Talk:Mega Man 2

I'd prefer to individually re-rip any tiles we know for certain are unused, rather than use that blob from "Sprites INC". The Metal Man tile is part of a gear platform, and all the Wood Man tiles are most likely used (the green leafy one is, I checked). The Flash Man platforms and background tile and the Crash Man Metool thing are all definitely unused. --BMF54123 18:58, 30 May 2010 (EDT)

Also holy crap that flower! Has anyone noticed that before? I'd be amazed if something like that went unnoticed this long. --BMF54123 19:00, 30 May 2010 (EDT)

I'll re-rip the Metool thing and the Flash Man things tomorrow. I knew porting it over from my wiki would do that thing some good! Thanks for the confirmation, I knew it needed it, like some of the other things I ported over. -- Rick 19:14, 30 May 2010 (EDT)

Oops, looks like I've saved you the trouble of doing that. Sorry! :P

I found this in several places within the enemy graphics. Translation, please? --BMF54123 04:36, 31 May 2010 (EDT)

...looks like アキ (aki) to me. Accordin' to my copy of NJStar, 明き (aki) = "emptiness". Does it fill in a spot that's just... not used? --RahanAkero 04:39, 31 May 2010 (EDT)

"Emptiness" is very appropriate for unused tile slots. You rock. --BMF54123 04:40, 31 May 2010 (EDT)

Since we're pointing out secrets hidden in the game's backgrounds, how about the Big Dipper at the end of Crash Man's level, as pointed out in this old NeoGAF post? --Rabidabid 17:27, 24 January 2011 (EST)

In my experience there should be at least 2 versions of the American game. I had 2 copies of the game at one time - one listed Crash Man correctly, the other lists him as the original Clash Man. Both are USA versions because it is titled Mega Man, not Rock Man. --Slothbot 22:18, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

I see only one USA and one Europe MM2 ROM in no-intro, however I don't have the NES sets so I can't check... - Andlabs 22:30, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

Mega Man leftovers

There are indeed Mega Man leftovers in the game, but TrebleTrouble's presentation was...lacking, and there's no need to point out things like the intro scene attached to the levels (a lot of games use level data for multiple purposes). I think a few MM->MM2 comparison screenshots and maybe some ROM addresses would suffice. --BMF54123 19:04, 15 March 2011 (EDT)

Interesting. I had no idea. I've managed to glitch through the walls of all the boss stages, but Quickman, Metalman, and Flashman all just froze the game. Is there any way to bring the remnants to the surface? -YK 19:05, 15 March 2011 (EDT)

I was able to find some screenshots on a now delisted website, although these appear to be the MM1 levels displayed from some kind of tile viewer. It doesn't seem anyone has found a way to load these in the actual game yet. But still, at least it's some kind of visual http://web.archive.org/web/20170529191553/http://www.x-cult.org/games/242/Megaman_2/2888/Beyond_The_Boss_Doors/ --Kippykip (talk) 23:07, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I found a tool called Megaman 2 Editor (https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/836/). By changing the respawn room number and coordinates, you can access the unused Megaman rooms in the game. However the tool is written in Japanese. All these rooms are malfunctional, they don't have any enemies, neither the doors nor the ladders work, some of them have on-screen nametable loading errors when scrolling. The spikes in the game are now as normal block, they can't kill Megaman. It is worth mentioning that since many code was changed in Megaman 2, some stages can't be played normally. For example, Cutman's corridor and room (in Metalman stage) is filled with solid blocks for some reason.

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-Owomomo (talk) 14:37, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Flower Power

I'm looking over a playthrough I'm editing for YouTube, and I'm actually seeing those odd little flower things in more places. They're full of 'em in the first room you fall down into with the Sniper Joe in the hopping bot. Suddenly, it doesn't really feel so much of an oddity anymore, as it's neither unused or rare.

If any of the other admins see fit to restore it, be my guest, but I'm going to be taking it off as I don't feel it really adds anything.

Unused Tiles

Under Unused Tiles for Flash Man's level, those horizontal pipes do indeed exist in his stage. During the vertical section of the level, the left side of the screen has 2 tiles of horizontal pipes, but without shadow. So I guess still 1 of those 2 suggested tiles still is not used anywhere.

