Download Mega Man 6: Next Loop ROM Hack

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Mega Man 6 Next Loop v1.2
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by BaronHaynes
Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/baronhaynes
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/baronhaynes

Thanks for playing my hack! 

Next Loop started as a Hard Mode hack in the style of Mega Man 9 or 10, with the same room layout but extra enemies and more pits. I got more ambitious as I went, learning how to edit more things, and even starting to change stage layouts a bit toward the end of the game. It's now more of an Extra Game or direct sequel style of hack, a Mega Man 6.5 or Mega Man 6 Part 2. 

My approach in designing stages and placing enemies was two-fold: Make something enjoyable and challenging for casual players who'll likely only play it once, but also facilitate a good speedrun for Mega Man 6 experts. Many screens are designed to be a lot of fun to do in an efficient way with specific weapons. I designed some sections knowing they could be trivialized or even bypassed by an experienced player. Others I tried to make cheese-proof. Overall, I tried to made a very good speedgame that doesn't lose anything as a casual game.

Since 1.0, I've fixed a hardlock issue involving ladders and smoothed out a couple of unfair sections throughout the game to make it more accessible. I don't have any current plans to update this hack unless a major problem or softlock is found, but it's possible I'll come back and add some of the alternate paths back in (several were sealed off to help me finish the game faster).

I used Mega FLE X for the stage editing and Tile Layer Pro for some of the graphical changes.
I used FCEUX 2.2.2 to find a lot information and change things like boss weaknesses and other in-game values with its hex editor.

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 INSTALLATION
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Use a program like LunarIPS to append the .ips file to a Mega Man 6 (not Rockman 6) rom.
http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/

Use the standard version if you want original Mega Man 6 physics.
Use the slidejump version if you want to be able to jump out of slides.

It was designed with the original physics in mind, especially for speedrunning, so allowing for slidejumps makes it a very different experience. I actually haven't had a chance to do a full playthrough of this version, but it should(?) work.

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 LIKELY FAQ (INCLUDES SPOILERS!)
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-Why is it called Next Loop?
It's intended to play like a second loop of Mega Man 6, or a sequel/extra game. That specific title comes from the end of Rockman 6: RE, which replaces the final credits text with "GO TO NEXT LOOP". Rockman 6: RE, or Spacefish as we nicknamed it, has a lot of personality as a romhack and inspired a lot of aggravation and affection, and GO TO NEXT LOOP became kind of a catchphrase for some speedrunner buddies, a message to keep trying.

-Can you get through Torch Man's stage without using Jet?
Yes. That's not water, it's oil. Your inertia from dropping into it determines whether you'll float back up or not.

-Can you get stuck in the oil?
You shouldn't be able to, I was very careful to make sure you could always touch the ground, or at least die when that wasn't possible. Even if a cloud platform is blocking your path, you should be able to get over it eventually if you keep jumping.

-I found a secret area in one of the castle stages. Is this impossible to beat?
No, but it's intended as a bonus challenge for savestates rather than something to be done in casual play or a speedrun. I was thinking about doing a Kaizo MM6 hack with jet and pow puzzles, as well as things like required ladder jumps, and did this as a test.

-How do you get past the fan section in Mr. Y stage 2?
Avoid using Jet, as it interacts with fans in frustrating ways. You want to delay your forward movement to get enough height to clear the edges of the fans, but not wait so long that you hit the spikes on the ceiling. With practice, this becomes an easy section, but a lot of players get stuck here for a little while.

-What's up with the weakness order?
It's very nonlienar. All bosses have multiple weaknesses, and one of them only takes light damage from special weapons. I tried to ensure that the speedrun route could be versatile.

-Why isn't the boss AI different?
I wanted to complete this hack in a short amount of time, and was limited by what I knew how to do, or what I could find. MM6 also has a habit of using shared values for very different game mechanics, so I couldn't change boss AI without breaking other things, based on what I found during development. I tried to modify the arena or weaknesses to make the fights somewhat different than vanilla MM6, either in casual play or a speedrun.

