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The Sonic franchise has one of the most thriving and active fan communities out there, both in terms of avid casual fans and also modders and hackers alike, so much so that the fandom has yearly events regarding fan games, mods and hacks made by the community and inspired by or created Sonic games in general, with one of these events being the Sonic Hacking Contest (SHC).

The Sonic Hacking Contest has been going strong for more than two decades now (with The Vault having archived contests since 2012), with the contest usually taking place at the beginning of October, but this year was an exception due to the release of Sonic Superstars, so in order to accommodate for the new release, the contest was pushed back a couple of weeks, and it officially starts off with its contest week today, October 23rd, with several popular Sonic-centric YouTube channels focusing on it, like Tails' Channel or SomeCallMeJohnny, which will stream all of the contest entries submitted.

The Contest Week will go from Monday, October 23rd up to Sunday, October 29th, and each submitted contest entry will be judged and given a specific based on a variety of metrics, ranging from things like Best Visuals, Best Audio, Best Level Design, Best Character Implementation, etc., to even absurd things like Most "WTF?!". The Contest is also open for the general community as well, with some entries being applicable to Community Trophies as well. There's also The Expo", which is more for exposition projects, which won't be participating in the main contest, but can still be downloaded and tried out at the same time.

Each entry can be downloaded and tested, and the community can give feedback during the week so that the authors can create patches during the week for an overall better experience with the submitted entries.

Sonic Hacking Contest website
SHC 2023 Contest Entries
SHC 2023 Expo Entries

 

[Bluer]

Nintendo would probably DMCA all romhacks if it was a Mario Hacking Contest for example.
At least Sonic fans (such as myself) can have something nice instead of mediocre/undercooked official games.

 

[DragonMals]

I can't wait until Sonic Megamix specifically. >

 

[Bladexdsl]

oh fuck sega is going to be real pissed about th....oh wait they aren't like nintendo!

 

[DragonMals]

oh fuck sega is going to be real pissed about th....oh wait they aren't like nintendo!

Yeah, they have this and Sage. NIntendo has...? Nothing.

 

[tech3475]

Yeah, they have this and Sage. NIntendo has...? Nothing.

Nintendo has a bill from their lawyers.

 

[AndorfRequissa]

modding communities for games make them so much more fun and legendary. they add extra spice to games that often would be forgotten imo without the mods.

 

[SylverReZ]

I can't wait until Sonic Megamix specifically. >

Wait, did that already exist?

 

[PopcornSweetie]

oh fuck sega is going to be real pissed about th....oh wait they aren't like nintendo!

Nintendo has ninja's that are trigger happy and will C&D every single fucking rom hack that are based on their ip.

Post automatically merged: Oct 23, 2023

Wait, did that already exist?

Yesn't i believe:

https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_Megamix

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Some years ago, the community got obsessed to mod Sonic 06. I wonder if this still is a thing.

 

[SylverReZ]

Some years ago, the community got obsessed to mod Sonic 06. I wonder if this still is a thing.

Then, we had Sonic Gather Battle, which later turned out to be malware.

 

[_Snow_]

modding communities for games make them so much more fun and legendary. they add extra spice to games that often would be forgotten imo without the mods.

Bingo! If Quake (I accidentally typed Quank.. and had to mention that because it's hilarious) and Half Life had not had mods, many good popular games would not have existed. They'd be happy memories with small communities. I've seen communities around other old games shrink to a handful. Of course some games are not easily moddable.

As far as I know, Sega actually promotes modding of Sonic. They won't chase anyone with a Cease and Desist unless that particular person is selling the game or the game has undesirable content in it.

 

[chrisrlink]

Bingo! If Quake (I accidentally typed Quank.. and had to mention that because it's hilarious) and Half Life had not had mods, many good popular games would not have existed. They'd be happy memories with small communities. I've seen communities around other old games shrink to a handful. Of course some games are not easily moddable.

As far as I know, Sega actually promotes modding of Sonic. They won't chase anyone with a Cease and Desist unless that particular person is selling the game or the game has undesirable content in it.

in an ideal world all companies would be like this but we far from live in an ideal world (nukes,war and the mothefugging DMCA)

 

[TheDerpyDolphin]

Yeah, they have this and Sage. NIntendo has...? Nothing.

I’d argue that F3 is mostly a Nintendo thing, although not every game/mod is for Nintendo platforms, just a large majority. Also if Nintendo could I’m positive they would shut F3 down in a heartbeat.

 

[ShadowOne333]

I’d argue that F3 is mostly a Nintendo thing, although not every game/mod is for Nintendo platforms, just a large majority. Also if Nintendo could I’m positive they would shut F3 down in a heartbeat.

F3 is for sure the closest thing to a Nintendo-centric fangame/romhacking event, but it heavily focuses on N64/SM64 stuff to be such a thing.
Thankfully, it has become more and more open towards other franchises/consoles over the past two years, so hopefully it can become the main fan/hacking event in general outside of the Sonic franchise.

 

[HarveyHouston]

SSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I drew it out a bit.

 

[NinStar]

Yeah, they have this and Sage. NIntendo has...? Nothing.

There was NCFC (Nintendo Community Fangames Convention), it was heavily inspired by SAGE and (if I'm not mistaken) was organized by members of MFGG, which is a quite big Mario fangame community that I used to be active in the past. Not sure if these events are is still happening nowadays.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Some years ago, the community got obsessed to mod Sonic 06. I wonder if this still is a thing.

Pretty sure Project 06 ended that . The end all be all mod

 

[ciaomao]

Nintendo has ninja's that are trigger happy and will C&D every single fucking rom hack that are based on their ip.

seems they are pretty slow. i found mario patches online from 2013. https://www.romhacking.net/?page=ha...&perpage=200&order=&title=&dir=&hacksearch=Go

 

[PopcornSweetie]

seems they are pretty slow. i found mario patches online from 2013. https://www.romhacking.net/?page=ha...&perpage=200&order=&title=&dir=&hacksearch=Go

Dude, it was a joke. Don't take it seriously ffs