Hello, this is NiphFM, and I’m glad to announce that the Mega Drive Music Contest has commenced its 8th round. For those who aren’t familiar, the Mega Drive Music Contest is a mini-contest held within the SHC’s Discord server, of which contestants compete to create the best Mega Drive music to fit the round’s prompt. In Round 7, rigid_atoms won 1st place, and with it, the choice of this round’s prompt.

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As promised in our presentation, we are releasing ahead of time the ruleset of the Sonic Hacking Contest. All major changes made have been clearly highlighted.

Feel free to come talk to us, if you'd like to express your feedback on the rules as they stand! The best place to do so would be our Discord server!

Read here

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And that's it for submissions at the Sonic Hacking Spotlight! We would like to thank all who decided to participate!

As said earlier, the presentation will be released at some point later in July: we'll let you know when exactly closer to release!

Hey everyone! Sorry for the double-announcement, but I wanted to add that if you were looking to submit a ROM Hack category entry to the spotlight but, for whatever reason, are unable to record at the quality necessary for the presentation (1080p resolution at 60fps), I have volunteered myself to record some gameplay footage if necessary! If you're interested, simply DM me via Discord (my handle is @naoto_ntp) a build of the submission and some clear instructions on what you would like to be shown off in the spotlight and I'll find some time this week to play through it and record some footage in your stead. I will also work with you to ensure that it is to your liking.

Please note that I am only one person and my time is limited, so I will likely only be able to record footage for a few submitters in total. As such, this will be done on a "first come, first served" basis and your submission must clear quality-control as well. I also unfortunately cannot offer this for entire in the Modern 2D or 3D modding categories, as I am ill-prepared to record for those categories; I personally don't own enough of the games under those categories to confidently extend the offer that far. Of course, if there are any judges in the Modern 2D or 3D categories that are willing to do this as well, they are free to comment under this announcement as well.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all have in store! Happy hacking.

That's right, you have one last week to submit your entry for this year's Sonic Hacking Spotlight!

Your deadline is set to the end of Sunday the 29th, 2025.

To be more precise, the form should close at around 9:00 of the 30th of June, 2025 (CEST timezone)*: past that time, you won't be able to submit.

Please remain available throughout the development of the presentation, as you may be asked for additional material!

^{*Since I'm going to be preparing myself for work, there is a likely chance the form will close up 9-10 hours later. If that scenario occurs, submissions sent in during that extra time window will still be accepted. It is advisable to not bet on that scenario to happen, and to prepare your submission in time.}

Apply Now!

WE ARE BACK!

Just like we did last year, we're doing another presentation going over what you can expect from this year's edition of the Sonic Hacking Contest! It's going to take a while for us to be able to update the website with this new information, so please pay attention to the contents of what's shown here!

You may watch the video below:

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The second edition of the Sonic Hacking Spotlight is opening up to applications!

The Sonic Hacking Spotlight is a Direct-style gaming presentation that aims to bring the latest news on Sonic ROM Hacks and mods in video form to an audience of tens of thousands!

For an example of how that's going to play out, please take a look at last year's presentation.

Applications are open to everyone, even those who do not wish to participate at the Sonic Hacking Contest 2025!

Apply now!

As announced in our presentation, we are looking for Judges for this year's Sonic Hacking Contest!

These are our most urgent openings for the time being:

• All Modern 2D games
• Mega Drive
• Sonic Advance 2
• Sonic Adventure Duology
• Renderware based games, such as Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog
• Any game that does not get submit often

If you are an expert in at least one of these categories, you are encouraged to apply!

Apply now!

We have received an announcement of the upcoming Sonic Racing Crossworlds release date, which will be on September 25th, 2025!

...which is unfortunately very inconvenient for our purposes, as it comes very close to the intended Sonic Hacking Contest 2025 Contest Period.

In response to this, all SHC Staff will be taking one additional day to decide whether to extraordinarily move the Sonic Hacking Contest Period accordingly.

This means that the upcoming presentation is delayed by one additional day, and is now scheduled for release on Sunday the 8th.

We apologize for the continuous delays, but luck really is not on our side this year, it seems!

As much as I wish I was making this up, due to a bee infestation in my room, progress on the SHC2025 presentation is temporarily halted, and is delayed to June 1st, 2025. Further delays may be necessary. You will be informed appropriately.

EDIT: it is going to take a while for the room to be rid of bees.

For this reason, the presentation is delayed to June 7th, 2025.

This will not affect the happening of the Sonic Hacking Contest or associated events.

Hi.

This is not so much an “important” SHC communication, as, if you’ve been following the SHC closely enough these days, you would likely learn nothing new from what I write. This is more so me speaking my thoughts on what’s going on as of late, especially the sudden passage of torch.

