Mega Man II: Rockman World 2 Music Improvement V2

It's been done before, but the lack of satisfaction with the previous hack required a new take on fixing this soundtrack.

For the technically interested, the modifications to the game are much more major than the previous music improvement hack:

The original modification was a quick and dirty mod, being simply a bit of code stuck onto the driver to make anything too high on specific channels lower by one octave. While this certainly made the soundtrack a small bit more bearable, it sounded still like a "wall of notes" that didn't sound all too great.

What was done here was to first reverse-engineer the driver, understand how it worked, and modified the sound data directly. This allows one to effectively control what the driver does on a per-tick/note basis, and even allows for things like custom music and sound effects. As such, one can modify the existing songs to better sound like actual songs. The changes varied per-song, however. Tracks like Clash Man were already quite "clean" sounding, requiring little modification, while other songs like the Stage Select and Metal Man's theme required more extensive modification to the sound data.

Despite these updates, The Author still does not consider this to be the "perfect" way to listen to the OST; An "ideal" Improvement Hack would ditch the original sound data entirely and create new arrangements from scratch, possibly even replacing the original sound driver.

Regardless, The Author hopes you enjoy the improvement hack! Feedback would be highly appreciated with the songs, as there are some they are still trying to "properly" figure out how to make sound the best they possibly can.


Note: Although the hack was made specifically for the Japanese Rockman World 2, it has been tested and compatible with all releases, such as the USA and EU releases. However, compatibility with other hacks has not been confirmed.

Database match: Rockman World 2 (Japan)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy/Color (v. 20210227-015730)
File/ROM SHA-1: 5D35BAA2FADD07796ED8B441F82ED5B136A999C7
File/ROM CRC32: C34D265E