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Jul - The Cutting Room Floor - Game Gear version of Mega Man: Help requested discovering potential unused boss New poll - New thread - New reply
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Pharmakon
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Posted on 03-31-11 08:36:36 PM Link | Quote
How's it going? I've new to posting on the forum, and I've been reading the the TCRF Wiki for several weeks now, and have become interested in uncovering or helping to uncover unused content from various games. I was pretty much raised on the NES, Game Boy, and Super NES, and right now the games that most have my attention besides the one I'm about to discuss are the original NES version of TMNT 1 and the the classic Mega Man games for the Game Boy.

Basically, I don't have that much experience digging up unused content from game ROMs, and I needed help confirming the existence of a potential unused version of Quick Man from the only Game Gear title in the mega man series.

Some background on what this game was, for MM fans not familiar with it: Essentially, Mega Man (GG) was a remake of Mega Man 4 for the Game Gear that actually consisted mostly of content pulled from Mega Man 5 for the NES.

Unlike with the Game Boy titles, which had original levels reusing similar content to NES games, with Mega Man (GG), the entire levels from the NES versions were ported with limited edits, and auto-scrolling was instituted so that the NES levels would fit the handheld's small screen size.

The entire game consists of exactly eight levels: four non-linear robot master stages (Stone Man, Napalm Man, Bright Man, Star Man), two linear robot master stages (first Wave Man, and then Toad Man), and then two Dr. Wily stages. The first of these is actually a modified version of Quick Man's stage from MM2 (this may be significant, more on this later) and then finally an abbreviated level where you fight a modified version of the final Dr. Wily fight from MM5.

This is where potential unused boss probably exists: with the first (and penultimate) Dr. Wily stage, as mentioned above the entire level is essentially a port of Quick Man's stage from MM2, but without QM himself.

Basically, when you get to the end of the stage, there's an intermediary chamber (standard in all classic MM games begining with MM2) which you enter thru a vertical sliding door, and this chamber contains another vertical sliding door that goes to the actual boss fight. All MM fans are going to know what I'm describing here.

This exists with not-Quick Man's stage also, but when you go thru the first vertical sliding door to enter the intermediary chamber described above, the game AI takes over, MM walks to the center of the chamber, and then teleports out of the level to the next Dr. Wily Stage. Even though that area probably exists in some form of completion, in the normal game, you NEVER get to see the boss chamber.

You can see this phenomenon demonstrated on youtube by going to the 2:11 mark at this specific youtube video (special thanks to user kuposan3 of youtube):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHkVcbTvaes&feature=related

This is basically where I'm asking for assistance: thru savestate hacking or some other technique or set of techniques, can any of you determine of help me determine if an unused version of Quick Man or another boss character exists in the game?

Also, if any of you can point me in the direction of pages discussing basic techniques on unearthing unused graphics, and also how to perform savestate hacks, that would be awesome. Aside from fooling around with Tile Molester to view tiles (and learning how little I understand in the process), I haven't been able figure out any of this on my own. I've also had hopes of pining for unused levels and music in various other games (particularly TMNT 1 for the NES), but haven't learned how to attempt to do this either.

Thanks for tolerating my lack of brevity, let me know what you guys' can help me find out. Thanks for everything you do, and take care!
Keitaro

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Posted on 04-01-11 09:07:51 AM Link | Quote
Playing around in Tile Molester is really gonna be the only thing you can do to find unused graphics (though to be honest, I prefer TLP, it feels a bit more...intuitive) unless of course they're compressed, in which case you'll have to know what compression format is used and all that jazz...but I imagine in a game like Mega Man the graphics wouldn't necessarily be.
Nicole

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Posted on 04-01-11 04:08:42 PM Link | Quote
I did a quick skim of the ROM in YY-CHR (conveniently, the game doesn't seem to use any tile compression), and couldn't find anything that looked like Quick Man...

But it still might be worth checking to see if anything exists past that teleport point (like a boss room or something), that's a fairly odd way to transition.

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Pharmakon
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Posted on 04-01-11 07:16:21 PM Link | Quote
Thanks for getting back to me. I have both TLP and TM, to be honest, I don't know how to view compressed graphics, and even when not compressed, all that tile data still looks like a glitchy mess.

I'm sure the boss chamber still exists, however, whether it's empty, Quick Man exists in a glitchy form (maybe less likely based on your input) or a surrogate boss exists reused from a prior title, I don't yet know. Thanks for looking over that data for me, Imajin. With the exception of portions of the opening and closing credits, it's worth noting ALL the used content in this game are things reused from MM's 5, 4, and 2 in that order. I'm thinking that would hold for anything left in the boss chamber if it's not empty.

Based on my limited knowledge, I think save-state hacking or maybe even a game-genie/PAR code could enable me to enter the boss chamber, but I don't yet know how to use either of those tools with any effectiveness (I could probably learn, I think).

The results would be worthy of an entry in the wiki, most likely.

Imajin, do you know if savestate hacks would be of use here, and if so how to perform them?
Sails
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Posted on 04-03-11 07:11:58 AM Link | Quote
I really wanted to take a peek with MEKA's tilemap viewer of that section, but I was only able to get to that part in Kega because Kega actually has Game Genie code support. I tried to convert the code to a RAM edit but couldn't find the address at all. The only part that trips me up is the second part of Wave Man's water ride.

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Pharmakon
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Posted on 04-04-11 08:16:52 PM Link | Quote
It's awesome you were able to do that much. A lot of this shit is greek to me. Not the most direct way to go about it, but I did download YY CHR myself to see if there was anything I could recognize that was unused (and potentially associated with the room in QM's reused stage), I couldn't recognize three-quarters to 85% of the material because the way such data is usually presented. I'd upload a photo showing what I'm describing, but I don't have my data stik with me right now.

A slim possibility exists that a debug mode is still present that allows free movement (many of the 8-bit MM games for NES and GB have them) but if there is, I don't know how to access it. I haven't yet taken the time to see if anyone else has already discovered such a feature, though, so for all I know it could already be "discovered".

Are there any other viable options for viewing the inside of the unused boss chamber besides what's already been brought up?
Aeonic Butterfly
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Posted on 04-22-11 03:14:38 AM Link | Quote
Being the sort of lazy person I am, I took a look at Zophar for savestates for MEKA =P; Killed myself at the final boss, and returned to the level before the boss started.

The tile viewer shows nothing remotely resembling Quick Man, but I'll take an honest playthru later and make a state before the level loads.
Afti
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Posted on 04-22-11 07:39:21 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Pharmakon

Are there any other viable options for viewing the inside of the unused boss chamber besides what's already been brought up?


Not a big MM fan, but if the engine supports teleportation to arbitrary coordinates you could modify the metadata for one instance of a teleport object somewhere in that level to land you inside the room.

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Jul - The Cutting Room Floor - Game Gear version of Mega Man: Help requested discovering potential unused boss New poll - New thread - New reply


Rusted Logic
Acmlmboard - commit 47be4dc [2021-08-23]
©2000-2022 Acmlm, Xkeeper, Kaito Sinclaire, et al.

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