It's time for Hellfire Saga to be released after 5 years - and that time period is quite a saga in of itself. In that time, the game has gone from an amateur little Sonic 3 and Knuckles hack to a full-fledged game project with a development history worthy of a whole book, with lots of time dedicated to the concept, development, audio and visuals. Red Miso Studio finally opens a portal to the devil's frying pan... so try not to get fried in the first few minutes. V1.1 Download link: https://redmiso.studio/roms/HellfireSaga_v1_1.gen Red Miso Studios Staff These are the people who have stayed with us until the end. They are the ones who have made this game possible. - FoxConED -- Red Miso Studios founder, project lead, music lead, music composing and arranging, programming, some visual design, programming development tools - Narcologer -- Project lead, main game concept, bosses, enemies, general programming - TheBlad768 -- Programming lead, SCE game engine, bosses, general programming, level gimmicks, art rips, music ports - pixelcat -- Art and level design lead, tilesets and backgrounds, sprites, animations, level layouts and gimmicks, logo and UI art, writing - Sergey ESN -- Extensive sprite art contributions - VAdaPEGA -- Sprite art, minor SFX design - Dolphman -- Sprite art - CatswellMeow -- Sprite art - SoS -- Final boss concept art - MarkeyJester -- Final boss implementation, some art, general programming - ProjectFM -- Bosses, general programming - lavagaming1 -- Object programming - EpsilionDubwool -- Level design, writing - Gerry Trevino -- Music composing - GENATAR_i -- Music composing and arranging - Yamahearted -- Music composing and arranging - N-BAH -- Music arranging - Hotmilk -- Writing - Solareyn Eylinor -- Tie-in animations, cutscene supervision - sndk -- Major support Retired Staff These are the people who left the team before the project was complete. We thank them for their contributions. - VladislavSavvateev -- General programming, early splash screens, programming development tools - SHooTeR -- General programming and programming development tools - Trickster -- Sprite art, some help with the SCZ1 background - Naoto -- Sprite art - JustMe -- Sprite art - Dakras -- Sprite art - ViruSSoFT -- Writing - SuperEgg -- Early level design - LuigiXHero -- Early level design - AURORA*FIELDS -- Programming, sound driver, error handler mods, level design Testing These people helped us iron out bugs and imperfections during the game's development. - malamus - Valeev - Tailsovich Special Thanks Although they have not been a permanent part of the team, their open source or direct contributions have been invaluable to the project. - Vladikcomper -- Programming, improved Kosinski, Nemesis alghorithms, Advanced Error Handler - Flamewing -- Ultra DMA Queue, improved Kosinski Module alghorithm - John Tay -- FDZ2 and credits music arrangement - ralakimus -- HUD implementation and bugfixes - cuberoot -- Help regarding programming development tools - shinbaloonba -- Sonic and Tails sprites - Skylights -- Tikal sprites - teamhedgehog -- Honey sprites - Gabriel_aka_Frag -- Rouge sprites - VBL -- Early draft of the final boss art If you're not on the above list of people and think we forgot you, contact us! Art used from other games As a Sonic hack and a tribute to other series, we have used art from various games to represent bosses and enemies. Most of it has been heavily reworked, but we still want to give credit where it is due. - Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3K - Castlevania (Bloodlines, Rondo of Blood, Dracula X, Symphony of Night, Super ~ 4, Java) - Ghosts 'n Goblins (ARCADE), Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts - Kid Chameleon - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Splatterhouse 2 - Demon's Crest - Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 - Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse - GS Mikami - OMORI - Galares - The Adventures of Batman & Robin - Contra: Hard Corps Music credits The soundtrack of the hack is comprised of both original music and covers. The details for those can be found in the Sound Test. We are grateful to every single one of you who have supported us over the course of these long five years. We hope to meet the same amount of support in our next ventures. https://redmiso.studio/ 2023
I played the whole game. The last release was amazing, but this final version is incredible! The final boss was something totally different I saw in any other Sonic hack, I´m curious if it works on real hardware. Never expected to see all that effects on a Mega Drive game. Congratulations for all the team!
