Download Mega Man 2 - Weapon Rebalance ROM Hack

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*  Mega Man 2 - Weapon Rebalance  *
*  v1.0                           *
*  by Nali                        *
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Mega Man 2 (USA):
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20180803-121122)
File SHA-1: 6B5B9235C3F630486ED8F07A133B044EAA2E22B2
File CRC32: A9BD44BC
ROM SHA-1: 2EC08F9341003DED125458DF8697CA5EF09D2209
ROM CRC32: FCFC04D


Contents:
 1. Overview
 2. Changes
 3. Thanks


--------------
*  Overview  *
--------------

Mega Man 2, for all the reasons that rightfully make it a popular and beloved game,
has a weapon set that's creative and versatile in theory and aggravating to use in
practice. Metal Blade gets every advantage and you'll never run out of Quick Boomerang, 
while every other weapon is kneecapped by high energy consumption or common enemies 
randomly being immune. 

This hack seeks to make every weapon fun and effective by retuning energy use and damage
across the board without changing their vanilla behavior, as well as implementing a few quality 
of life improvements elsewhere. Blow away the world with Air Shooter, drop Bubble Lead on 
everything, discover uses for Crash Bomber and Atomic Fire that were always there but you 
never thought to try because of how expensive they were. Mega Man thrives on variety, and I
hope you'll find you can experiment with and enjoying using weapons more than ever before.

Or keep on killing Metal Man first if you wanna, I won't stop you.


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*  Changes  *
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This hack is balanced around and intended to be played on Difficult mode. Normal retains its 2x
damage modifier for those who prefer it.


General:

- Health and weapon energy bar fill rates slightly increased
- Crash Bomber walls can be destroyed with charged Atomic Fire or Metal Blade, if inefficiently
- Checkpoints added in front of the boss doors in Wily 1-4
- Two large weapon energy capsules added to the start of Wily 6


Weapons:

- Air Shooter:
 - Cost reduced to 1 energy, down from 2

- Atomic Fire:
 - Cost reduced to 1/2/4 energy per level of charge, down from 1/6/10
 - Charge time reduced to 46/92 frames for half and full charge, down from 125 and 187 frames

- Crash Bomber:
 - Cost reduced to 2 energy, down from 4

- Leaf Shield:
 - Cost reduced to 2 energy, down from 3

- Metal Blade:
 - Cost increased to 1 blade per 1 energy, up from 4 blades per 1 energy

- Quick Boomerang:
 - Cost increased to 6 boomerangs per 1 energy, up from 8 boomerangs per 1 energy
 - Fire rate moderately increased

- Item 2 and 3:
 - Energy consumption cut in half

- Bubble Lead and Time Stopper's energy consumption is unchanged.



Bosses:

- Atomic Fire changes in all cases refer to a full charge. Uncharged and half charge shots retain
  their vanilla behavior, which is to deal 1x and 3x the buster's damage, respectively.

- Air Man:
 - Two of his tornado patterns were altered to be more reasonable to dodge, though they're still
   intentionally trickier than the other three.
 - Air Shooter increased to 1, up from 0
 - Bubble Lead increased to 2, up from 0
 - Buster reduced to 1, down from 2
 - Crash Bomber increased to 2, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield reduced to 6, down from 8
 - Metal Blade increased to 1, up from 0

- Bubble Man:
 - Air Shooter increased to 1, up from 0
 - Atomic Fire increased to 3, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield increased to 2, up from 0
 - Quick Boomerang reduced to 1, down from 2

- Crash Man:
 - Air Shooter reduced to 4, down from 10
 - Atomic Fire reduced to 3, down from 6
 - Crash Bomber increased to 1, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield increased to 2, up from 0
 - Metal Blade increased to 1, up from 0

- Flash Man
 - Air Shooter increased to 1, up from 0
 - Atomic Fire reduced to 3, down from 6
 - Buster reduced to 1, down from 2
 - Leaf Shield increased to 1, up from 0
 - Metal Blade reduced to 1, down from 4
 - Quick Boomerang increased to 1, up from 0

- Heat Man
 - Crash Bomber increased to 1, rather than healing him
 - Leaf Shield increased to 1, up from 0
 - Metal Blade increased to 2, up from 1

- Metal Man
 - Air Shooter increased to 2, up from 0
 - Atomic Fire increased to 5, up from 4
 - Bubble Lead increased to 1, up from 0
 - Crash Bomber increased to 1, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield increased to 1, up from 0

- Quick Man
 - Atomic Fire reduced to 6, down from 10
 - Bubble Lead increased to 1, up from 0
 - Crash Bomber reduced to 3, down from 4
 - Leaf Shield increased to 1, up from 0
 - Metal Blade increased to 1, up from 0
 - Quick Boomerang increased to 1, up from 0

- Wood Man
 - Air Shooter reduced to 2, down from 4
 - Atomic Fire reduced to 10, down from 14
 - Bubble Lead increased to 1, up from 0
 - Quick Boomerang increased to 1, up from 0

- Mecha Dragon
 - Air Shooter increased to 1, up from 0
 - Bubble Lead increased to 1, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield increased to 1, up from 0
 - Metal Blade increased to 1, up from 0

- Picopico-kun
 - Values refer to the individual parts (which have 20 health each), not the boss as a whole
 - Air Shooter increased to 7, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield increased to 7, up from 0
 - Crash Bomber increased to 7, up from 0
 - Metal Blade increased to 10, up from 7

- Guts Tank
 - Air Shooter increased to 1, up from 0
 - Leaf Shield increased to 1, up from 0
 - Metal Blade increased to 1, up from 0

- Boobeam Trap
 - As with Picopico-kun, values refer to each individual part
 - Atomic Fire increased to 20, up from 0
 - Bubble Lead increased to 3, up from 0
 - Quick Boomerang increased to 2, up from 0

- Wily Machine
 - Bubble Lead increased to 1, up from 0
 - Crash Bomber reduced to 2, down from 4
 - Leaf Shield increased to 3, up from 0

- Alien
 - Unchanged



Enemies:

- 117 buffs and nerfs across the game, most commonly for the sake of making weapons do damage
  where they previously did not.
- Air Shooter and Bubble Lead in particular benefit a lot from this.
- Metal Blade is generally a bit more powerful to partially offset its energy nerf.
- A couple things that you might not think of as enemies now have secret vulnerabilities. 



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*  Thanks  *
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Testing:

Bookish Delight
Turaina
Liquid Boss
Jake Nagare
Berordn


Documentation referenced:

http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Mega_Man_2:ROM_map
http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Games/Hacking/Wiki/index.php?title=Mega_Man_II
https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Mega_Man_2/Data
https://www.romhacking.net/documents/795/
https://www.romhacking.net/documents/796/



And to you, for playing!


You can find me at the following youtube channel, where I mostly dabble in Mega Man music modding:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkCtciGoJUqy-vafzGMNujQ