Sonic Advance: Sonic Advance 1: Tweaked

This is a patch for every release of Sonic Advance 1 that makes two 'tweaks' in hopes of providing a better, less frustrating gameplay experience. These two tweaks are nerfing all 7 Special Stages by lowering the ring requirement in each section, and changing the Pause Menu to have it's functionality from Time Attack mode in every mode in the game. This includes the main campaign as well!


This change allows the player to quickly retry an Act, switch characters, change Acts, or go back to the Main Menu without having to bother with finishing up the current game session.

Included in the zip is various patches for all releases of the game. Please check the readme.txt that's also included with the zipped archive for further information.

**Readme:**

This is a patch for every release of Sonic Advance 1 that makes two 'tweaks' in hopes of providing a better, less frustrating gameplay experience. These two tweaks are nerfing all 7 Special Stages by
lowering the ring requirement in each section, and changing the Pause Menu to have it's functionality from Time Attack mode in every mode in the game. This includes the main campaign as well!
This change allows the player to quickly retry an Act, switch characters, change Acts, or go back to the Main Menu without having to bother with finishing up the current game session.

The first tweak is accomplished by modifying values that the game stores at the start of ROM offset 00480040 (in the US release). These values are used by the game after an equation determines what
Special Stage you're on and what values to grab. The idea is to make all 7 Special Stages easier by lowering these values, as frequent criticisms regarding the game's Special Stages
state that object interaction is difficult due to the depth perception. This nerf should make Special Stages fairly more forgiving if the player misjudges where a set of Rings are and makes the
Special Stages much more accessible while still offering some level of challenge. Below are the new values:

Special Stage 1 now has a ring requirement of 40 for it's first section, and 70 for it's second section.
Special Stage 2 now has a ring requirement of 50 for it's first section, and 120 for it's second section.
Special Stage 3 now has a ring requirement of 60 for it's first section, and 140 for it's second section.
Special Stage 4 now has a ring requirement of 60 for it's first section, and 130 for it's second section. This is lower than Special Stage 3's second requirement intentionally due to hazard placement.
Special Stage 5 now has a ring requirement of 65 for it's first section, and 160 for it's second section.
Special Stage 6 now has a ring requirement of 70 for it's first section, and 165 for it's second section.
Special Stage 7 now has a ring requirement of 80 for it's first section, and 170 for it's second section.

The second edit modifies several functions related to the in-game pause menu to remove checks to see if the game's mode is set to Time Attack. As a result, the Pause Menu graphics and functionality
exclusive to Time Attack are now available anywhere. This change was made primarily to assist with going for The Moon Zone/All Chaos Emeralds ending, as it allows the player to quickly go back to
any stages where they might have missed a Special Stage Spring, or failed and want to quickly retry. This change was also made so a playthrough in the main campaign can end whenever the player decides
without having to rely on the GBA's reset button combo, powering off the game, Game Overing, or clearing the current gameplay session.




**NOTICES:**
Choosing to quit by pressing A in the main campaign's pause menu causes the player's score and lives to be reset, due to these values not being stored.

The second edit has not been extensively tested on other game modes. The current game mode is set at 0300505c (in the US ROM) and is not a boolean value, meaning it can be set to numbers higher than
0 (main campaign) or 1 (Time Attack). While not extensively tested, '6' seems to be control the game's multiplayer mode (named 'VS' in the main menu). It's possible choosing to quit using the pause menu
with this patch while in multiplayer mode might cause issues. Quitting in Special Stages and The Moon Zone seems fine, however.

Included in the zip is a patch for every release of Sonic Advance (minus the Japanese Wii U eShop release of the game). The 'Standalone' folder includes all standalone releases of the game itself,
while the 'Double Packs' folder includes patches for releases of Sonic Advance 1 that bundle another game with it (ChuChu Rocket!, Sonic Battle, and Sonic Pinball Party).

Find which ROM you're using, go into the appropriate patch the game, and give it a go!

I would advise using either the '(Japan) Rev 1' release of Sonic Advance 1 in the 'Standalone' folder or one of the 'Double Pack' ROMs, as these fix an oversight present in the original game's releases
where the address that keeps track of your Rings for the Tiny Chao Garden would be erased when resetting the game data. This prevents you from getting any more Rings for the Tiny Chao Garden until your
new overall total matches that of the old one prior to being erased. The Double Pack releases all seem to fix this bug and have more language choices.




**ROM Patch Files:**
For the 'Standalone' ROM files:
Advance_1_Tweaked_EU.ips = Sonic Advance (Europe) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_US.ips = Sonic Advance (USA) (En,Ja).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_JP10.ips Sonic Advance (Japan) (En,Ja).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_JP11.ips = Sonic Advance (Japan) (En,Ja) (Rev 1).gba

For the 'Double Pack' ROM files:
Advance_1_Tweaked_2in1Battle_EU.ips = 2 Games in 1 - Sonic Advance + Sonic Battle (Europe) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es+En,Ja,Fr,De,Es,It).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_2in1ChuChu_EU.ips = 2 Games in 1 - Sonic Advance + ChuChu Rocket! (Europe) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_2in1Pinball_EU.ips = 2 Games in 1 - Sonic Advance + Sonic Pinball Party (Europe) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es+En,Ja,Fr,De,Es,It).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_ComboPack_US.ips = Combo Pack - Sonic Advance + Sonic Pinball Party (USA) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es+En,Ja,Fr,De,Es,It).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_DoubleBattle_JP.ips = Double Pack - Sonic Battle & Sonic Advance (Japan) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es+En,Ja).gba
Advance_1_Tweaked_DoubleChuChu_JP.ips = Double Pack - Sonic Advance & ChuChu Rocket! (Japan) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es)


**Thanks:**
- Huge thanks AGAIN to RayCarrot for assistance with rewriting/removing the Game Mode checks related to the Pause Screen functionality. Editing assembly is no easy task.
- The original author behind the Codebreaker code for Max Rings in a Special Stage. Made finding the function that calculates the Special Stage ring requirements very easy!

Hope you enjoy!

- Cornholio309

Database match: Sonic Advance (USA) (En,Ja)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy Advance (v. 20210227-023848)
File/ROM SHA-1: D842AFA7DD1E84DE08ADDB94A51506F1BCAFD551
File/ROM CRC32: 63F70FD8