Sonic Advance 2: Lower SP Ring Requirement

This is a simple patch for all regions of Sonic Advance 2 that lowers the SP Ring count requirement for each stage from needing all 7 SP Rings to just 3. This makes entering the Special Stage for each Zone significantly easier, while also still providing some level of challenge with locating and maintaining the SP Rings. The player is still rewarded if they obtain more than 3 thanks to the SP Ring bonus at the end of each Act. This (hopefully) provides a nice balance between challenge and collecting without giving out entry to the Special Stages right away!

Included in the zip is 3 patches for all 3 standalone releases of Sonic Advance 2. Just patch the ROM with the region you're using, and go!

Check the readme for a bit more information, and special thanks for helping with the hack.

Readme:

This is a simple patch for all regions of Sonic Advance 2 that lowers the SP Ring count requirement for each stage from needing all 7 SP Rings to just 3. This makes entering the Special Stage for each
Zone significantly easier, while also still providing some level of challenge with locating and maintaining the SP Rings. The player is still rewarded if they obtain more than 3 thanks to the SP Ring
bonus at the end of each Act. This (hopefully) provides a nice balance between challenge and collecting without giving out entry to the Special Stages right away!

Included in the zip is 3 patches for all 3 standalone releases of Sonic Advance 2. Just patch the ROM with the region you're using, and go!

- Huge thanks to RayCarrot again for providing an explanation for how Ghirda works and for providing GhirdaGBA, a loader for GBA ROMs.
- Sonic Retro and the developer of the original Codebreaker code to instantly reward the player with all 7 SP Rings also deserve thanks.
- Having the address for the player's SP Ring count variable made finding the check significantly easier/actually possible.

If you're interested in lowering the SP values yourself, doing a search for every instance of hex values '00 78 06 28' and changing '06' to any value lower should work, but has not been tested extensively.

Hope you enjoy!

- Cornholio309

Database match: Sonic Advance 2 (USA) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es,It)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy Advance (v. 20210227-023848)
File/ROM SHA-1: 7BCD6A07AF7C894746FA28073FE0C0E34408022D
File/ROM CRC32: 7EFEE7F7