Mega Man II

Mega Man II
Also known as: Rockman World 2 (JP), Rockman II (CN) Developer: Thinking Rabbit Publishers: Capcom (JP/US/CN/HK), Nintendo (EU/AU), Playtronic (BR) Platform: Game Boy Released in JP: December 20, 1991 Released in US: February 1992 Released in EU: December 17, 1992 Released in AU: 1996 Released in BR: 199X Released in CN: 1995 Released in HK: 1995 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has regional differences. This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page

Mega Man II is, as you may have guessed, the followup to the first Game Boy entry. It was made in five months by a completely different development team that knew little about the series, and it shows.

It's also one of the few Game Boy titles to receive an official Chinese and Hong Kong release.

To do: Move information about the broken Sound Driver Frequency Table to the main page, and add a comparison of the in-game tracks with their "fixed" versions.

Sub-Pages

Prerelease Info

Notes

Unused Level Data Tiles, Blocks, mostly derived from their NES counterparts!

Cheat Mode

Setting memory address $FFF9 to a non-zero value enables an invulnerability cheat. This will disable all damage and turn all spikes and pits into bouncy surfaces. It also enables freeze-frame pause when pressing Select during gameplay, similar to the feature in the first NES game. The sound effect that plays when toggling it isn't used anywhere else.

This value is normally initialized to zero when selecting an option on the title screen, and is then never written to again.

Robot Master Select #2

Set memory address CF66 to 04-07 on the Robot Master select screen and you'll be able to choose the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters.

The select screen itself doesn't explicitly account for them, as it lacks code for loading their icons and is simply programmed in a way that makes it possible to select any group of four levels. The intro screen, however, does, with the Robot Masters having otherwise unused text strings associated to them, as seen on the right. Their animations aren't actually unused, as they are the exact same ones used during gameplay, down to reusing the same animation code.

After beating the Robot Master, you'll be thrown back to the stage select.
In the final release, you enter unmarked teleporters akin to those traditionally found in rematches in Wily's Castle to access the Robot Masters and their stages.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Music

Seems to be an alternate version of the ending theme.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Borders

Mockup	In-Game

The HUD uses two different blank white tiles, $70 and $5D. Editing the $5D tile's graphics reveals that the HUD was originally supposed to have borders, similar to an early build of Dr. Wily's Revenge.

Unused Graphics

Unused graphics not related to the actual levels.

Mega Man

Unused	Used

While tiles for Mega Man inching forward are present as usual, only one of them is actually used in-game, resulting in one of his legs inexplicably shrinking when he first moves forward.

Early	Final

This early buster shot based on the NES sprite would get replaced with its equivalent from the first Game Boy entry.

Bosses

Crash Man

Early	Final

A poorly-made early walking frame for Crash Man. Luckily, it was replaced with a much better sprite.

Metal Man

Early	Final

An early, single-framed version of the Metal Blade can be found in Metal Man's sprite set. This 16×16 sprite seems more accurate to the NES version than the final sprite, which uses two 8×8 tiles that are flipped vertically and horizontally for each frame.

Needle Man

An unused firing frame for Needle Man. While an equivalent frame is used in Mega Man 3 and should have been used here, the game instead erroneously alternates between the first firing frame and the standing frame when Needle Man shoots his Needle Cannon.

Unused	Used

An unused tile for the needles themselves also exists. This tile was again used in Mega Man 3, but for some inexplicable reason this game opts to use a different, horizontally facing needle sprite, despite the fact that Needle Man still only fires them diagonally downwards.

Magnet Man

An unused frame from Magnet Man's intro animation. Although this is used in Mega Man 3, here his animation is only two sprites, the same as every other Robot Master in the game.

Quint Intro

To do: This animation doesn't actually exist in the game, and if Quint were to use the standard boss intro animation it'd look different. Worth noting that both frames have sprite mappings associated to them, and these indeed do take up the reserved slots used by boss intros in Quint's sprite pointer table, so they most likely were intended for it.

An unused intro animation for Quint. He just stays still in the final version.

Enemies

Giant Springer

A diagonal sprite for the missiles Giant Springers shoot. A different diagonal sprite is used for said missiles in Mega Man 3, but not here for whatever reason.

Metall

Early	Final

Leftovers from a slightly off-model early version of the Metall enemy are part of the sprite set for Hard Man's stage. They were later updated to match the NES version of Mega Man 3. No early version of their hard hat seems to exist.

Peterchy

Unused	Used

An unused sprite of Peterchy on both legs with its eye open. Its eye is closed in the used sprite. (Also note the different shading.)

