Hellfire

An add-on pack for the original Diablo, by Blizzard. It added several new elements to the game, not all of which i totally liked. The Hellfire pack unbalanced the game slightly, and it did not solve many of the issues that made Diablo 1 a lacking game (besides the rampant multiplayer Battle.net cheating).

First it added new character classes. The only "normal" add-on class was the monk. He was good without a weapon, and excellent with a staff. The object of this character i was never sure of, but it was fun from the perspective that i had played the game many times before, and could use the change. His power was Search, which found items that one would have normally missed. This drawback of the Diablo item system was fixed in Diablo 2, by making all items of interest available and easy to click on with the ALT key.

Two other characters were included, but they had to be unlocked. By placing a text file, called commands.txt with a few switches in the directory with Hellfire, it would unlock the bard and the barbarian. The bard was the most unbalanced, because she (it was a female character model) could use two weapons that always hit, and had the identify scroll spell as a skill (meaning that it took up no mana to use). The barbarian could use no magic, but had an insane amount of strength. Fun if you wanted a challenge.

There were minor additions to the game system. Runes (almost identical to scrolls) were added in as an afterthought. Among spells, apocolypse was now available as a book; very handy for those of us who played wizards in the original installment. Oils came out and had some weird permanent effects on weapons and armor. (Oils are replaced with "socketed" items and gems in D2).

All in all, Hellfire was good for the veterans of hell, who wanted to see a new face on their characters, however, for the mainstream populace (ie: those who left their rooms on the weekends), the add-on did not provide much to what is, overall, a masterfully done game.

Club located at 29 Ninth Avenue in the Chelsea area of New York City.

Open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays to those over 21, Hellfire describes itself as "a BDSM Fetish Fantasy realization place of public assembly." There are five primary ground rules: drugs and alcohol are not allowed, nor are fellatio, intercourse, or tongues (due to risk of hepatitis); the only ass play allowed is with fingers and toys. Those found violating the rules will be thrown out immediately.

Hellfire's premises include fully-equipped dungeons, with jail cells, horses, crosses, and stockades. An area called "Heaven" in the rear of the club offers booths for couples only. Because no alcohol is served, full nudity is permitted (though it's best to arrive clothed to keep from being arrested before you get there).

Events are hosted on occasion, including women-only parties, BBW contests, schoolgirl parties, and foot fetish nights.

The club's only official website, located at http://www.hellfireclubny.com/, offers photographs and extensive information.

While it seems to draw its name from the Hell Fire Club, this venue spells its name as one word.

Name: Hellfire
Format: Sega Genesis, Arcade, Commodore 64 (possibly the same game. It was released before the arcade version, which is a little odd, but it does seem to be a scrolling shooter, so it could be the same game)
Developer: Toaplan
Publisher: NCS (Genesis version)
Year: 1989 (original game) 1990 (Genesis port)

Hellfire is a horizontally scrolling shooter of the truly manic kind. The game is incredibly challenging, like all the best arcade games, but is so addictive you'll find it hard to stop, even after you are blown into smithereens for the umpteenth time.

At first glance, Hellfire is just like any other horizontal scrolling shooter. You're in space, you're shooting enemies, there is absolutely no plot to speak of, just the temptation of the next level and an ever higher score. You start off firing a puny weapon, which then gets upgraded over time until it fires a triple pronged attack which makes mincemeat of most basic enemies. There are numerous pick ups to pick up and enemies to dodge around, followed by screen filling bosses to destroy throughout the six levels. After a while, when collecting the right pick up, you get a little "buddy" which flies around causing damage, and the mandatory one hit shield also makes an appearance.

The thing about Hellfire which makes it stand out from the admittenly enormous crowd (U.N. Squadron, R-Type, and hundreds more) is that as well as scrolling to the right and firing your weapon (whatever it may be) to the right you can select the direction of your fire. As well as the fire button, and the obligatory huge laser beam limited use button, the third button on the Genesis pad switches the firing mode of your spacecraft. At first you're firing pink shots forward, but after pressing B you're firing yellow shots backward. Another press and you're firing green shots both up and down at the same time, and a final press gets you to the last mode, firing blue shots in all four diagonal directions. A last press takes you back to the original pink mode. Cleverly, your ship changes colour so that even when you're not firing you can tell what mode you are in at a glance, and when you switch mode arrows will flash up briefly to pint in the directions that your weapons now fire.

Obviously, there are disadvantages to being able to fire in all these directions - the most powerful (and fast) firing options are the straight ahead or straight behind, because if that wasn't the case people would just use diagonal all the time, because it can, with a little maneouvring, take out enemies behind and in front quite easily. Make no mistakes, this is not a game where you can simply use one of the firing options and stick with it, the way that the enemies are scripted means that you will have to constantly switch between modes. Because of this, the is game probably the most hectic 16-bit game I've played..

Another excellent part of the game is the sound and music. Like many other Genesis games (for example Streets of Rage) it is clear that a large amount of time has been spent coming up with adrenaline pumping tunes to compliment your blasting. While it doesn't top Gyruss' amazing soundtrack (hey, you have to work hard to defeat Bach...) it's definitely one of the catchiest shooter tunes around, and the generic sound effects go with it perfectly.

The graphics of the game are pleasing, and don't slow down the game too much unless there is a lot of enemies on screen. When playing the ROM in Gens, putting on an interpolation filter makes the graphics mighty smooth... The artwork on the enemies is very varied, but usually quite pleasingly weird - for example, the Egypt themed enemies are simply too odd for words.

Overall, Hellfire has to be one of the best horizontal scrolling space shooters I've played, especially on the Genesis. I'd highly recommend picking up a ROM and giving it a try in Gens (my personal favourite) or Kega. The arcade ROM appears to be playable in MAME athough I haven't tried it. I suspect that it will be much the same, probably playing a lot smoother though, and with better graphics and sound. Definitely worth adding to anyone's collection, although if you want an original copy rather than a ROM I suspect the only place to look is eBay, unless you have a really good second hand game shop nearby. While this game isn't original by any stretch of the imagination, borrowing as it does a heap from R-Type etc, what it does it does well. My only problem was that when you are fighting the large boss / mid boss characters, it is often hard to tell if you are actually causing any damage. Apart from that though, this game gets a big thumbs up from me.

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Sources:

Playing the Genesis ROM in Gens.
www.gamefaqs.com

Cheers to fondue for pointing out that this game needed a writeup.