-I got zipped into the ceiling in Shield Man and died!
Yeah. Sorry about that! The ceiling moves so fast that if you're falling (or have just stopped moving) when it retracts, its geometry will overlap with yours and kill you. MM6 is very unforgiving if you're ever inside a wall for any reason. Try to be still when the ceiling is about to retract.

-Gust Man went down the hole in the refights.
I haven't seen this happen personally, but apparently it can. You'll have to die once and try again. Sorry :X
If his health falls down the pit, Mega Man should just teleport out and the boss is counted as beaten, at least when it happened to me.

-Why does Eddie turn green when jumping on the bumpers in Shield Man's stage?
The animation when jumping on a bumper is actually considered an enemy by the game, and it loads that enemy's palette when it spawns. Its palette is different from Eddie's, but the game stores both in the same location, so he ends up using it too.

-Why does the skull jumper in Hatchet Man look glitchy?
For some reason, the game doesn't update the enemy sprite sheet after the room with the mets in it until you first spawn that guy.

-Why is Mechazaurus's chest constantly exploding?
He has heartburn.
(I wanted to remove the platforms and make that fight take place entirely on the springs, and the first solution Raiden found made them explode as soon as they spawned. He later found a way to do it without explosions, where the door would open and close but nothing would come out, but I thought the explosions were funny.)

-I'm stuck in Wily 4 without an E-Tank and the boss fight is too hard.
There might be something helpful hidden in this stage somewhere. Look closely!

-Why did you use the US version?
My main audience for this hack prefers the US version, and I wanted to write new dialogue for the absolutely all-new storyline in Next Loop. The US and Japanese versions play identically, but you'll need to patch a US rom.

-Why doesn't Next Loop have quick weapon-switching with select?
I personally like quick-switching in romhacks, and have done speedruns of several MM5 hacks that have it. Since I run on emulator, I can rebind select to the R button on my SNES controller, which makes it much easier to cycle weapons with select and down+select. However, most of my audience for this hack while making it is speedrunners who play on console, where that isn't feasible without some controller surgery. I didn't want to force people to have to use the actual select button to cycle weapons in a speedrun (which I hate doing), so I just made the menu delay as small as possible. Switching weapons is quick enough that it's still optimal to use them a lot throughout the game, without requiring any awkward select usage.

-Why didn't you use the full optimization patch with lag reduction?
I didn't feel like it was in the spirit of the game I wanted Next Loop to be. I wanted it to play like Mega Man 6, lag and all, so that speedruns had to account for it. Quick screen scrolling, menus, and health fills make it a better speedgame, but I think lag reduction as a speedrun strategy is an interesting part of running NES Mega Man, so I left it in. I still like running hacks with lag reduced though.

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 SPECIAL THANKS
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> RaidenTheQuick - for helping me find a lot of ROM values to play with. I'm a debugger novice, so I could only poke around the hex editor when I started this project. This hack wouldn't have been half as good without his research efforts. Also for helping playtest.

> Prisiii3 - helped find a lot of values for the Squidon enemy. 

> R0ck5Easi1y - his site contained a lot of useful documentation for this game.
http://rock5easily.sakura.ne.jp/

> Puresabe - Developed a number of patches for this game that allowed for fast screen transitions, fast menu fading, and quick health/ammo pickup. 
http://www.geocities.jp/borokobo/neo/download.html

> Anandastoon - Wrote a fast scrolling patch for Mega Man 6 (US version), as the JP patch only works on Rockman 6.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11296674/MM6fs.zip

> Pogington for helping playtest.

> Fastatcc, Chelney, Ppotdot1, DarkTerrex, Eldra, ZodaNOR, ThaDarkman78, BrettSuzo, Pallidus, P0lari, TheBlacktastic, and anyone else who expressed interest/support while I was working on this.