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Due to a series of very unfortunate and private events, HazelSpooder will no longer host the Sonic Hacking Contest. Ownership of the SHC is hereby transferred to me, giovanni.gen.

The upcoming SHC2025 presentation has been delayed to May 31st.

Expect an extended announcement.

Tune in this Sunday the 25th for a presentation on the Sonic Hacking Contest 2025 with news, changes, and important announcements!

The presentation will be released on our YouTube channel!

We regret to inform you that the IRC channel for the Sonic Hacking Contest has ceased its operation, and that the bridge connecting it and the Discord server has been cut.

This has been done due to lack of activity and lack of moderation resources.

We apologize to all those affected. You can still interact with our community by joining our Discord server!

I come with a major update in regards to the future of the SHC Twitter/X account.

Effective right now, Hazel and I will no longer be operating the Sonic Hacking Contest Twitter/X account.

This decision is motivated by the declining state of the platform, resulting in our desire to leave it once and for all.

The SHC user account will not be abandoned.

In fact, starting right now, control of the account is delegated to KGL, who will be tasked with posting and responding to incoming DMs.

Hazel and I will continue managing all other social media platforms, as well as the SHC itself, until further notice.

Thank you all for following the Sonic Hacking Contest, and we'll see you all with news on the SHC2025 in the coming months!

We regret to inform you that PimpUigi has been banned from the Sonic Hacking Contest, as well as associated events and platforms, in response to allegations of criminal sexual conduct that are currently being investigated by U.S. law enforcement, and the FBI.

The material unearthed is very critical, and the testimonies presented paint an abhorrent image. Given all that is currently available to the public, we believe that allowing PimpUigi presence could pose a very serious threat to our community.

We will also no longer accept submissions created by PimpUigi, or with the participation of PimpUigi in a major capacity.

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This announcement was posted with permission from the SHC leadership.

Hello everybody!

Here's a little something for the the ROM hacking community that we've been working on for a good while. After two years of work, Red Miso Studios can finally proudly present...

Sonic 1 in Sonic 3 (S.C.E. Version) Open Source Framework Release

This is a port of Sonic 1 to Sonic Clean Engine (S.C.E.), our heavily modified and improved Sonic 3 & Knuckles engine, which we have been using for a long time for our MD projects (such as Hellfire Saga and Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Epilogue). This includes the 2013 content from the RSDK remakes, too.

This is intended to be an open source Sonic 1-like base for everyone to use and build their projects on, as well as an example of how to add Sonic 1 stuff to your existing S.C.E. projects.

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Hello, people of the Sonic Hacking Contest!

I would like to say thank you, for the bottom of my heart, for making the Sonic Hacking Contest 2024 as great an event as it was! We are currently reading your feedback as it is coming along, and we're very pleased!

Unfortunately, I don't come with only pleasant announcements.

My own enjoyment of the Sonic Hacking Contest was affected by internal and external stressant events, the most intense ones happening just in the span of this month. I also can not 100% praise whatever internal management of the Contest I carried out, for there were clear, undeniable issues with stress and deadline management most prominently.

For these reasons, I've decided to go on a couple month long break from managing the Sonic Hacking Contest. During this leave period, expect me to be far less active to happenings in the public SHC Server. If you need support from Staff related to the SHC, I also have to ask that you don't directly send me DMs on Discord. Although I appreciate that lots of you trust me enough to come to me for support, it was never proper procedure, and was meant to be a last resort, with the Discord Server's ModMail bot being the *true* proper procedure for reaching out the in-server Staff of the Sonic Hacking Contest. If I, specifically, am needed, Staff knows how to reach me, and I *will* make sure to be there. Otherwise, please use the ModMail bot. Alternatively, for those not present on Discord, you can reach out via shc<.>zone<.>site<@>gmail<.>com, or via the official SHC Social Media DMs.

Thank you, once again, for your support to the Sonic Hacking Contest, and look forward to a new-and-improved Sonic Hacking Contest 2025!

That's right! This 40-ish question form will be your place to give us your two cents on just about everything of this year's Hacking Contest. Do take your time filling out each question!

Fill in now

Kept you waiting, huh? Judge evaluations are finally public!! Please do note that a couple of our judge's evaluations are running late, as they both have had various factors come into play that has kept them busy, but rest assured they will deliver their evaluations soon! Also as a reminder, jubbalub has previously been excused from judging this year, but they might end up writing up some evaluations eventually, so keep an eye out for those!

Apologies for the evaluations coming in so late. A lot of factors came into play that we never considered, and we're already discussing how to iron out these issues for future years. Thank you for your patience!

Without further ado, you can view the Judge Evaluations here!