romhack 5

[700? Follower Special]
ROMHACK 5

1. Rockman 5 - Air Sliding
2. Rockman 5 - Install Metal
3. Rockman 5 - YH
4. Rockman 5 - Wily's Dream Space
5. Rockman 5 - KT

AIR SLIDING - A Tsukikuro classic. Frantic boss patterns, quick energy refills, strange weapons. Gravity Hold can flip you up or down with directional inputs, making it an extremely useful mobility weapon. This is the hack that introduced air sliding to MM romhacks. Before there was BCAS, there was just AS.

INSTALL METAL - This is the best MM romhack in my opinion. No real gimmicks -- just tightened up gameplay, redone tilesets/music/weapons/boss patterns, reduced lag, and it adjusts a lot of MM5's native quirks like enemy i-frames, bad Rush Coil hitbox, charging while sliding, and losing charge when getting hit.

YH - A very solid hack with changed weapons and boss patterns. Gravity Hold has become a toggle-able flashlight that murders everything onscreen and can still collect weapon drops. Enemy i-frames are gone, all special weapons are better, and Super Arrow is nerfed.

WILY'S DREAM SPACE - An early MM5 hack that was very impressive for its time (2009). Looks and sounds strange, often pushes MM5 past its operating capacity with enemy placement, causing a lot of lag and sprite flicker (or complete disappearance). Probably the hardest and most punishing hack I've tried to speedrun.

KT - I resolved to learn at least one "bad" hack, although it's still an entertaining watch and it was fun to play despite its many issues and sloppy level layouts. No quick-switching or other engine changes, as it was made in 2008 and probably someone's first effort without many resources. It also has the most incredible arrow shot in any MM5 hack.

Other notes/thoughts:

- I'm not doing Killer to Hell because of how much it steals from Wily's Dream Space, although it might be a "fun" (terrible) project for the future.
- Mega Man 5 has some incredibly good romhacks, probably the best overall library of the NES classics. MM2 has more, but unless you're an expert, those are often insanely difficult and punishing, built more for savestate scumming than standard playthroughs. It was not hard to find 5 hacks that I wanted to run, and in fact I had to cut a few I'd like to have tried.
- Learning to run a hack of a game you know is way easier than learning a new speedgame from scratch, since you have a strong foundation in place and just have to apply it to a different set of levels, weapons, and boss weaknesses. It's a really fun exercise in routing and practice and I actually learned some stuff about MM5 and discovered new strats for it in the process of this.
- Thanks for all the follows!