ROM Hack Mario World original color hack

[granville]

First of all THIS IS NOT MINE.

As we know, Mario World received a good port to GBA. But like most if not all SNES-to-GBA ports, the game suffered from two gripes:

- lower sound quality
- oversaturated and washed out colors

Now, someone has hacked the GBA version of Mario World and restored the darker graphics! It's by a guy called Asaki and this is a sample of the graphics:

GBA port:

Hacked GBA port:

GBA port:

Hacked GBA port:

GBA port:

Hacked GBA port:

And a screen from the SNES game for comparison:

This would be so cool of a venture to redo the SNES GBA ports to look like their original versions! The hack can be found here:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/470/

A quote from the official site:

"It's a shame that such a cool remix got mangled with bright, washed-out colors. A lot of games from that period met the same fate, brightened so they would be easier to view on the original non-lit Gameboy Advance. Nowadays, my old GBA doesn't see much action (and I bet yours doesn't either), so I thought I'd try my hand at reverting the palettes to their original SNES shades."

"Finally, this updated classic is more suited towards gracing your GBA SP, GB Micro, GB Player, or DS (or I guess your emulator, if you're into that sort of thing)."

"It wasn't very difficult once I figured out what I was doing (yes, I'm somewhat new at this). I just copied the hex straight over from the SNES ROM to the GBA, then playtested and made adjustments where necessary. Some colors were deliberately changed, so I had to account for that."

"There's a few new tiles that use their own palettes, so I had to come up with those colors on my own, borrowing from existing colors. For the balloon, I played the game on my GBA with minimal lighting and tried to get as close to that as possible."

Official website:

http://redwax.circa1984.com/smwcr/

And get this:

He's doing the same for Mario Bros 2 GBA!!!

I hope to god he does Yoshi's Island! I reckon Mario 3 needs it the least as it came out near the GBA SP and they didn't wash it out as much.

I'm sorry, but I label this hacking project EPIC WIN! Anyone else share my opinion?

EDIT: the official forum for this project is here:

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,7444.15.html

I asked Asaki which games he's planning to color hack and he had this to say:

"No plans in particular, but SMB2, SMW, and Breath of Fire are at the top of my list. Would also like to fix Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country, but that's probably easier said than done (especially since MK has nothing to compare to). Gonna see if I can fix DOOM ][ in a minute, but I don't think I'll be able to change the blood back to red =/

Don't think fixing SMB3 would be worth the effort (since they only brightened it a minimal amount), but I don't remember how bad Yoshi's Island looks, I didn't play it very long. I'll have to check it out later, I'm on a burnt-out monitor for the weekend, so I can't really compare it very well >_

 

[Vague Rant]

Yes, this is completely awesome. All I want now is a hack to remove the stupid voice samples; the two of those together would make for a perfect port in my eyes.

 

[granville]

Yes, this is completely awesome. All I want now is a hack to remove the stupid voice samples; the two of those together would make for a perfect port in my eyes.

Yeah I remember you saying that over at the Pocket Heaven boards!

And I did see a person post a voice removal patch over at this color project's board:

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,7444.0.html

Unfortunately, I don't know if it works and it seems to be for Mario Bros 3 Advance. But this is the link:

http://www.megaupload.com/de/?d=4B6INA5F

I'll try it out in World and see.

EDIT: Nope. Whatever you do, don't patch Mario World with the sound removal patch. It freezes and glitches when you try to begin a game.

On the other hand, it works GREAT for Super Mario Advance 4 Mario Bros 3 version 1.1. It only works in the 1.1 version though. All voice clips are gone EXCEPT the "oww" noise Mario and Luigi make when they get hit (but the death "mamma mia" quote is gone).

 

[NINTENDO DS]

Someone mention this to Etermal Myst so he can add it in the "List of the best rom hacks thread"

 

[Maikel Steneker]

I actually liked the voices in the GBA ports, but the colors of this hack seem much better! I'm not sure if I'll ever use it though; the colors have never really bothered me.