E-Tank drop

The Rockman ABNormality hack had the E-Tank drop programmed in there somehow, so it might not be completely inaccessible.--Ekkusuman88 11:40, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

I don't know how item drops work, but I'm guessing each item has an associated value that determines how often it will drop. If the E-Tank was set to zero, re-enabling it would be really easy. --BMF54123 13:07, 31 July 2012 (EDT)

Here is the commented disassembly of the relevant code, so you don't have to rely on TASVideos authorship for the reference. --Bisqwit (talk) 14:26, 5 March 2015 (EST)

SpawnBonusDrop:
 00F23D A5 4A       lda $4A                          ; Load randseed
 00F23F 85 01       sta $01
 00F241 A9 64       lda #$64                         ; Load #100
 00F243 85 02       sta $02 
 00F245 20 4B C8    jsr $3884B                       ; Calculate randseed MOD 100 (hex: 00-63)
 00F248 A5 04       lda $04                          ; Take the remainder
 00F24A C9 30       cmp #$30  
 00F24C 90 14       bcc $00F262 <Lbl_000000+258658>  ; Was it 00-2F?
 00F24E C9 49       cmp #$49
 00F250 90 11       bcc $00F263 <Lbl_000000+258659>  ; Was it 30-48?
 00F252 C9 58       cmp #$58
 00F254 90 11       bcc $00F267 <Lbl_000000+258663>  ; Was it 49-57?
 00F256 C9 5D       cmp #$5D
 00F258 90 11       bcc $00F26B <Lbl_000000+258667>  ; Was it 58-5C?
 00F25A C9 61       cmp #$61
 00F25C 90 11       bcc $00F26F <Lbl_000000+258671>  ; Was it 5D-60?
 00F25E C9 62       cmp #$62
 00F260 F0 11       beq $00F273 <Lbl_000000+258675>  ; Was it 62?
 00F262 60          rts                              ; It was 00-2F, or 61, or 63. Give nothing.
 00F263 A9 79       lda #$79                         ; Reached when was 30-48: Choose small weapon refill
 00F265 D0 14       bne $00F27B <Lbl_000000+258683>
 00F267 A9 77       lda #$77                         ; Reached when was 49-57: Choose small energy refill
 00F269 D0 10       bne $00F27B <Lbl_000000+258683>
 00F26B A9 78       lda #$78                         ; Reached when was 58-5C: Choose big weapon refill
 00F26D D0 0C       bne $00F27B <Lbl_000000+258683>
 00F26F A9 76       lda #$76                         ; Reached when was 5D-60: Choose big energy refill
 00F271 D0 08       bne $00F27B <Lbl_000000+258683>
 00F273 A9 7B       lda #$7B                         ; Reached when was 62: Choose extra life
 00F275 D0 04       bne $00F27B <Lbl_000000+258683>
 00F277 A9 7A       lda #$7A                         ; Never reached: Choose E-tank
 00F279 D0 00       bne $00F27B <Lbl_000000+258683>
 00F27B 20 37 F1    jsr $3B137                       ; Allocate object slot
 00F27E B0 0F       bcs $00F28F <Lbl_000000+258703>  ; Don't create object if no slots were free
 00F280 A9 84       lda #$84                         ; Fill in the object properties
 00F282 99 30 04    sta $0430,y
 00F285 A9 02       lda #$02   
 00F287 99 50 06    sta $0650,y
 00F28A A9 01       lda #$01   
 00F28C 99 F0 04    sta $04F0,y
 00F28F 60          rts 

You could use e.g. Game Genie code IPTYPZ on Japanese version to activate this feature. It changes the branch at F260 to jump to F277. in effect changing extra lifes drops into E-tank drops. Although you could also use ZYYYGX for exactly the same purpose, by changing the extra life item code #$7B into #$7A at 00F274.

"Metool"?

