Download Mega Man 5: Second Strike ROM Hack

               Mega Man 5 
             Second Strike
                  v1.3


1) General Info
2) Gameplay changes
3) Patching, playing & Protoman Edition
4) Version history
5) Credits


     1) General Info

Second Strike is a Romhack of Mega Man 5 for NES.
It intends to offer classic style Mega Man gameplay
by drawing into what I consider to be MM5's untapped potential.

v1.3 offers many changes and improvements, see "Version History".


     2) Gameplay changes:

a) Stages:
- All new stage layouts. 
4 of them include MM6 style forking paths (Stone Man, Charge Man, Wily Fortress 1 and 2).

b) Enemies:
- Altered bosses behaviour. All of them, at varying degrees.
- A few other enemies also got their behaviour slightly altered.

c) Weapons:
Altered weapon behaviour for:
- Power Stone
- Napalm Bomb
- Crystal Eye, which was also renamed to Crystal Orb.

d) Other:
- The hit detection of the charge shot was slightly reduced, and its art changed accordingly.
- Reduced invicibily frame time for bosses after they get hit.
Both of these changes aim at making the regular buster shot a more viable solution in combat.
- Reduced item drop rate of enemies, making it more on par with previous MM games.
- Weaknesses of bosses were changed.
- Rush Jet and Super Arrow are acquired in different stages. Passwords were changed accordingly.
- v1.3 offers many more small changes on the original game to improve the experience, check the "Fixes list" in "Version history".


     3) Patching, playing & Protoman Edition

a) Patching
Original game rom: Mega Man 5 (USA).Nes
Use a patching software such as Lunar IPS.

By default the hack uses Rock5easily's "bossroomjump" hack which allows
for altered boss room layouts during the initial robot master stages.
Thanks to Rock5easily for this cool patch.


b) Playing
The hack was thoroughly tested using a Famicom 2 and an Everdrive N8 flashcart,
as well as with Nestopia and FCEU X emulators.


c) Protoman Edition

I have a Protoman version of this hack. It's a different download, you can find it with "Mega Man 5 - Protoman Edition".
Not only you can play this hack with Protoman and all his abilities from MM9-10, but it also offers some differences with the MM version of Second Strike.

It is a seperate download because "Protoman Edition" offers the possibility to play both the original game and Second Strike as Protoman.


     4) Version History

v1.0 release (Feb 28 2017)


v1.1 (March 01 2017):
- Fixed spelling error in credits
- Wily stage 2 boss: Improved spawn point for the falling green heads

v1.2 (March 06 2017):
- Changed some weapons damage relation toward some enemies, mainly making Power Stone stronger
- Improved hit detection for Darkman 1 and Darkman 3
- Fixed Darkman 3 so that he can no long freeze you forever
- Improved bullet spawn placement of Darkman 4's shots (no longer possible to exploit)
- Improved hit detection for Crystal Joes (shots no longer go through their feet)
- Improved behaviour of Big Pets (Wily stage 1 boss)
- Improved behaviour of Circring Q9 (Wily stage 2 boss), also changed his palette
- Mizzile enemy (the 'Rocket going up' enemy in Napalm Man stage): fixed their hit detection, 
also now they can die now and they're weak to star shield
- Changed placement of the 'Megaman V' letters in Wave Man stage and Star Man stage
- Gyro Man stage: improved the segment after the checkpoint,
also deleted a spike in the first row of spikes of the elevator
- Wave man Stage: changed a couple of platforming segment jumps 
- Wily Stage 1: changed a couple of enemies to avoid flicker possibility
- Bossrush: fixed palette of Crystal Man room and changed the layout of Crystal's and Stone's rooms

v1.3 (August 24 2017): 

Fixes based on the original game:
- Charging up a charge shot now works during a slide and during the "360? rotation" animation (on moving platforms)
- Charge shot charging sound now fades out 
- Charge shots go through destructible blocks and can destroy several blocks in a row (like in MM4)
- Charge shots spawn a little closer to MM to avoid having them go through objects and enemies MM is close to (No more shooting through an enemy's shield)
- While charging, if the player would release the B button during a slide or during the "360? rotation" animation, the palette could freeze with one of the charging palettes. Fixed.
- When dying in a pit while charging the charge shot, palette gets reset to default to avoid items on the screen (1up, tanks, etc) being 'frozen' with the wrong palette.
- Underwater slide-jumps are now possible
- During a slide, you can't jump if holding "down" on the d-pad. In reverse gravity this remained the same, while it should be when holding "up". Fixed.
- In reverse gravity, the Y-axis relative spawn placement of Buster and Charge shots was a little off. Fixed.
- M tanks now always appear, even if the player already has one. You can still only carry 1 at a time though.
- Picking an E/M Tank or a 1up when they're already full no longer makes a sound, like in later games in the series
- Fixed jetski art (MM's leg would flicker in/out and have the wrong colour)
- Falling crystals gimmick in Crystal Man stage: when 'destroying' a crystal with Star Shield, the following crystals falling from the same tube would go through MM. Fixed.
- Crystal Man's orbs: they no longer disappear if hitting the player during invicibility frame time. I also added a small visual explosion when they disappear when their timer runs out. This change of code also makes them less laggy when there are 3-4 of them at the same time. 
- Fixed the possibility to skip most of the boss rush by sliding through the wall (at least I think I fixed it)
- Jetski segment: fixed the possibility to "miss" the jetski during the cutscene and play the segment without the jetski, glitching the entire part. (At least I fixed the easiest way there was to pull that glitch, it might still be possible to do it with the S.Arrow but since I can't pull it off, I can't check)
- Title screen: Slightly shortened the time it takes to loop back to the intro, so that you can no longer hear the title screen song start again for a split second.
- Boss intro screen: fixed the Y-axis location of the bottom flickering light of the teleporter (the lights flickering before bosses appear)
- Wily cutscene at the end of Protoman fortress stage 4: made the text flow faster.
- Getting frozen by Darkman 3's onion rings during a Charge Kick will nullify the charge kick (turn the animation into regular sliding), to avoid C.Kick working while being frozen.
- The B button now works to select things everywhere it didn't (weapons menu, stage select screen, password/continue screen)
- The drop rate of 1ups was reduced


