Hello everyone!
I figure you all here are aware but just in case... Mega Man World 4 DX was released last week! Grab it here if you haven't done it yet.
Reception couldn't be more fantastic, thank you. I've been addressing all the minor issues that have been reported and there will be soon an update that hopefully will become the final version.
The release of MMW4DX completes the first phase of Mega Man Mania. The second phase will be obviously the GBA compilation.
A lot of people have been asking me about the project, when it will be released, which extras will contain, etc.
As of the release date, I'm afraid I cannot even give an estimate date. I want to focus now on Mole Mania, Ninja Gaiden and, finally, resume Donkey Kong.
However, I can give you some little details on how the compilation will work and its possible extras.
I haven't typed a single line of code yet (and probably that won't happen anytime soon) but I've been already thinking of the technical details:
Heavily customized Goomba Color (GBC emulator for GBA) build
A pixelart title screen by Kensu, the artist behind MMW3-5DX
A good-looking game selection menu
Specific border for each game
Several additional more generic borders
That's it. Nothing ambitious. Well, it's already a little ambitious since I never coded for GBA so I'm going to need to learn!
Fortunately, I am not over ;-)Among the five colorized Mega Man games, we will be including a couple of neat extras!
The first one is Roll-chan World DX 5, a MMW5DX hack that replaces Mega Man with Roll! We've got the author's (Zynk) permission to add the game to the mix.
And the second one requires a little bit of history.During this year that is coming to an end, since we came up with the idea of reviving Mega Man Mania, I've been chewing over a cool thing: adding another game to the compilation.
After hacking three Mega Man World games, I can say I really know how Minakuchi Engineering (the original developers) engine works. That means, I am able to do cool things like editing stages, physics, difficulty, etc. So... what can I do with these?
The first idea came six months ago, I thought of just creating a MMW5DX boss rush. That would be as simple as editing the stages, so it wouldn't be hard but I am too perfectionist to consider it enough.
That's when I came up with a much bigger idea: an entire new short game featuring Proto Man, with its own story, a bunch of new stages, enemies and even an exclusive boss called Mezzo (from intermezzo).Sounds quite good, huh? While I felt capable of doing it, I fortunately cancelled it for mental health purposes. The idea was amazing and I even wrote the story (Protoman would infiltrate old Wily's labs to grab the Mega Arm components while Mega Man is unconscious during the MMW5 intro) and even started some hacking. But I promised myself I would only do it if Capcom paid me (laughs).
After cancelling it, Kensu suggested to add a hard mode to MMW3-5DX: you would be playing as helmetless Mega Man, damage taken would be doubled and you wouldn't be getting weapons from bosses. That was quite more feasible in little time, but I still felt like it couldn't be considered our own 'game'.
I continued thinking and finally came with a good solution: mixing all ideas into one.
The extra game would be called Mega Man World Boss Blues:
boss rush that would include all exclusive Mega Man World bosses (mainly the stardroids, Quint and the Mega Man killers)
no story, just pure arcade action
select between Mega Man and Proto Man
Mega Man would have Mega Arm all weapons from start and maybe some E-Tanks
Proto Man would have the classic Mega Buster and no special weapons, plus he would take much more damage from attacks
recycle unused MMW5 songs
What do you think? This is very feasible since I wouldn't need to hack a new story, artwork, etc. And, in my opinion, it would be a good tribute to the Game Boy World series.It's still not definitive, but sounds exciting so far.
Anyway, sorry for the extremely long post, hope you were able to read it entirely, haha!
Wish you Merry Christmas! And thank you as always for your support.
Take care,Marc.