Why do the little hard hat dudes keep being called "Metool"? Weren't they referred to as "Metall" in the Game Boy games? --ICEknight 22:47, 26 June 2013 (EDT)

I'll try to elaborate to the best of my understanding. In both the Japanese and English versions, they're referred to as Metall in some of the Game Boy games (though not the last one), and Mettool in the cast ending roll of Mega Man X. The Game Boy games are notorious for having their enemy names seemingly transliterated by some Capcom intern, so Mettool is probably what it's intended to be (plus it's the closest to the Japanese name "Mettōru"). Then the localization team of the Battle Network series bizarrely dubbed them "Mettaur", apparently because they didn't cross-reference the other series. Regardless, the damage was done and it stuck ever since, leading certain fans to debate over which one is the "true" name. Because of the confusion, some fans like to just shorten it to "Met", which is what they were once called in the Mega Man NES manual and I think the PSP remake. Then there's "Hard Hat", and I'm not even sure where that comes from - my guess is it's either from Nintendo Power or just a fan-given name that caught on. I don't believe I've seen the "Metool" (one 't') spelling used before, though... Hope this explains that. LinkTheLefty 15:26, 28 June 2013 (EDT)

That's more or less what I had read over here, where it also mentions that "Metall" was not only used in the old classic Game Boy games, but is still being used in Japan nowadays... So it seems to be the most consistent name they've been given.

In any case, that's certainly not the closest romanization of Mettōru, since ō depicts a long "o" rather than a "oo" sound (which means "Metall" ends up being phonetically closer) which, paired with it having only been used once for Mega Man X, it seems kind of arbitrary having it as the preferred choice here.

Not sure which localized names would the wiki favor in this kind of situations, though. Perhaps the name in the NES manual has preference over everything, despite all this?--ICEknight 19:12, 28 June 2013 (EDT)

There's a sokuon before "to" rather than "ru" in the katakana. You can say that Metall is acceptable since it might be phonetically closer (and that's generally what you want to do with Japanese), but Mettool is closer to what's directly written down and also better conveys it as a likely portmanteau of [hel]met (メット) and tool (ツール), which I personally feel makes a lot more sense...but I digress. At any rate, I think that Wiki articles should generally stick with their game's localized names at the time, which was Met. LinkTheLefty 19:45, 28 June 2013 (EDT)

For the record, here's the explanation of the Metall name, which ends up being the correct romanization (from ALL helMET), but the current official name still seems to be "Mettaur" as in Battle Network, judging from Smash Bros for 3DS. Oh well. --ICEknight (talk) 13:04, 28 September 2014 (EDT)

Unused Sounds

I think the first unused sound (ID 22) could've been used when the Alien was defeated in place of the stock explosion sound used in the final game, or possibly after the stock "hit" sound, but before the sound that plays after the Alien is defeated and the flashing stops. --DrFault 1:19 13 March 2018 (GMT)

The much more likely reason based on the placement of the sound in memory is that it was meant for a weapon. The ending sequence was reportedly added late in development, likely long after the use of that sound was scrapped. --Dasragnerok (talk) 23:18, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Unused Weapon (Item-4)

Regarding a recent edit that was added, then removed… I'm pretty sure it's referring to the Sniper Armor. The Mega Man Knowledge Base has this to say, on the topic:

Sniper Armor is a Sniper Joe that pilots a lilac jumping machine equipped with a machine gun that was originally created by Dr. Light. […]

As the walking machine was created by Dr. Light, it's believed that it would have been used as an "Item-4", which is sustained by this image of Mega Man using the armor, with a "4" in front of it. It could also be that Mega Man took the armor directly from a Sniper Joe.

Looking at the game's tileset, I don't see any "spare" Sniper Armor tiles. The only Sniper Armor tiles in the game are located (and loaded) with the Returning Sniper Joe enemies. On top of that, they only have one 8x8 "back" tile, for the seat, since the Joe fills the rest of the cockpit, itself. Therefore, if there ever was going to be an "Item-4," I'm thinking that it never made it beyond the art/planning stages, much like the original Rush Drill and quite a number of combat robots/characters. That being said, it probably doesn't fit into the main space page. It might go on a pre-release page, though, since there's a similar unused vehicle situation (no in-game tiles, just a screenshot/mock-up) with Battletoads.

~ Joseph Lithius (Info|Chat|Edits) 09:36, 19 April 2018 (EDT)

iam8bit Repro ROM Differences

I tossed the normal USA ROM and the patched ROM into a side-by-side comparison viewer. Here's what I came up with for differences:

	1989 US ROM	2018 "iam8bit" ROM
$35697 $35F06	0F	7D
$359D1 $362C8	0E	8D
$38039 to $38066	45 bytes	19 changed bytes
$3C020 to $3C07F	95 bytes	41 changed bytes

Now, while this is all somewhat interesting, there's just one problem… According to the Data Crystal ROM map, none of these value seem to be even close to anything important.