 

[KiC]

On the other hand, it works GREAT for Super Mario Advance 4 Mario Bros 3 version 1.1. It only works in the 1.1 version though. All voice clips are gone EXCEPT the "oww" noise Mario and Luigi make when they get hit (but the death "mamma mia" quote is gone).[/b]

I only made that patch really quick, so I didn't check for anything past the first level. If you can list where voices still appear (and can post a no$gba save if it's later in the game, like, past the first few stages of world 1), I can replace them with another sound effect or just remove them, too.
It also shouldn't be too hard to do the same for the other games.

 

[shaunj66]

The only reason the original colours are so bright is because of the visibility factor on the old, non-backlit Game Boy Advance.

But yeh, cool hack. Should look much better on the backlit SP or Micro

 

[Noitora]

Ah yes; I remember seeing that hack a few days ago in romhacking.net. Good one.

 

[granville]

Been playing on my 3-in-1 on DS Lite and it works great (too bad I can't save since my battery is dead). It's SUCH an improvement and I hope he does Yoshi's Island too!

@KiC

I see you were the one who did the voice patch. A good job there!

I've always liked the voices though as they've never bothered me. It's Vague Rant that has the problem (and admittedly most others too). I might try it out in an emulator to see where the other voice clips are, but I'm on restricted internet time at the moment as I'm sharing a PC with my mother currently.

Edit: According to Asaki, the games he's put on top-priority for a color restoration are:

- Super Mario World
- Super Mario Bros 2
- Breath of Fire

He also said he wants to look into:

- Donkey Kong Country
- Mario Kart Super Circuit
- Doom

But these won't be easy and may not get done.

 

[DanTheManMS]

I personally didn't mind the brightened colors, but that's because I played through the SMB ports on my original GBA, so I suppose I'm in the minority here. Still, nice hack, good to see people still working on GBA stuff.

 

[Radio]

Agreed awesome hack. Makes the game a lot more pleasant to play on my DSLite.

 

[granville]

Asaki has now updated to provide color patches for these games:

Breath of Fire
Super Mario Advance 1
Doom (minor changes)

http://redwax.circa1984.com/smwcr/cr081122.zip

Important Readme (not really spoilers, just saving space):

Spoiler

+------------------------------------+
| Game Boy Advance Color Restoration |
+------------------------------------+

Nov. 11, 2008

Breath of Fire
Super Mario Bros. 2 (Super Mario Advance)
DOOM

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just a quick little multi release, since these are prettymuch playable.

Breath of Fire should be just about complete. There may be a situation
later in the game that'll load up the old bright blue text box palette,
but I'm not sure.

TODO: Dunno what to do with the battle menu stuff and the portraits,
perhaps I'll just leave them for now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SMB2 is all sorts of crazy. I've changed some of the custom palettes,
so the growy plant/hill thing, flying mask, 1up bubble, and scores
should all be set.

TODO: The sprite palettes are in totally different order from the SNES
ROM, so I just have to hunt them down as I find them during
playtesting. There's probably a few of those left to fix, I've
been working on it on and off. Flashy player palettes (charging
the jump, growing Super) are a pain, I'll try to fix those
later...maybe. Dunno what I'll do about the new jar stuff. I might
try to figure something out for the "choose a player"/slot
machine/level warp screens, maybe. Maybe.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

DOOM I've not done much with. Took the two red fonts with white outlines
and changed the outlines back to dark red, and I changed the ugly tiny
ammo numbers back to something much easier to read. For that, I had to
take the original PC graphics and chop off the bottom row of pixels.
Cuts off the shadows on the bottom, but at least the numbers line up
correctly. For best results, combine with Kaiser's Grn2Red patch.

TODO: I'd like to change the flash when you're injured from purple back
to red, but that could take a while to find. Also I think the
gib animations might still be in the ROM, but re-enabling them is
probably way outside my abilities. Also gets kind of annoying
hearing pain sounds whenever you fall from a ledge, but that might
also be difficult to fix...and I'm not 100% certain, but I think
Jaguar DOOM had that problem too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to assume you know how to use IPS patches. I'm also going to
assume you know how to obtain a ROM to patch. Please don't ask me.

