Hack Showcase: Mega Man Wily Wars Improvement Hacks (Genesis)

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Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.

Mega Man: Wily Wars came out for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in Japan and Europe, but only released on the Sega Channel service in the US in the 1990s. It finally got a real US release on the Sega Mini. It’s a collection of the first 3 Mega Man games along with the new Wily tower level with new bosses to fight. The jump to 16-bit graphics and music were applauded, the play control, uneven challenge in all 3 games, the sluggishness and slowdown…not so much. Since emulators and the Sega mini rom of Wily Wars dropping, various hacks have attempted to fix the shortcomings of this collection.

For this Hack Showcase, I used the European rom of Wily Wars and put 4 hacks together for a better experience, which I’ll be reviewing separate and together in the order that I patched the rom. Anyone reading this is welcome to patch their game the way I did. These hacks are made for the European rom of Wily Wars and I patched SRAM + Proto Man first, then the others, testing each one as I put them together. I played these in Retroarch, your mileage may vary on Retroarch and other systems. Feel free to try these together or separate!

The SRAM + Proto Man Size Fix hack by JackelZXA is the first hack attached and adds the following:

  • SRAM saving
  • Changes the ROM from EU to US (50Hz to 60Hz)
  • Fixes Saving so Wily Tower can be unlocked
  • Improves Input Lag
  • Improves Buster Fire Speed
  • Adds the Slide to Mega Man 1 and 2
  • Redraws all of Proto Man’s sprites.

Weapon Master by Woodfrog adds the ability to use any weapon and item in all 3 Mega Man games, along with Wily’s Tower! Hit the C button for the Window will pause the game and hitting up or down will cycle through the weapons and items from Mega Man 1, 2 and then 3. Worth noting that you can only use MM1 weapons on the Copy Robot fight in MM1 to prevent crashes.

Wily Tower Always Available by Gruesome_Garie gives you the option to go right to Wily Tower from the start! No need to use save states or worry about saves not working after finishing Mega Man 1-3!

Fixer Upper by Josephine Lithius adds the following improvements, which actually build upon some from the 1st hack I added:

  • Enemy invulnerability time has been all but eliminated.  This means that enemies can take damage more frequently and reliably.  No more “missed” shots!
  • The default weapon (the Buster) has been sped up to match its 8-bit counterpart.  Watch those lemons fly!
  • The default weapon and some boss weapons can be fired more rapidly!  Hammer that “fire” button and launch waves of projectiles!
  • Rockman pulls his Buster back a little sooner after firing!  This… only affects a handful of weapons and the change isn’t that big, but hey!  It might help!

SO HOW IS IT? All 4 of these hacks together are great!! The SRAM and Fixer Upper hacks really improve the quality and speed of Wily Wars to something semi-resembling the NES games. Wily Tower does exactly what it says on the tin.

Weapon Master is another big game changer too! Wanna use any weapon from MM1-3 in any of the games along with the special items including Rush? You got it! Hit the Window button to pause the game and switch weapons hitting up or down. Try out different weapons from the games on the Robot Masters and Wily Bosses and see what happens…you’ll be surprised!! Some weapons will actually heal Robot Masters too! You can’t switch out MM1 weapons due to crashing fighting the Copy Robot boss in MM1. Try using the weapons from MM3 on the Robot masters from MM2 for some additional surprises! There can be some graphical glitches using weapons from the wrong game and Mega Man can sometimes scroll off the screen and die. May want to use save states in case it crashes, lol.

SRAM & Protoman and Fixer upper are the meat and potatoes of this little suite of hacks I set up. These are the ones the fix the slowdown and lag the best they can to make this game more like the NES counterparts. Protoman is actually Mega Man’s size and looks good! Now you can shoot your buster more rapidly along with the other weapons and have 5 buster shots on screen at once compared to 3 in vanilla Wily Wars! Adding the slide in Mega Man 1 and 2 is another game changer letting you avoid damage better and go through some levels faster. Also works to avoid the pieces of Yellow Devil in that fight (not that you need to with the slowdown, but hey).

Wily Tower Available does exactly what it says on the tin. Wily Tower is available at the start along with MM1-3 instead of finishing and saving the other 3 games. Wily Tower is quite fun and all new Mega Man content! You got 3 all new bosses with new weaknesses and prior to the levels you can pick which weapons and items from MM1-3 you want to use. Same when you get to Wily Tower itself, which runs like the traditional Wily Castle levels. You may want to try the Wily Tower levels first to learn what weapons and items you want to bring in for destructible walls, pits and even fighting the new bosses.

In general, adding all 4 of these hacks worked great and was a lot of fun to play! All 4 of them combined really improves a lot and adds needed quality of life features for Wily Wars. Or just using Wily Tower or Weapon Master is fun too! Only downsides really are some of the graphical glitches from using the hacks together and cause issues. The improvement hacks really improve the quality and polish of Wily Wars compared to the vanilla game, but not quite at the speed and quality of the NES games.

I GIVE MEGA MAN WILY WARS WITH THE WEAPON MASTER, WILY TOWER, FIXER UPPER AND SRAM + IMPROVEMENT HACKS 4.5 OUT OF 5 E-TANKS!!

GAMEPLAY VIDEO: (Note video will be replaced eventually with a full run of MM1-3 and Wily Tower.)

LINKS:
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6792/ – Mega Man SRAM + Proto Man
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7387/ – Weapon Master
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5418/ – Wily Tower Available
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7257/ – Fixer Upper

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