Actually running the patched ROM reveals only one major change: the title screen is all messed up and there's some scrolling and layering issues. I would immediately assume the patch is bad, but the ROM CRC32, MD5, and SHA-1 all match against the No-Intro DAT-o-MATIC entry, which leads me to believe that the changes are like that on the actual game cart…?

Regardless, that's what I was able to see without actually playing through it. It's entirely possible there's more changes somewhere in there, but I'm too lazy to actually play the thing, right now.

~ Jo Li (Info|Chat|Edits) 15:53, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Apparently I got the iNES header wrong - this seems to be the correct iNES header that I got from someone: 4E 45 53 1A 10 00 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 --Hiccup (talk) 21:20, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

This is just a mapper hack to convert the game from MMC1 to something else. All of the changes are to code related to the mapper hardware. --Revenant (talk) 03:32, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, that's interesting. 'cause… after fixing the header and playing through the game from the start, I've made the following observations:

• The game is extremely sensitive to sprite overload.

If there's even one too many sprites on screen, or if there's too much flicker going on, the game might reset. This is most prominent in stages with Pipi and Chibi Pipi, or boss fights with lots of active sprites, like Airman or Alien.

• Vertical scrolling is broken.

Basically, any time the screen scrolls vertically, it tries to copy the buffer from the last "scene". For example, scrolling in the Wily stages usually displays a whack Wily Castle with the current tileset, briefly. This has no detrimental effect on gameplay, but it sure looks ugly!

• The Mecha Dragon is a mangled mess… sometimes

For about five frames during its floating animation, it turns into a chunk of the Wily Castle map. I assume this has to do with the previous thing I mentioned.

So, all-and-all, if this game has been patched correctly – which it appears to be – the "iam8bit" repro ROM is broken in a few minor ways.

Beyond that, there are no noteworthy changes to the game that I noticed. It's still laggy, classic Mega Man 2 from-start-to-finish. Either that, or I'm not looking hard enough. I just didn't notice any glaringly obvious changes to levels or text.

~ Jo Li (U, T, C) 03:46, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

That just suggests to me that something is still wrong with the header (i.e. wrong mapper number or something), but I don't have time to actually look at the changes in detail to tell what mapper the repro ROM is supposed to be using. --Revenant (talk) 03:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Well… No-Intro has high-quality images of the front and back of the PCB. Unfortunately, the mapper chip has some illegible text. I can see the "serial number", which reads N 04 642288, but that doesn't seem to line up in any meaningful way with the official European cart's code of N MMC1B2… A quick search on the Nesdev Wiki turns up a whole lotta nothin', too.

I'm a stupid moron. The answer is right-bloody-there. The board is from Infinite NES Lives and it has the serial number of INL-D-RAM. A quick search of that reveals… it uses an UNROM 512 mapper.

~ Jo Li (U, T, C) 04:51, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

… I can't make heads-or-tails of this header situation. Here. I'll explain with a table.

	1989 US ROM	"iam8bit" Patched ROM	"iam8bit" "Fixed" ROM
Mapper	1	30	2
PRG ROM Banks	16	16	16
Mirroring?	Horizontal	Vertical	4-screen VRAM
Bugs?	None	Intro V-scroll	Game V-scroll

Like… I have absolutely no idea what's right and what's not. But, both the ROM patch and the header fix seem to break the game in small ways. I even tried setting the mapper – via iNES Header Editor – to 30 with horizontal scrolling, but again, it screwed up the game by destroying the horizontal scrolling.

I'm not completely loopy. I know you can't just swap numbers around and make something work. I just… don't understand what the actual ROM settings are supposed to be for this game to work perfectly are.

~ Jo Li (U, T, C) 05:38, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to link this thread on the No-Intro thread for this dump to see if anyone there has any ideas. --Hiccup (talk) 10:44, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The best I have it working is iNES 2.0 Mapper 30 / PRG ROM Banks 16 / 4-screen VRAM / Battery-backed SRM / 16K CHR RAM / 8K Battery. In hex that should be 4E 45 53 1A 10 00 EB 18 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 00. On FCEUX I'm still seeing some graphical glitches, but it's working for the most part under Mapper 30 minus vertical screen changing issues. My thought is that it must be something with the on-cart RAM sizes but it seems pretty happy w/ 8K Battery. --Pr3tty F1y (talk) 23:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)