Mega Man: Rockman Kenk

In celebration of the release of Mega Man 9 comes Rockman Kenk. What is Kenk? It's a modified and polished version of Small Apple's unfinished Rock Man Kai. 30% of the original patch was altered and fixed to keep the game's feeling in line of the original game. All the levels have been redesigned and boss fights and weaknesses have been altered. Keep in mind this patch only works on the Japanese Rock Man game.

The Mega Man series tend to be plagued with mods that are littered with cheap hits and unfocused level design. One thing that Kenk attempts to do is stick close enough to the source material in level style and difficulty, but at the same time it changes things up just enough to feel fresh.

It's one of those rare hacks that is meant to be played NES style rather than the savestate way.

Thank you for trying Rock Man Kenk!




What the hell is Rock Man Kenk?

It's Rock Man Kai + the love of Enk (mwa)





How does it work?

Apply the Rock Man Kenk patch to the Japanese Rockman.nes rom and play on your favorite NES emulator!





How do I play?

You push buttons and shoot things. Winning is the goal!




Why was this project started?

What started off as a simple fix for the rare Rock Man Kai mod (done by the same fellow, Smart Apple, who did the amazing Rock Man 2 Dash and Rock Man 3 Alpha) turned into something bigger than I expected. When I originally play Rock Man Kai I thought "Damn, even though this game doesn't change anything to the extreme like Rock Man No Constancy, the level design is there and didn't feel as random as a typical hack". The game felt in tuned with the original, and that's a good thing.

But there was one big flaw, Fire Man's level had some buggy tiles than can cause instant death. So I thought I'd go in and fix that part, then fix another part, then fixed a couple of cheap hits, then...

Eventually I reconstructed about 30% of the game using the Rock and Roll editor. I tried to go in and make it as polished as I can, attempting to avoid the "cheap hit, hard as hell" syndrome that a lot of hacks like to use. In the end I feel the game's difficulty is on par with the original series and can be completed without abusing savestates.

Unfortunately, due to the fact I was working with a patched rom I wasn't able to do everything that I wanted. Sometimes even the slightest of change could involve heavy glitching or just break the game period. So I tried with what I had.

Also the original patch had Bomb Man's, Ice Man's, and Wily's music changed to MM2's Wily Castle music which I felt a bit out of place and repetitive. Since I don't know how to hack the music I just switched things around to have tunes that better suit their particular stage. If anyone who knows how to hack music can get the stages original tunes back into the hack I would be your love bunny forever!






What has changed from Rock Man Kai?


-Fire Man's stage is fixed

-Guts Man bug is fixed along with some otheer enhancements

-Several enemy placements throughout the gaame have been altered.

-Cuts Man's end stage received an overhaul to make the platforming segment less tedious and repetitive.

-Most of Wily's last stage has been redesiggned to make it feel a bit more fitting of a final battle. Also I dropped the music for a more quiet build up.

-Completely redesigned the Fire Man battle into something different and more fair than the original.

-Also redesigned Bomb Man's, Elec Man's, annd the final gauntlet battle.Ice Man and Guts Man also received tweaks to their stages.

-Palette tweaks and some changes to enemy sstatistics.

-And probably more I can't think of right ooff the bat.




If you see any bugs or want to help me fix the music on Bomb Man's and Elec Man's stage let me know!





Final words?

Yeah I'd like to thank Smart Apple since it was his creation that pushed me to finally take my first steps into game hacking! You can get the original version along with the great Rock Man 2 Dash and Rock Man 3 Alpha at the link below:

http://pikopikokun.hp.infoseek.co.jp/kakobutsu.html

Now that this is over with I think I might start on some original efforts (starting with Mega Man 4 and Super Mario World). I'm also looking at a couple of other good, but flawed patches that could use a bit of polishing up.

I'd also like to thank YOU! Yes you the wonderful game player who took the time to play this game and read all these freaking words!


-ENK

File: Rockman (Japan).nes
CRC32: E0141A24
MD5: 88248420 70A569E9 BA7287BC DEA045A3
SHA1: 5914D409 EA027A96 C2BB58F5 136C5E7E 9B2E8300