Bubble Memories Black Edition

[rtw]

Bubble Memories is a great game and a lot closer to the original Bubble Bobble than Bubble Symphony.

The artwork is excellent but the game is marred by ugly digitized backgrounds.

In my opinion the game would be better if we replaced all the digitized backgrounds with black backgrounds like in the original Bubble Bobble.

And why does practice mode play the original Bubble Bobble theme while story mode replaces the music with something from a circus ?

How hard could it be to remove those backgrounds and fix the music ?

Turned out that this was not trivial at all but here it is:

Bubble Memories Black Edition (bmbe)

A patch for all regions of Bubble Memories which does the following:

. Digitized backgrounds are replaced with black backgrounds
. Title screen, game-over and several others have been replaced with black backgrounds
. In-game music has been replaced with the Bubble Bobble theme.

The following ROM sets are supported:

bubblem, Bubble Memories: The Story Of Bubble Bobble III (Ver 2.4O 1996/02/15)
bubblemu, Bubble Memories: The Story Of Bubble Bobble III (Ver 2.5A 1996/02/21)
bubblemj, Bubble Memories: The Story Of Bubble Bobble III (Ver 2.3J 1996/02/07)

The patch works on the original cart, in MAME and on the F3-Multi.

In order to use it you must unpack the ROM set into a directory.

Then run the patcher with the directory as an argument. The patcher is a command line program there is no GUI.

Example

> bmbe unpacked_directory
Bubble Memories Black Edition (Sep 9 2020/07:34:47)
black patch: rtw
music patch: MetalliC
discovered region: Overseas
output directory: bubblembe
searching for files
--> e21-21.20
--> e21-20.19
--> e21-19.18
--> e21-18.17
files verified
filling memory
generating blackness
populating blackness
extending blackness
changing scripture
enhancing music
writing patched files to: bubblembe\roms
--> e21-21.20
--> e21-20.19
--> e21-19.18
--> e21-18.17
writing patched F3-Multi files to: bubblembe\f3-multi
--> flash.12
--> flash.13
--> name
success, please enjoy the blackness

The patched files will be written to the directory: bubblembe

Inside this directory you will find two sub-directories:

. roms - these are suitable for an original cart as well as MAME
. f3-multi - copy these files on top of an existing Bubble Memories directory on your SD card

Enjoy the blackness

Credits:
black patch: rtw
music patch: MetalliC


If you have any questions please do not DM me, ask them here in this thread instead!

View attachment bmbe_1.0.1.zip

 

[rtw]

Before

 

[rtw]

After

 

[djsheep]

Nice work! Looking forward to checking this out on the multi.

 

[brizzo]

This rom hack gets my 110% approval

 

[Raph_friend]

Nice work! Looking forward to checking this out on the multi.

I miss you.

 

[alberto1225]

This looks great! I'll try it this weekend. thanks for sharing.

 

[nnap]

Fantastic work, thanks a lot for this! Always hated those digi grafics.

 

[djsheep]

I miss you.

Sorry I didn’t say bye before ditching the social media

 

[AlxUnderBase]

Make me to think on how legendary Bubble Bobble looks like ! Glad to try it when will be available Thank you sir !

 

[opt2not]

Very cool. I’ll definitely give this a try. Thank you, @rtw!

 

[djsheep]

Roll Up Pack update?

 

[nem]

YES! I've been wanting this for ages.

Now I just need someone to hack in a free play mode for me...

 

[bytestorm]

Awesome work guys! And thanks a million for sharing!

 

[Mrhide]

oh very nice!!! Looks like I'll convert a puzzle bubble cart to this

 

[Aurich]

This looks 400% better, really smart fix. Looking forward to checking it out!

 

[Bluetear]

Thank you, @rtw and @MetalliC! This looks so great. Can't wait to load it up on my multi. Displacing the original on my memory card without question.

I still can't believe the team over at Taito OK'd the release of the game with that horrendous look and sound.

 

[SmokeMonster]

This is brilliant

 

[kuze]

Wow what a clever idea, makes a huge difference!

 

[Brettster]

Wow thank you for this