Please visit our Twitter for the full list of entries.

... Hey, is this thing on? I think it's on...

Welcome, one and all, to the Sonic Hacking Contest 2023!

Where's the new site, I hear you ask? Don't worry about it! We're here and we're once again all ready for another exciting year of hacks and mods! (tl;dr, Work keeps me extremely busy and it's not ready yet. Shocker, I know.)

I'll let others say more, but for information on updates and changes since the last year please take a look around the various Information pages. They should have everything relevant, however as always you can contact any of the SHC staff on Discord for more help or information.

I look forward, as all years, to seeing just what everyone comes up with for both the Contest and Expo. Enjoy!

For full details, please here to find out the winners of this year's Contest.

Congratulations to all our winners and participants of this year's Sonic Hacking Contest!

Courtesy of Danny Lee Dawber, we have a Media Panel playlist of the Contest Week's streams and uploaded content - please click here to access - please note this may not contain some Twitch VODs as they have not yet been uploaded to YouTube.

The Sonic Hacking Contest will return in 2023.

Until next time - Ready, Set, Procrastinate!!

Here is a reminder that you must submit your Community Trophy voting by the end of Saturday 15th October - the results will be on Sunday 16th.

And please fill out our feedback form too.

Hey, guess what. SHC2022 is now live!

Go play. Go vote. Go nuts.

Please visit our Twitter for the full list of entries for the time being.

A few days remain, here is your reminder to submit your Expo entry and mark it as COMPLETE if you want to showcase it to the biggest audience of the year for Sonic hacks and mods.

You have until the end of this Sunday 25th September to submit. Entries will be announced after the quality control has been completed.

Remember, Expo entries are NOT ELIGIBLE for trophies, either from Judged or Community.

Entries MAY be played by streamers, but there is NO GUARANTEE they can show EVERY SHC entry.

All hacks and mods that meet our Quality Control Criteria are eligible to submit. And don't forget about those trailer clips too!

The deadline has EXPIRED for Contest submissions. Updates to Contest submissions are being accepted until the end of Sunday 11th September.

You can still submit to the non-judged Expo on this website, along with trailer clips, until the end of Sunday 25th September.

Judges are checking entries for quality control purposes and entries that are Expo material, or unsuitable for either, will be emailed as to their status.

We are now LIVE and ready to take your submissions to this year's Hacking Contest and Expo.

Please submit your entries on https://shc.zone and refer to the rules on how to submit, the quality control and of course, how to submit to this year's trailer.

Anyone especially submitting 2DPC entries (+ S3 AIR), please check to see if your entry is eligible for the Contest or Expo.

On the website, we have added some highly requested features in the forms of One Click Installs for most mod loaders for quick and easy playing as well as multiple upload support which can also be limited to Media Panel and / or Judges to allow for exclusive uploads such as save files so your entry can be played to your requests.

This should address a few issues identified on previous contest weeks, however we hope to add a few more features as well to the site, which will be ready for the Contest Week, and much more.

The Splash Screens have also been updated for this year, although the RSDK screens are awaiting an update, so please bear with us whilst we implement this. We also have a Splash Screen ready for Sonic 3 A.I.R mods too.

EDIT: We have made an amendment to the rules regarding Copyright & Intellectual Property when it comes to requiring external assets from other games.

If anyone has any issue with trying to submit, or have any questions, do let us know by visiting the SHC Discord.

Welcome, one and all, to the Sonic Hacking Contest 2022!

So it's time for the Sonic Hacking Contest once again. Welcome!

I'll let Spanner say more, but for information on updates and changes since the last year please take a look around the various Information pages. They should have everything relevant, however as always you can contact any of the SHC staff on Discord for more help or information.

I look forward, as all years, to seeing just what everyone comes up with for both the Contest and Expo. Enjoy!

Thank you to everyone for yet another successful Contest Week!

The submissions received this year were certainly enjoyed by many and we have a solid list of trophies to announce - both Judged and Community.

Congratulations to all the winners and those who received honourable mentions too - if you did not win, please try again for next year as there were many submissions which absolutely should come back next year with an updated submission, whether it’s more levels, features, the list goes on…

Please read the entire newsletter, as we have a few more things after the trophies!

Click here for the Judges' Evaluations.

Click here to Submit Feedback.

Can I remind people we have a feedback form on what you like, didn't, what we can do better this year, as we always seek to improve for next year.

There's a few things this year that we wanted to do, but couldn't, but there's always next year, for some new features.

In the meantime fill out this form and don't forget we need your Community Trophy submissions by the end of Saturday 16th October!

We intend to announce the results, Sunday 17th October at 7pm EDT (Monday 18th October 12am BST).

They'll be pushed out through a few websites, and not through a results show this year. We'll also have the Judges' Evaluations ready for you to read too!

We're halfway through the week and there's still plenty of streams to go and plenty more games to play.

Can I remind people to please be respectful towards them as well, they are our guests (just as the public are) and if they are having trouble with an entry let them sort it out, we will assist them when they ask for it.

Some streamers like to do things their own way and that's okay. We do not control their content, we provide the entries, and can help set up when asked to.

Many streamers are also busy and have other commitments before and after the Contest Week (and some just came back from other events too), please accept that we only have their attention for this week only for the most part.

If you like what you see, please follow / subscribe them for more of their other content! They don't just stream Sonic games after all.

Also, please can people understand, there are time constraints in play, and streamers may not be able to get around to playing everything in an entry, or things in particular.