Petit Goblin

Early	Final

Some kind of face thing. This appears in the Air Man stage's object set, possibly being an early version of the Petit Goblin.

Pipi

Early	Final

A hilarious-looking early Pipi is part of Wood Man's sprite set. These enemies appear in Wood Man's stage in the NES game but not in the Game Boy version, so their art was never updated.

Early	Final

The Pipi egg is a dinky 8×8 sprite in the Wood Man sprite set.

Early	Final

The Copipis that hatch from the egg have only one frame of animation in the Wood Man set.

Fonts

In the font graphics used for the weapons menu are some arrows that never get used.

A font stored near the font used in the credits. The actual credits use a different font style, with this shaded one resembling the Stage Start text when selecting a robot master. Also, the unused arrows make a reappearance.

An unused font that goes from 0 to F. Used to pad out unused parts of graphics banks. Hiden Inyou Kikouhou: Ca Da uses the same graphics for the same padding purposes, once again unused there.

A number font that's used... in an entirely different game for the score display. Since the two games share staff and some code, it may be a leftover or a stray shared asset.

Near the select stage graphics is a small unused arrow of unknown purpose. Pointy.

Others

Earth

Full	In-Game

The Earth graphic is slightly larger than it appears in-game - 16 pixels are cut off from the bottom.

Explosions

Unused	Used

While there are three explosion effects used throughout the game, stored alongside them in the sprite set is an unused fourth one.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Stage Select Robot Masters

Early	Final

Early versions of the Robot Masters appear in the ROM.

The early graphics actually use the background palette. They were probably used in a stage select like the one in Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge.

The Mega Man 3 robot masters also have full intro animations. A demonstration can be found in the video above.

Wily Shuttle

Unused	Used

A number of different-sized images for Dr. Wily's spaceship.

Unused Damage Values

Modifying the game to have all weapons earlier than usual results in some interesting damage data that goes otherwise unused:

Weapon Damage Data
Boss	Mega Buster	Metal Blade	Air Shooter	Crash Bomber	Leaf Shield	Needle Cannon	Magnet Missile	Hard Knuckle	Top Spin	Sakugarne
Crash Man	01	00	02	00	00	00	00	00	00	00
Metal Man	01	0A	00	05	00	00	00	00	00	00
Wood Man	01	05	01	02	00	00	00	00	00	00
Air Man	01	00	00	00	07	00	00	00	00	00
Top Man	01	00	01	00	00	02	01	04	00	02
Needle Man	01	00	03	01	00	00	01	00	05	02
Magnet Man	01	02	00	01	00	03	03	02	01	02
Hard Man	01	01	00	01	00	00	04	03	00	02
Quint	01	02	02	04	02	02	02	05	02	00
Wily Machine II 1st	01	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00
Wily Machine II 2nd	01	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	02
Wily Machine II 3rd	01	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	02

Notes:

• Weapons obtained by the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters and Quint do not damage the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters, instead ricocheting off of them as they appear to be invulnerable.
• Metal Man is once again hilariously weak to his own weapon, taking 10 points of damage.
• Hard Man and Magnet Man take 3 damage from their own weapons; a similar mechanic is present in the original Mega Man 3. Weirdly, Needle Man and Top Man in this game don't share this hidden stat.
• Sakugarne damages the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters for 2 damage each.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	US/China/HK

As usual, the title screen was modified for the US release. However this also included bumping the copyright date changing from 1991 to 1992, and updating the copyright info to include Capcom USA. The European version mostly takes after the US version, but reverts back to 1991 while adds ,92 and alters the licensing text to say "Licensed To Nintendo".

Despite being released about three years later, the Chinese/Hong Kong release simply uses the US ROM untouched from its original release, despite the added Chinese/Hong Kong name on the label claiming the game's name as "Rockman II", as well as the already updated EU release being present.

Top Man's Stage

Japan/US/China/HK	Europe

One block was removed from this sliding tunnel. In the Japanese and American versions Mega Man would reach the end of the tunnel and stop moving but remain in his sliding animation, which looked rather silly.

Needle Man's Stage

Japan/US/China/HK	Europe

The platform at the top of this screen was lengthened to keep the player from jumping on top.

Room Before Final Boss

Japan/US/China/HK	Europe

The platform with a second Scworm generator was removed, replaced with a large background... bubble? Orb? Planet? Round thing.

End Credits

Japan/US/China/Hong Kong	Europe

The Have "Su" Bee's name had its spelling corrected. The correct spelling actually already exists in the other versions of the game, but the name ends up getting cut off in-game due to it being too long.