I've always passed over this whenever it came up, as a spooky Sonic game doesn't really inherently appeal to me, but seeing all the love, care, and polish put into it, I won't be able to overlook it any longer. Congrats on completing the project and looking forward to giving it my attention when I'm feeling better (covid sucks lol)
I, too, always dismissed this hack as "weird", so I never even tried it, but since it looks like a polished thing, I wondered if I could make a gameplay video for my youtube channel, so I downloaded the rom. ... but it turns out that this hack doesn't like Gens Movie, to the point of not allowing me to proceed at all, so my adventure ended in less than a minute. Late edit: I got it to work in Gens Movie with some trickery, but it does indeed crash in the third zone. Nevertheless, here is a partial video.
I don't want to dump on a hack like this, but it might be worth toning down the difficulty for some of these bosses. And by that I mean telegraph the attacks better - I gave up fighting Death because his scythe wasn't going where the little indicators suggested it might. And then the rules change and you die for not knowing.
I played through this fan modification from the start to ending. I really enjoyed the stages, the music and the mechanics of ring health. :-) I picked up one skull in Stage 2 and it changed the palette colour for a few seconds. I don't know if that's necessary for any terms. I used 8Bitdo SN30 Pro+ gamepad and that was great for controlling Sonic.
I literally only just learned of this hack, I checked it out. Very high quality stuff here! I'm curious how the final boss works. My best guess is that the background is all on plane B using temporal dithering (alternating the lines every refresh) to create the illusion of two blended layers, and that the Eggman Devil machine is not a sprite, but rather all on plane A. And perhaps the vertical scaling is handled via the line-skipping trick much like Sonic 3's pseudo 3D water, with only horizontal scaling being handled via software, since it'd be faster to use the line skipping trick for the Y axis than to do that in software as well. Is this correct?
I remember playing some of the early demos, it felt really good gameplay wise and generally very polished. Can't wait to play the final version, once the site is running again.
While the website is down for maintenance. Here's the link to the latest rom P.S.: it was added with the permission from the creators.
The website and the link to the ROM are functioning again. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
Oh very good~ veeery good~ Your are right about everything except one thing... Sonic 3's 3D water is handled via animated tiles, as the plane height is limited and cannot hold the top, bottom, over and under water segments at once in the plane, for the slit scan trick to work. In hindsight, for the final boss, the vertical scaling could have been handled with software equally as well, I don't think it'd put much more pressure to skip lines with software vs skipping lines via V-scroll. But whatever, we were under a time restraight, I'm sure you can forgive us Once again, well done, you're thinking like a retro programmer!
The release of version 1.1 is here, with bug and balance fixes. # Changelog - PicoDrive is now fully supported. - Fixed a bug with SRAM which caused some specialised cartridges to fail. - Tweaked the attack timing of Death's second phase. - Added several new sounds. - Fixed many bugs and oversights. Download link is in first post. Art by SAWhane
Hellfire Saga 2.0 Update (SHC 2023 version) New Features: The game has received a lot of tweaks and polish. The final boss now has a new music track for the second phase. But for those who remember the original and want an excuse to perfect their skills... Welcome to Extra mode. Your playthroughs will be judged. You will need to train to achieve a perfect run and be set free. The world has not forgotten your misdeeds. You reap what you sow. Download Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MJhGnwhEAIRKKXNdDv4--ltd-rhlXDhw/view?usp=drive_link
Hellfire Saga V2.1 + Source Code release We are pleased to announce a new bugfix update for Hellfire Saga. It includes a combination of all the countless small fixes we've done since last SHC (corrections for glitches, small graphical oversights and credits issues.) There's no new content, but this is definitely the definitive way to play the game if you haven't yet! Download here: https://redmiso.studio/roms/HellfireSaga_v2_1.gen IN ADDITION: Here's a surprise to the people interested in the tech side of things. We are releasing the source code of Hellfire Saga! We, however, will ask you to adhere to the usage guidelines outlined in README.MD and credit people appropriately. Apart from that, we hope you have fun peeking behind the curtain! Visit the repository here: https://gitlab.redmiso.studio/public-repos/hellfire-saga-public-source
