one of the most iconic 8-bit characters in one of the most iconic 8-bit stages, that being megaman two’s airman stage. i find rom hacks so fascinating because i think mashups like this illuminate design trends between games. mario and megaman share “jump” as a primary verb, which is why it’s possible to complete this hack at all. it’s not easy, though: the airman stage is designed around megaman’s jump, which is far more precise than mario’s because jumping is not the entire focus of megaman’s game. jumping is absolutely the focus of super mario bros., which is why mario’s jump is far more nuanced and tricky.
because i couldn’t find a good source for the patch (there’s a rom link in that video, but it’s one of those filehosting websites and i don’t trust it to stick around), i am again hosting a download.
thanks to lurky. thanks lurky!
9 comments
Wow. Worked better than one would think, although it looks like it’d be way too hard with Mario’s tiny damage potential.
actually, it’s not so bad, mostly because of the choice of stage. in air man’s stage there are no tiny bullets flying around (save the zeus-bots’ lightning bolts, and those are tossed one-at-a-time in a predictable arc). the enemies are mostly either slow-moving or stationary, and the fact that mario can bounce of their heads safely (yes, even the swarms of birds) gives the player some leeway in getting around foes.
(airman is a different story. but even in his original context, airman is a jumping puzzle.)
no, what gets you is the jumps. mario, unlike megaman, has to accelerate prior to jumping and decelerate after. and that’s tricky on these tiny platforms.
In a similar and interesting vein, Kirby vs. Quickman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnm8adf42_M
Unfortunately, there’s no patch link, and Quickman hasn’t been made yet, but it still looks nice to use copy abilities to avoid Force Beams.
yeah: mario vs. airman is interesting because the level design isn’t changed to suit the abilities of the new protagonist. kirby vs. quickman looks interesting because it is.
This simply is awesome. Reminds me of the Mega Man VS. Samus game on the web.
Definately worth checking out for those who don’t
i didn’t! watching a video, i noticed the author adjusted the height of megaman’s jump so he can make jumps designed for samus.
I’ve noticed Mario’s jumps in some way make the stage easy. I haven’t been able to play as much as I’d like, but I noticed there’s a much easier way to clear the first several floating head platforms than the player does in the YouTube video – simply accelerate and you can leap from one head to another and skip the tiny platforms entirely.
This may be my favorite Mario hack ever – what the author did was incredibly complicated and had to involve a lot of assembly hacking.
Bonus points for making “I Can’t Defeat Air Man” the background track and allowing you to select Luigi. Whoever made this is a total bad ass.
Very interesting. I found the boss to be quite challenging. I eventually beat him, and I have to say this ROM hack is really fun. I’ve always wanted to play as Mario in a Megaman game. Good job. :)
I can’t get it to work.
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