Bonus: Monkey MOCup

Earlier today, I sat down and built my Brakas concept. I'm still not convinced that I've got the torso right, but I'm very happy with how this fella looks. For such a basic build, it has a lot of personality! (Obviously the click hinges aren't quite accurate, but they're the same length as the Mata neck piece and they provide much-needed articulation.)

UPDATE: With time, I've grown less and less convinced about the foot torso. It's still a fun build tho

Oops, all Brakas

Folks, I've been busy. You see, it turns out that there are tools that will do an OK job of decompiling a ROM automatically. Armed with Ghidra and basic programming knowledge, I've found out enough about this game's code to be dangerous.

For example, I can now edit the ROM to change what objects are spawned in each level. This has a few significant advantages over my previous approach, which was to change the values in RAM that determine which sprite an object use. For one, you can spawn the actual object, as opposed to having a fully functional palm tree that uses the object's sprites. Additionally, the object is more likely to use its correct color palette if you spawn it in this way.

And yes, you can spawn the Brakas. Aaaand it uses a color scheme that's closer to its depiction in the Nintendo Power Advance walkthrough than in the prerelease screenshot:

Whoops.
 

This also opens the door for romhacks. For example: here's a UPS patch that replaces every object on the tutorial beach with Brakases.

This patch is for the North American release of the game, which you can find at the BioMediaProject site. You can apply it using any UPS patching tool. Let me know if you make it past the tutorial – one of the jumps is trickier than before! (Hint: try talking to the Matoran Brakases.)

Also, looking closer at the Brakas sprites, I don't think it uses a Slizer torso, as most fan builds do. Here's my proposed build for it:

While the Mata foot torso is odd, it has precedent. This game's version of the Maha (Mahi?) definitely uses one:

Edit a/o July 27: I've fallen out of love with the mata foot torso, but still contend that the Brakas doesn't use a Slizer body.

Welcome to Brakas

Well, it took me a couple of years, but I finally got around to making an honest-to-god spritesheet for the Brakas:

The Brakas uses 9 shades for its primary color, 5 shades for its secondary color, and a nondescript dark shade for shadows. We also know from this prototype image that it was going to be red and blue. The only Rahi in the game that uses 9 shades of blue and 5 shades of red is the unnamed scorpion found in Po-Wahi:

This exact colormap doesn't look right when applied to the Brakas, but if you rearrange the colors, separating the reds and blues, then it looks pretty decent.

Overall, compiling this spritesheet was easier than I thought it would be, especially considering it started out looking like this:

(It's actually less of a mess than it looks, since all of these 8x8 tiles are more or less ordered. That is to say, all of the tiles for animation 1 sprite 1 come first, then animation 1 sprite 2, et cetera. It did take a lot of time, though, so I'm not going to do it again immediately.)

Edit 1: this sheet is now on The Spriters Resource!

Edit 2: turns out the Brakas does, actually, have a color palette in game. More on that here.