copy of smb2

I got it to work with the version listed on the hacks webpage.

[Uberdubie]

Can't get it to work on any copy of smb2

It works perfectly on most of them.  If you've tried multiple with no luck then you're either installing incorrectly, or your source for roms is no good... which are both common causes.

I found a very popular Europe version that surprisingly didn't work with this, but all others I tried worked perfectly.

[NesDraug]

It works perfectly on most of them.  If you've tried multiple with no luck then you're either installing incorrectly, or your source for roms is no good... which are both common causes.

I found a very popular Europe version that surprisingly didn't work with this, but all others I tried worked perfectly.

I'm glad to hear that you got most of them to function correctly. 

I put "Super Mario Bros. 2 (U) (PRG0) [!]" in the description for a reason. The hack will only work properly with this rom. Even the experimental speedup version adjusted for PAL hardware uses this rom. You can even patch your rom here on RHDN and it will tell you if your rom matches the original rom used to make this hack.

[Uberdubie]

I'm glad to hear that you got most of them to function correctly. 

I put "Super Mario Bros. 2 (U) (PRG0) [!]" in the description for a reason. The hack will only work properly with this rom. Even the experimental speedup version adjusted for PAL hardware uses this rom. You can even patch your rom here on RHDN and it will tell you if your rom matches the original rom used to make this hack.

Thanks for that!  I knew about patching roms right on this site (still glad you mention it since a lot of people don't know about this phenomenal site feature). I was mostly just curious if it worked with most versions anyway, and I found it does.  First time I patched this, I admittedly skipped over the info where you state "PAL version is not tested on hardware and we cannot guarantee it will work. Patch the American release of the game."  Of course, the only one I tried that didn't work was a PAL version, so this info was spot-on.

Anyway thank you SO much for developing this treasure, and sharing it with the world.  It's absolutely amazing and exploding with life and creativity! 

[NesDraug]

Anyway thank you SO much for developing this treasure, and sharing it with the world.  It's absolutely amazing and exploding with life and creativity! 

I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition.