Sonic 1: The Super Challenges - First Demo Release

DeltaW · Jan 10, 2025

Red2010 is now · Jan 11, 2025

Oops

You suppose that I didn't say anything

DeltaW · Jan 17, 2025

Click on me to submit your response!

The deadline for this form will be on the 29th Jan at 11:30PM GMT, and you will be notified whether you will be accepted after it's up. Looking forward to working with you!

Donald T · Jan 18, 2025

DeltaW said: ↑

View attachment 6861

Click on me to submit your response!

The deadline for this form will be on the 29th Jan at 11:30PM GMT, and you will be notified whether you will be accepted after it's up. Looking forward to working with you!
Click to expand...

what username?

DeltaW · Jan 18, 2025

Your account name.

DeltaW · Jan 23, 2025

Only around 5 days to go. I've gotten some responses so far, so if you wanna seize this opportunity, click on me to access the form!

A reminder that the deadline is on 29 January 2025 at 23:30 GMT

Anyone who already submitted must wait for me to respond to you after the deadline is up. I will reach out to you sometime between the 30th Jan-2nd Feb. Please don't ask me as it may hurt your chance of being accepted, so please be patient!

Joao Gamer · Jan 23, 2025

DeltaW said: ↑

UPDATE: I received a lot of complaints saying Knuckles' gliding is broken in the hack. I already pushed a hotfix build if you click on the download link and select said build. Just bear in mind that drill diving is disabled in this build while I fix it in a future release.

Introducing Sonic 1: The Super Challenges!

It's a ROM hack where the main gimmick transforms and speeds through South Island before your ring counter runs out. Destroy everything in your path, collide with anything you bump into and try to get hurt. The only thing that'll damage you is time; you better not waste that. Every ring counts so try and collect them as fast as you can! Even though this is a challenge-based hack, you will find that this hack will have more than just a simple concept.

New game modes - this hack will include 4 different modes:

Island Run - run as fast as you can till you beat the final boss. There are hidden paths for you to explore throughout a few zones, so check them out when possible. You may think this is easy, but it isn't and it should be noticeable once you play more and have another south island adventure :V

Endless Run - beat as many levels as possible in a randomized order. The counter will drain the more you progress so try your best to keep the ring counter high and y'know... don't lose rings.

New powerups:

Magnet/Lightning - attracts rings nearby to you for a short period

Stopwatch - freezes rings for a short period of time

Random Rings - collect rings between 5 to 50 either positive or negative - be mindful when destroying badniks

Playable characters:

Sonic - Super form is akin to Sonic 2's with the dropdash while Hyper behaves exactly like Sonic 3 and Knuckles

Tails - Super form being identical to Super Sonic while Hyper is Super from S3K alongside a higher jump height and speed stats

Knuckles - Super and Hyper are identical to S3K's behaviour alongside a new drill drive move and a higher jump height and speed stats

There are also extra things for you to encounter when playing the demo:

Runs on an in-progress engine dubbed WoolooEngine aiming to squeeze as many optimizations and fixes as possible in Sonic 1 to be less laggy as possible and will serve as a base for any future ROM hacks I make

Toggle between movesets for Super Sonic (dropdash or jumpdash/homing attack)

Select a wide range of Super Sonic themes to play within the zone or to generate a random playlist for all the modes

The upper section of MZ has unique secrets and layouts for you to check out alongside SYZ2 near the end (akin to the 2013 remake)

SRAM support to save your record and attempt to beat it the next time you play the game

A fully-fledged menu allowing you to view the instructions, sound test, options and credits

What's to come in future builds:

Amy Rose as a playable character - she's in-game however unplayable as I'm looking for ways to make her Super and Hyper forms distinct from each other

any badniks that Super flickies destroy will have to attract rings to you

Clock Dash - basically Time Attack where you get the best time and rings record beating a single level

Hardcore Dash - for the real super challengers who want to play an endless amount of

possibly more ideas for gamemodes - to be discussed at a later date

Bugs

Before the LZ3 boss, gliding as Knuckles can cause you to wrap and skip the boss (due to level wrapping shtick that couldn't be fixed in time). It would save time but that ain't gonna be kept in future builds lol

This build only saves you the best time, not the best rings. I have considered making Island Dash save time only while rings can be a separate game mode.

The ring counter is capped at 999 rings (though breaking a 10 ring monitor at over 990 will give you higher than that) - 2nd demo will contain an overhauled HUD system allowing for 4-digit ring counter to be in place

Super flickies don't hit bosses just yet, only badniks

On rare occasions, you can accidentally go through chunks if you spam moves. Sometimes, it does fix itself, but it may lead to you clipping through or dying.

Click me to download!

I hope you guys enjoy the ROM hack after spending at least 5 years trying and failing to make a decent ROM hack until today and this is one I'm sure I'm proud of creating and will keep this project alive for a good while.

I also want to thank the following people who either helped me on the project, playtested it or provided public assets that served as a key benefactor during development:

Project Lead: DeltaW

Programming:
- DeltaW
- RetroKoH
- RobiWanKenobi
- Malachi

Music:
- DeltaW
- LackOfTrack
- GenesisDoes
- RobiWanKenobi

Additonal sound:
- 29yami - instructions theme
- Speems - title Screen theme
- KC - Chaotix SFX ports
- nineko/Tweaker - Dragon Soul theme
- Cinossu - dropdash SFX

Playtesters:
- ChiliHog
- Speems
- JDPense
- DaxKatter
- RobiWanKenobi
- GenesisDoes
- Sonic the Dutch hedgehog
- Malachi
- Nia/ArcaniaCQ
- RetroKoH
- Infermol
- Chaotic SoFa
- lavagaming1
- KC

Additional feedback:
- D.A. Garden
- vladikcomper
- djohe

Additional artwork:
- Zeta_Null - helped coloured in a lot of sprites to not use palette line 0 (player's palette line)
- KC - custom Sonic 2-styled Sonic 3 sprites
- DaxKatter - title screen logo
- RobiWanKenobi - sound test background, parts of the DeltaW Splash Screen
- RetroKoH - Sonic 1 drop dash sprites
- Techokami - expanded monitor artwork
- Sonic3Expanded - additional Sonic 3 sprites
- Doc Melonhead - finetuned Super Sonic (Sonic 1) sprites
- MDTravis - additional ASCII punctuation
- Gardow, Nebula - Knuckles' drill dive sprites
- neo2k - S3 title screen font used for the DeltaW splash screen

Additional code:
- SonicRetro/SSRG - optimizations and bugfixes taken from various tutorials
- Filter and OrionNavattan - helping out with the extra optimizations that makes Sonic 1 (almost) lagless
- devon - bugfixes, Regen detection and helped with setting up sound test screen
- Hitaxas - after-images object port and splash screen code
- ProjectFM - S3K object and rings manager port and worked on the splash screen too
- RetroKoH - additional engine optimizations taken from S1Fixed
- TheBlad768 - some object code taken from S1 SCE which was needed (some of the object code in the original game was smoking the CPU)
- Mercury - Sonic CD-styled timer and extra tweaks taken from ReadySonic
- Kilo - dynamic water palette loading routine (DynaWater)
- heyjoeway - dropdash code taken from Sonic 2 Community's Cut
- giovanni.gen - dropdash improvements, level randomiser, ASCII rendering and menu structure taken from Sonic 2: Score Rush
- vladikcomper - Advanced Error Handler and Debugger, MegaPCM 2
- Clownacy - Sonic 2 Clone Driver v2 (based on an older build (2.7+) but with changes backported from the latest version)
- flamewing - optimized decompression codes, Kosinski+ and UltraDMAQueue
- Everyone who contributed to documenting the Sonic 1, 2 and 3K's disassemblies which made backporting code a lot easier to understand

Special thanks:
- All playtesters and those who provided additional feedback that are listed above who all served a major part of the development and helped me keep on my toes
- The Shining Stiffies - made a ROM hack with a Super Sonic challenge-like concept
- Clownacy - his Super/Hyper Sonic port to Sonic 1 ROM hack was also a major inspiration to the project's creation
- You - because you'll probably click on that download link and play the game. What are you waiting for? It's a cool-looking hyperlink. You don't wanna miss out. :O

Click to expand...

Will Amy be added?

DeltaW · Jan 23, 2025

DeltaW said: ↑

What's to come in future builds:

Amy Rose as a playable character - she's in-game however unplayable as I'm looking for ways to make her Super and Hyper forms distinct from each other

Click to expand...

Please read the post next time.

Joao Gamer · Jan 24, 2025

DeltaW said: ↑

Please read the post next time.
Click to expand...

Yeah i forgot to read, sorry

Redmoreo62 · Feb 1, 2025

Hey Delta. Can you make falling sprites and spring twirl animations for S1: Super Challenges

AleDrawer2008 · Feb 4, 2025

Incredible hack, this a really original idea and Im getting kind of addicted to it
Idk what else to say. Just: good luck to the entire team
I will post my results in the discord server

DeltaW · Mar 13, 2025

New ROM update!

To keep you guys engaged with the project while the next major update is in the works, I'm releasing a more polished build of the first demo, mainly containing bug fixes and optimizations. In addition, a few new tracks have been implemented and can be selected as Super themes. Unfortunately, the same aforementioned bugs in the top post apply here, but they are going to be prioritized in the next update.

Also, if you're curious, Amy isn't playable in this ROM. This is to prevent another leak incident from a certain little prick.

Click on me to download. Just select the hotfix 2 build from the link and you should be good to go.

PeanutNoceda · Mar 14, 2025

So, i think its time to send my opinion about the rom hack (again, if i remember right)
the idea to complete all Sonic 1 levels with the Super/Hyper form its really good, because you can play Sonic 1 in a new way.

I found Amy hidden in VRAM lol

And about musics, god, i really like them, one of the things that i love is the music, and the music used for this ROM hack are my favorites, the adaptations sounds good.

SK invincibility.
Player Select Menu.
Clean Slate.
Speed Of Sound.
Kirby 64 invincibility.
And more, i mentioned these ones for now

As an conclusion, this ROM hack has a good future and i see potential on it.
Thats all!

DeltaW · Mar 14, 2025

Thank you for the kind words - means a lot to me

PeanutNoceda said: ↑

I found Amy hidden in VRAM lol
Click to expand...

And that's the only time you'll see her in this ROM lmao

Sin_ · Mar 14, 2025

I had my fun with this hack! I would like to have a toggle for the super music though, it got grating by Star Light.

Also, where's track 18 from? It's so familiar but I can't place it...

DeltaW · Mar 14, 2025

Super music toggle is planned for the next update. I had the idea of enabling or disabling what tracks you want played or not if the music randomiser is enabled.

Also, track 18 is the menu theme from Sonic R.

RobiWanKenobi · Mar 14, 2025

PeanutNoceda said: ↑

So, i think its time to send my opinion about the rom hack (again, if i remember right)
the idea to complete all Sonic 1 levels with the Super/Hyper form its really good, because you can play Sonic 1 in a new way.

I found Amy hidden in VRAM lol
View attachment 7300

And about musics, god, i really like them, one of the things that i love is the music, and the music used for this ROM hack are my favorites, the adaptations sounds good.

SK invincibility.
Player Select Menu.
Clean Slate.
Speed Of Sound.
Kirby 64 invincibility.
And more, i mentioned these ones for now

As an conclusion, this ROM hack has a good future and i see potential on it.
Thats all!
Click to expand...

Pretty cool that you like Clean Slate.

We also did a better job at keeping things out from the public, even making the code for entire game modes not be in the public build.

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Sonic 1: The Super Challenges - First Demo Release

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

Red2010 is now A Normal RomHacker with occupations. Member

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Donald T Newcomer Trialist

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Redmoreo62 Newcomer Trialist

AleDrawer2008 Active Member Member

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Sin_ flesh Member

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Sonic 1: The Super Challenges - First Demo Release

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

Red2010 is now A Normal RomHacker with occupations. Member

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

Donald T Newcomer Trialist

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

Joao Gamer Well-Known Member Member

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

Joao Gamer Well-Known Member Member

Redmoreo62 Newcomer Trialist

AleDrawer2008 Active Member Member

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

PeanutNoceda Well-known member Member

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

Sin_ flesh Member

DeltaW The noob next door Staff

RobiWanKenobi The one with the dog Member

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