Fixes based on the hack:
- Fixed the timer and explosion of MM's Napalm Bomb
- Power Stone no longer gets deflected when hitting power-ups
- Added "NOT FOR SALE" splashscreen at the start
- Title screen improved
- Weapon get: re-arranged the "AND SUPER ARROW" message to look nicer

- Gyro Man stage: Fix possibility to backtrack to the previous screen during the elevator ride + fixed the flickering with the falling blocks at the start of the stage + changed palette of the Power Muscler
- Stone Man stage: Starting area altered + Fix possibility to get stuck due to the destructible blocks (room with E-tank) + moved a moving platform to avoid possibility of unfair pixel jump
- Gravity Man stage: Got rid of a pixel jump + Scroll after checkpoints (reverse gravity spikes): made it easier + fix possibility to get stuck + improved the look of bgs + altered an enemy + changed palette of Power Musclers
- Charge Man Stage: Made a jump above spikes easier in the last section + added 2 enemies in the room before the boss door (the room was empty)
- Napalm Man stage: fixed the colour of the moving drill
- Star Man stage: moved down a couple of spikes near a platform to avoid accidental death + changed the layout of the ceiling of the room with the first Dachone to allow jumping over him + deleted one Space Metool
- Protoman Castle stage 3: Changed some enemy placement to avoid flicker possibility + fixed some bg graphics
- Wily capsule stage 1: deleted 2 spikes on the 3rd screen so that the player can't just walk into them accidentaly
- Wily Castle stage 2: Made the ladder at the end of the 2nd water segment slightly higher to avoid glitch with water splash sprite. Also slightly modified enemies and got rid of a pixel jump in that area + fixed a possible visual glitch at the start of the first underwater segment + added an M tank

- Reduced some speed values for Gyro Man and Charge Man
- Changed Crystal Man's movement when he hits a wall to avoid the possibility of exploiting his movement
- Altered Napalm Man's behaviour: homing rockets, more likely to use them; and also changed the layout of his 2 boss rooms
- Napalm Man's and Charge Man's weaknesses deal a little more damage to them
- Darkman 2's "satellite" is now animated with new art
- Big Pets: reduced the speed of the platforms when they return to him, to make it less "hacky" and easier
- Altered Wily Machine (the tank form) a little to make it less "hacky" and slightly more different from the original
- Wily Capsule : made his X axis energy shot slightly higher, so that the player better understands he can slide underneath
- Crystal Joe enemy: added an extra delay to their vulnerability time before they spawn another shot, to help kill those who are close to the end of the screen and to compensate for the extra speed of their shots.
- Graviton enemy: their shots are now time based, instead of spawning another one as soon as the first is destroyed
- Suzy G enemy : they start detecting the player and shooting from a bigger distance
- Pukapucker enemy: the "head ball" comes off as soon as you hit the base once. Also the base is no longer destroyed if you destroy the ball.
- Mizzile enemy (rockets going up in Napalm Man stage): after you destroy one, there is now a small delay before another one spawns.
- V buoy enemy: For those in Wily stage 2, you can now damage them with weapons other than the buster



     5) Credits

Capcom and everyone involved in the making of Mega Man 5 and the Mega Man series.

MetHy (aka Ness aka NESfag): Level design and hex editing
Steambull: Beta testing, ideas
Anons of /vr/: Hacking help

Built using:
- The "rock5_bossroomjump" patch by Rock5easily
- MM5 hex editing documentation by Rock5easily
- "Capcom "6C80" Sound Engine/Music Format Documentation" by Matrixz
- MegaFLE X by Matrixz and Kuja Killer
- FCEU X emulator
- YYCHR graphic editor by Yy

Special thanks to Matrix, Rock5Easily and Kuja Killer.
Without their excellent work this hack wouldn't have been possible.


Enjoy!