Megaman 5 Palette Hacking Doc
by Sephiroth X
Comments, Flames, and Compliments made to danman42@hotmail.com
4/17/00

This will be a brief FAQ, but will certainly be worth it to anyone trying to hack Megaman 5. The
problem with this ROM, if anyone has ever tried to hack it's palette, is that if you succeed in
changing Megaman's colors, you'll quickly find that Megaman changes back to his normal colors
the moment you shoot, and then back again when you get hit. So, I'll try to explain why this 
happens, and how to fix it.

--The First Changes--

The initial changes to the palette go as normal. Search the ROM for the color sequence of 
Megaman, which is 0F2C11, (which is universal in all MM games on the NES...) where 0F is black
(and leave that color alone, btw...), 2C is Light Blue, and 11 is Dark Blue. In my 
Megaman 5-->Protoman hack, I opted for making 2C into 00, which is a nice shade of grey, and 
making 11 into 16, a good red. Search the ROM for that sequence in any hex editor, and make 
your changes as normal. To the best of my memory, there's maybe 3-4 occurences. Check the rom 
in your favorite NES emu, and the colors should have stuck. Shoot once, and the colors revert 
back to Megaman's normal colors. Here's why:

--Why It Does That--

Took me a bit to figure out, and this is the best explaination I can give to help someone
understand. There's a secondary palette, which we'll call the "shooting palette", for reference.
When you want to charge the Megabuster, Megaman wil flash in many colors. Those colors are stored
separately in the ROM. Thing is, Megaman will automatically fire a single shot when you try to 
charge the weapon. So, the game switches to the shooting palette to prepare the charge. When you
take a hit, Megaman automatically loses any charge he had, so the ROM cycles back to the 
original palette. Here's how to go around it:

--The Shooting Palette--

Boy, did this take forever to find...Ok, open the ROM in any HEX Editor, and go to offset 225119,
where you'll find a series of 2C's (3, i think). These are the colors for the shooting palette.
The 2C at offset 225119 is the standard shooting color, and the only one really needing changing.
Right near that, at offset 225127, you'll see 3 11's. Again, the first one is the only one that 
needs to be changed to fix it, permanently. And that is all there is to it, folks. Hope this
helps someone, and do send me your hacks, I'd love to see how they work out for you!

Sephiroth X