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First, I love much of bankbank's work. Second, I love that he (and anyone in general) is FINALLY trying to address this major issue with the port of this game.

But this is a bizarre implementation and almost the direct opposite of what I was looking for. Why not make the only unused button for this GBA port, Select, the button for Bass' dash? Why force it to be the Weapon Switch button (which thus makes cycling through special weapons far more tedious)?

I'm assuming that making Select the Dash button (for either direction) might require a lot more work than making it a weapon switch button. And I get that compromises must be made sometimes if a ROM needs serious reprogramming to prevent having them. But since the game's standard controls are now made all screwy by the current state of this hack, I can't endorse it. I'm really hoping this hacker (or even someone else) can address this, so that the GBA port can finally play as much like the SNES original game as possible.

The sole thing that prevents me from fully enjoying Mega Man & Bass on the Game Boy Advance is that the controls aren't customizeable, and there's no "quick dash" button for Bass, as there is in the Super Famicom version. Needless to say, this is a hack that I have been waiting for! With the good comes the bad, however.

As implied in the description, this hack was made by rerouting one of the "dash" function code blocks to use buttons instead of a double-tap. As such, Bass can no longer "double-tap dash" to the left. I feel like it was unnecessary to completely "disable" one double-tap function. I'm sure there's a way to split the code so that one bit would work for either direction. Or maybe just port the code from the Super Famicom version and park it somewhere? Surely, that's a possibility.

Edit: I somehow failed to notice this. Mega Man gains a "quick slide" button — also done by hitting a Shoulder Button. But for some reason, the traditional "Down + Jump" button combination was disabled?! This is simply unacceptable. I, for one, do appreciate "quick slide" functionality in fan games and ROM hacks that use them, but completely removing something that's already there and works just fine alienates players who are used to playing the game in this way.

Additionally, the Weapon Quick Switch functionality has been completely destroyed to make way for one-button dashing. Specifically, the Next Weapon button was moved to the Select button. This affects both Bass and Megaman and was, of course, due to the Game Boy Advance having all of four "action" buttons and two "option" buttons to work with. Now, for some people, this won't be a problem. However, my big issue is that there's seemingly no way to reset back to the Buster in a hurry — usually done by hitting both Next and Previous Weapon buttons at the same time. Maybe the removed functionality can be added back in as some NES ROM hacks do: Up + Select for Previous, Down + Select for Next, and Select + Jump for Reset? Just a thought.

I originally recommended this hack under the premise that it just needed a little fine-tuning, but it seems like core gameplay controls have been completely gutted because the hacker didn't know how to make the proper code junctions, or maybe due to personal preference. This is my personal preference, but I like having the Down + Jump slide and dash available, as a traditionalist. Beyond coding acrobatics, I just don't see the point in removing that functionality. Also, disabling double-tap dashing for Bass one way without removing the other seems lazy.

That said, I do not recommend this hack, anymore.

One look at the hack description is enough to tell me I won't like this one. And no, being able to switch sub-weapons with Select doesn't save it.

Let's start with what happened to Mega Man. We've been able put up with Down+A for sliding throughout almost the entirety of the classic series. We did NOT need that functionality removed, so HOW and WHY did that have to happen?

On the more nitpicky side of things, it's good that the shoulder buttons got their dash functionality back for Bass. But again, why did double-tapping left have to be sacrificed for that when double-tapping right was already spared?

I cannot recommend this hack to anyone until bankbank at least gets Mega Man's situation fixed. Until then, stick with the vanilla ROM.