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View topic - [Romhack] "Death Counter" for Wonder Boy

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  • Joined: 28 Nov 2017
  • Posts: 3
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[Romhack] "Death Counter" for Wonder Boy
Post Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2023 2:47 pm
I always thought that Wonder Boy on the SMS looked just about 300 times better than Adventure Island on the NES.

I had Wonder Boy as a kid and never managed to beat it. It is a VERY hard game.

Then I found out that actually Adventure Island has a secret that gives out infinite continues. And it even lists in its manual how to get it! That actually makes the game beatable on the NES.

This made me actually prefer Adventure Island over Wonder Boy for a few years (sorry for the blasphemy).

I was still kind of salty that all the SMS version has to its credit is the level select. But that isn't good enough because you have to get all the dolls to access the last level. And skipping levels meant skipping dolls.

Then this year I found out a couple of romhacks: Castlevania Death Counter (/hacks/6669/ on a certain rom hacking website) and Ninja Gaiden Death Counter (/hacks/6678/, sorry, I can't post links). As their name implies, it turns the lives counter into a deaths counter.

The intent of these modifications is to beat the game with the least amount of deaths possible. I think hard platformers are a-ok if the game is not too punishing about it. Think Jumper, Meat Boy or Celeste. I think letting the player keep trying is great! These romhacks are great!

I've been studying for a while z80 assembly and the SMS architecture and decided to see if I could do a Wonder Boy romhack that did the same. This would actually make me want to play Wonder Boy again!

I think I managed to make it work for the most part. I haven't really played it to completion yet, but I have checked the expected problems when doing this kind of modification I think I have done a good enough job.

Here's what I changed:
1. The game starts with "x 0" as a deaths count.
2. Every time you "die", that number goes up.
3. [not changed but kept] The counter doesn't go above 99 (but the counter in memory still goes up).
4. Once the counter goes above 255, it changes it back to 99 to keep the game from triggering game over or rolling back to 0.
5. 1-ups don't count up the "death counter".

The required rom information:
Database match: Wonder Boy (USA, Europe, Brazil) (Rev 1)
Database: No-Intro: Master System (v. 20210216-223458)
File/ROM SHA-1: 63149F20BF69CD2F24D0E58841FCFCDACE972F49
File/ROM CRC32: 73705C02



Let me know what you guys think!
Also let me know if you find any bugs.
Wonder Boy (USA, Europe) Death Counter 0.9.ips (116 B)
Wonder Boy Death Counter Patch

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  • Joined: 15 Jan 2018
  • Posts: 70
  • Location: Tokyo
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 10:22 am
Thank you for creating this. I really appreciate hacks that make our beloved games more accesible.

I was sitting on this and thanks to having seen it in the competition, I remembered to play it. I’ll comment in the compo thread too.
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  • Joined: 07 Nov 2018
  • Posts: 42
  • Location: Brazil
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Post Posted: Fri May 26, 2023 3:13 pm
Sata wrote
Then I found out that actually Adventure Island has a secret that gives out infinite continues. And it even lists in its manual how to get it! That actually makes the game beatable on the NES.

This made me actually prefer Adventure Island over Wonder Boy for a few years (sorry for the blasphemy).


What... what are you talking about? Wonder Boy on the Master System always had infinite continues... you just go back to the beginning of the level.
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