Rockman & Forte

Rockman & Forte
Also known as: Mega Man & Bass Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Platform: SNES Released in JP: April 24, 1998 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test.

Mega Man (Rockman) and Bass (Forte) team up to battle King (King), albeit for different reasons.

Designed as a sort of "consolation prize" for gamers who couldn't afford a Saturn or PlayStation to play Mega Man 8, Rockman & Forte is notable for its impressive sprite animation and ruthless difficulty. The game was exclusive to Japan until it was ported to the Game Boy Advance as Mega Man & Bass, which unfortunately suffered from horrible screen crunch, grating music, and a terrible English translation ("Douchie"?). The original version of the game would eventually get an official release in the west, completely and utterly untranslated, as part of a licensed plug and play console.

Debug Menus

A number of debug menus seen in the previous games return.

Map Editor

Text for a map editor seen in Mega Man X and Mega Man X3 is present, but said text is all that's left of it (similar to Mega Man X2):

POS. X
POS. Y
CH CELL NO.
CELL NO.
HIT  NO.

Object Viewer

This is identical to the object viewer in Mega Man 7, with an additional parameter: "OBJ_USE". The code begins at SNES address C02326.

Use these Pro Action Replay (PAR) codes to boot into the object viewer:

C00547EA
C005484C
C0054926
C0054A23

• Controller 1:
  • Left/Right: Decrease/increase frame index.
  • Hold A and move D-Pad: Move sprite.
  • Y: Animate sequence.
  • Hold X and Left/Right or Up/Down: FlipY or FlipX.
  • Hold B and Up/Down: Decrease/increase sprite index.

• Controller 2:
  • Hold Y and move D-Pad: Cursor selection.
  • Select: Reset/center cursor.

Sound Test

Identical to the Sound Test in Mega Man 7, and the cursor is still invisible against the background. The code begins at SNES address C04BCE.

Use these Pro Action Replay (PAR) codes to boot into the menu:

C00547EA
C005484C
C00549CE
C0054A4B

The highest valid music index is $2E, but the menu allows selection up to $35. Add Pro Action Replay (PAR) code C04CBC2E to lower the maximum value to $2E and prevent crashing.

(Source: gedowski, JLukas)

VRAM Test

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

Presumably tests the different graphic layers.

VTEST COL
SCR1
SCR2
SCR3
OBJ

Unused Graphics

Bass

What appears to be an alternate jumping animation.

Cold Man

An unused "hurt" animation for the Snoler miniboss. Minibosses in the Mega Man games don't tend to have these kinds of animations.

These stick figures are used as placeholders for the Cold Man stage tileset.

Teleporter Stage

A broken teleporter. The teleporters in this stage always function, even when the rooms are cleared.

Some Japanese text 「[...]　キケン」 ("[...] Danger"). Unfortunately, the lower half of this has been cut off.

Castle Stage 2

These star tiles are used as placeholders for the Castle 2 stage tileset.

Castle Stage 3

More Japanese text: 「COLĐアスダイマジ＃テリー」 (COLĐ Asu Dai Maji # Terī). They appear to be the incomplete names of the bosses Cold Man, Astro Man, Dynamo Man, and Magic Man; the last name is the enemy Telly.

Alternately, "Asudai Maji" could be a name.

Unused Music

This is most likely a track for testing the sound system of the game. Use Game Genie code F071-E704 to play this track in the CD Database.

Unused Text

Other text that isn't used.

Build Text

A leftover from the ROM building process, which indicates that the game was called "Rockman 8.5" at one point:

F:\ROCK8.5\BIN\COLOR.EXE

Sample Version

Text from a demo version, helpfully including a build date.