Patches have not been tested with different regions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Special thanks/programs used:

HackMew for the wonderful Advanced Palette Editor
creaothceann for vSNES
Christian Maas's dandy hex editor, XVI32
ETK's tutorials at http://etk.scener.org
JASC's ever-useful Paint Shop Pro 3.12
MrClick's TilEd
Tenchi's ips XP
ZSNES team for their emulator
VBA team for VisualBoy Advance
and Nintendo, of course

------------------------------------------------------------------------

lordasaki (at) hotmail (dot) com

Note that the Mario Advance hack seems only to work on the Europe version. I tried it on the US rom, but it garbled all the graphics. So only use that patch on GBA release #0050. The Doom patch is made for GBA #0155 and the Breath of Fire patch is for GBA #0245.

Asaki is now working on a patch to restore Yoshi's Island:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

 

[pilotwangs]

Ooh,looks alot nicer,surprised I haven't spotted this before(visit romhacking.net often).

 

[gukid]

I'm working on a patch very similar to these, for Breath of Fire 2 (with some input from Asaki). The full snes palette is back in, but the animated palettes are still incomplete. The game still looks MUCH MUCH better, but I'd like to have it finished before I release anything...

or maybe, what the heck, here's a patch for the US BOF2 rom that restores the full snes palette, fixes the textbox and battle colours. You might not notice, but the water on the overworld is not the correct colour, nor is the outer edge of the land. But it still feels nice to not have mostly blinding colours.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3pvsnb

I was also thinking that SMW2 Yoshi's Island didn't need a colour patch, but after seeing the results, there was a lot of detail missing in the lack of real contrast, and it's looking really nice in the modified version. Way to go!

 

[granville]

I'm working on a patch very similar to these, for Breath of Fire 2 (with some input from Asaki). The full snes palette is back in, but the animated palettes are still incomplete. The game still looks MUCH MUCH better, but I'd like to have it finished before I release anything...

or maybe, what the heck, here's a patch for the US BOF2 rom that restores the full snes palette, fixes the textbox and battle colours. You might not notice, but the water on the overworld is not the correct colour, nor is the outer edge of the land. But it still feels nice to not have mostly blinding colours.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3pvsnb

I was also thinking that SMW2 Yoshi's Island didn't need a colour patch, but after seeing the results, there was a lot of detail missing in the lack of real contrast, and it's looking really nice in the modified version. Way to go!

Great job on the Breath of Fire 2 patch! It's really well done!

I'm loving these palette hacks. Now I just need a new 3-in-1. My old one's battery died.

Yoshi's Island was inconsistent in the color changes. Some parts were close enough to the SNES, but others were more brightened. One example were the dark parts of the game. In a few caves levels and a castle, the level would be pitch black with only a small circle of light surrounding Yoshi. Those parts were particularly lightened up in the GBA remake.

 

[gukid]

Breath of Fire 2 should be done now as well, the only thing I'd like to do, is actually LIGHTEN the colour a bit, as the snes palette is a tad too dark (even on real hardware). Currently working on it though

 

[granville]

That's cool! May I suggest that you provide TWO patches if you are going to lighten it more though? One for purists and one for the partially lightened palette. Keep up the good work!

 

[Knarf]

I think it was stupid for nintendo to was out the GBA ports as much as they did, but I'm glad someone is restoring them.

 

[granville]

I think it was stupid for nintendo to was out the GBA ports as much as they did, but I'm glad someone is restoring them.

Well, technically it wasn't *stupid* as the old GBA didn't have a backlight. But I'll agree it was stupid not to include a brightness/gamma setting where you could change it. The Disney's Magical Quest 2 and 3 did this so you could change the color back.

 

[Tall Alien]

i agree i dont know why colors were washed out