I understand if people get disappointed about that however the public are encouraged, to download and play the entries themselves, for the full experience.

We have had many great streams and even if some have had a few hiccups, the streamers have improved upon them - remember, many streamers are showing SHC more than once.

At SHC, the door is always welcome for the streamers to return in 2022, as many have done in the previous years. So if they can make it, expect them to return for next year's SHC.

Thanks for reading and let us know, what we can do better!

P.S: We have a Sonic Riders DX invitational tournament on right now as Garrulous64 is unable to stream today, come and watch!

All entries can now be downloaded and played!

The Contest Week runs from Monday 11th to Sunday 17th October, you have until the end of Saturday 16th to vote for the Community Trophies on Contest Entries!

For the SHC Contest Week 2021 trailer by redhotsonic along with the entry list for the Contest and Expo, the streaming schedule and more, check out the newsletter!

Judges are checking entries to check for Quality Control purposes whether they meet the requirements of the Contest, get moved to the Expo, or are rejected.

Anyone whose entries get moved to the Expo or get rejected will be emailed as to why.

Updates can be entered until the end of Sunday 19th September.

The non-Judged Expo is still available to submit until the end of Sunday 26th September.

If you want to enter to the Contest, you MUST make an entry on the website, and ensure you have a fully playable build by the end of Sunday 12th September.

Again, you have one week to refine your entry and fix any issues you find, and this has to be submitted and marked as Complete by the end of Sunday 19th September.

Judges will be making use of next week to determine whether or not entries meet the Contest criteria, get moved to the Expo, or rejected altogether.

Any moves will be advised through email. If you submitted to the Expo but want to swap it to the Contest (or vice versa), again we need to know by the end of today, as some have requested swaps.

Expo entries and trailer clips will still be accepted until the end of Sunday 26th September, where there is no updates deadline and what is submitted by then must be marked as complete.

If there's any issues with submitting something through the website, let us know.

And a reminder, the deadlines are final, there will be no bugfix uploads allowed unless they are severely game critical, but you should be using the updates deadline / expo deadline to fully test out your entry.

This is a reminder that you have until Sunday 12th September, at the end of the day, to submit something to the Sonic Hacking Contest.

You must submit a fully playable entry of your submission by this date.

After that, no further submissions will be accepted, however Expo entries (which are not judged) will still be accepted until the end of Sunday 26th September. There is no updates period for Expo entries.

All Contest entries have until the end of Sunday 19th September to refine their submission and update it, then afterwards the Judges will be looking at them, for evaluations and trophies.

Please note that it is the responsibility of the submitter to test their own entries for bugs, the deadline is the deadline, we do not normally accept any fixes beyond that date unless they are game critical, and even then it is a case by case basis, to avoid any more changes than what is needed. So please test your entry prior to finalising your submission.

For more information, as well as a few other things that have been mentioned, check out the latest issue of the SHC Newsletter.

We are receiving a good amount of entries to the Contest and Expo so far, but there's still a few weeks away before the first deadline for the Contest.

However, I must state that there has been an attempt to dodge the submission rules, which are in place to have an enjoyable Contest Week.

This time, we have had someone register multiple accounts to submit multiple Kaizo hacks to the Expo, with the same IP address.

You are only allowed one account per person. Duplicate user accounts for the purpose of evading the submission rules are not tolerated, and any caught are banned from submitting to SHC with their entries being disqualified.

Please refer to our rules regarding Kaizo hacks:

4. All entries should be enjoyable for all to play. Please refrain from submitting monotonous, off-putting, or insanely difficult entries (such as "Kaizo" hacks). While these are enjoyable to some we want everyone here to be able to enjoy your entries, and unfortunately these just do not do so to most. If you feel you must submit one of these, please stick to the Expo rather than the Contest.

Submitting one of them, provided they were of an acceptable quality, would have been fine, as much as people do not like them. Submitting a series of five poor quality entries under duplicate accounts however is not.

Also, SAGE 2021 is now live as of this post, so feel free to check out their games on offer during this coming week.

It's been a few days since the website has been up for submissions and we're already getting in a good amount of entries. Please submit if you have something good to enter, including short demos of one or more levels!

In the Rules and Guidelines page we have added a line regarding updates for 2DPC and 3D mods. Please apply this to avoid your entry from being automatically updated during the judging period and Contest Week.

Please note that if you have implemented the Mega Drive Splash Screen, a fix has been made to the files to address a DMA window issue.

Another fix was also updated to the Mega Drive Splash Screen later in the day of Sunday 15th August due to VDP issues, so please download and use the new binary file for your game.

The Sonic Mania splash screen has now been ported over to other RSDK games (Sonic 1 / 2 / CD) so all RSDK games can now take advantage of the SHC Splash Screen.

Finally, can I remind people to check the submission rules and guidelines before you submit to either the Contest or Expo. You must ensure that each entry will meet the Quality Control Criteria.

Also, all entries MUST be based on a Sonic game or ROM. Sonic character ports into other non-Sonic games do not count as acceptable entries for SHC. Although there is the argument out there that these could be allowed in the Expo, we don't want it to be a free-for-all where everyone finds a game they can put Sonic into and put it into an entry. There may be other websites where those kinds of games can be submitted to instead.

Judges are scanning over entries as they get submitted and if there is anything that will not meet the criteria or is not eligible for submission, we reserve the right to reject said entry and email the submitter about it.

If anyone comes across any further issues or have any questions, you can join the Discord server. We have a ModMail bot which you can DM, and the Judges will see your response and reply where need be.