Go to hell Bion scum!
Terminal Reality, makers of Fury 3, serve up another action game for Microsoft's game line. In Hellbender, you pilot a "Hellbender" prototype attack spaceship. Managing your ship's resources and weapons, your goal is to destroy enemy robotic invaders, the Bions. Like Star Trek - The Next Generation's Borg, the Bions are trying to annihilate humanity. In the 24 missions or levels of Hellbender, it's up to you to stop them. Hellbender supports Direct 3D technology and 3D accelerated graphics cards. Hellbender also supports multiplayer aerial combat with up to eight competitors over a LAN, four over the Internet or two via a modem.
I found that Hellbender takes some time to get used to. It's not really the many commands to memorize or the ship controls but what to do. After a while I picked up on Hellbender's vibe and the more I played it, the more I like it. Hellbender is a little like Doom or actually more like Descent. Like Doom-type games, you explore worlds and shoot things. The things in Hellbender include radar installations, enemy ships, missile bunkers, troop transports and energy depots. Hellbender is different than Doom-type games since you are flying a spaceship and there are three dimensions to worry about. Things can get quickly out of hand when you find yourself flying upside down and trying to shoot enemy ships. Hellbender includes a variety of views to fly the ship from and I found that the "chase" mode made flying much easier. From chase mode you get a much larger view. Spotting enemy ships is much easier when they are in your line of vision.
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
Hellbender uses the latest graphics technologies and the results are impressive -- if you have the power. On my 120 Pentium machine and all of the graphics options on, I found the frame rate to be tad slow. You can get the resolution up 640 x 400, but the results are too slow. The game defaults to 320 x 400 which is kind of a disappointment after seeing the high res version. On the sound side, Gillian Anderson from the X-files plays E.V.E. (Enhanced Virtual Entity) the on-board computer. Cool! What is missing is some real engine noises. I know that sound dampening technology must improve in the future but if you turn off the soundtrack, empty space is a little too quiet for me. Speaking of the soundtrack, Hellbender streams it directly off the CD-ROM. Great sound but like many games that use this type of soundtrack, it's not long enough. A few minutes into a mission, the soundtrack cuts off for a minute and then restarts. I also found it too loud and opted to turn it off after my first few missions. Game designers should look to LucasArts for a hint on how to tie a soundtrack to the action. On Tie Fighter and other LucasArts games, the soundtracks change with the action as if you were watching a movie, not just listening to a CD track playing in the background.
BUGS
I was reviewing a final beta of Hellbender and I found it to be a bit buggy. Controls went haywire on me a few times and the view commands seemed to get stuck in some kind of loop. Rebooting solved the problem but it was annoying. I'm sure these problems will be cleared up in the boxed version.
Final Analysis
Hellbender is a fun action game if you have the systems to run it on. (These days this is quickly becoming a cliche!) If you liked Fury or Descent, you'll probably like Hellbender.
How about some cheat codes? OK, to jump from planet to planet, type AUNTEM followed by 1-8 (for example AUNTEM7). TOTLPWR makes main energy 100%. MAXMEUP makes the hull 100%. IMSTUCK skips the current mission.
Review By Games Domain
English 
Comments and reviews
THANK YOU MYABANDONWARE. There is repack available from the collection chamber.
https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/2017/07/hellbender.html
As a kid I played the demo of this game nonstop until finaly finding the full version in a "bargain bin" at a gaming store (it was a hard to find game by the time I was playing it a couple years after release). At that time I had some sort of Gateway computer and it ran the game normally including in the 3D Accellerated mode which basically smoothed out the chunky dos-style blocky graphics and made them look nicer. The game still runs consistently on modern computers I have owned, but I have never been able to make the 3D Accelleration work. If anyone has a workaround for the 3D accellerated smoothing the graphics out I would be curious to know.
Just like Terminal Velocity/Fury3, it's an awesome game. Work fine on up-to-date W10x64. I wish this genre would make a comeback.
Oh this game has a special place in my childhood. My father used to work for Nestle and one day they had an event for all employee's kids to come up with a poster to promote work safety. I came 2nd and won I think $70 AUS. I kept that for when we went to Sydney to see family and my father took me to a huge computer store, and I saw a package deal for a Joystick + Hellbender game. I played that game for many years. Great to find it has been archived for people to still have access to it, after all these years.
I remember microsoft hellbender
i played the demo in the past
it uses direct x
have tried full version but difficult gameplay.
do game pads help more than keyboard play?
The ISO image is not corrupt just extract the .img file under Hellbender_ISO and change it from .img to .iso. Next mount the ISO with Power ISO and run Hellbend.exe you don't even have to install it it'll run without install although it may skip videos and mission briefings possibly. You can also install it this way if you want, but you'd have to keep it mounted all the time with Power ISO to play it possibly with or without install. You could also just use Power ISO to burn it to CDR and go that route.
NO ISO FILES ON MYABANDONWARE ARE CORRUPT. Do i have to leave this comment on every single game???
Use anyburn's Browse/extract button instead. Just extract it to a new folder somewhere on your desktop or something
Windows just does not like old iso's. Plain and simple. They are not corrupt.
check out my youtube channel randalmcdaniel, good luck trying to find a game i cannot get working. Its just not possible. -win10pro(x64), 12700k, 32gb ram, 4070ti super oc 16gb, 1tb nvme
My favourite childhood game.
@Rick Sanchez: thank you for the detailed instructions!
@ZEITHRI
Thanks! That did it! I had played a demo version of this game a long time ago, and I've always wanted to try the full version.
@Douglas
I realize I'm 9 months 20 days too late with this reply but as I myself encountered it and figured it out. When you start up the game, first make sure you launch it in windowed mode ( the little clicky box ). It'll give you the first video, immediately go into the menu bar at the top and go into Settings. Unselect "Show Videos" and it'll start you right away into the game.
;;; To recap in tl;dr.
You have .smk error. DO THIS;
- Click the launcher
- Deselect Fullscreen
- Start game
- While first video plays, go to Options in Menu Bar
- Select Settings
- Unselect "Show Videos"
- Hit Ok
- Enjoy
This is one of my favorite childhood games. I really wish I could find any kind of iso which would include the "mixed mode" CD version that also had the audio tracks for menu and in-game music (not synthesized).
how run in win 10??
I appreciate the instructions Rick posted. However, I've run into a snag. Whenever I start up the game, the launcher appears, then the microsoft logo video plays, but then the game crashes with the error 'Unable to open .SMK video'. I'm not sure what I've done wrong. In the HELLBEND.INI step, can you clarify which parts exactly are capitalized?
To those who have problem with Hellbender using the RIP (the ISO is corrupt and doesn't work).
Got this to work by doing the following:
- Edit HELLBEND.REG on root of \hellbend folder wherever you extract it to, with the correct path of the folder after you extract it (e.g., E:\Games\hellbend)
- Edit the setup.stf file in \hellbend\setup with the correct path where you extracted folder by doing CTRL+H to replace all instances of the incorrect path with the correct one. You'll also need to edit some paths with the subdirectories (e.g., E:\Games\hellbend\system)
- Edit HELLBEND.INI in \hellbend\system with the correct path where you extracted folder in the [CD-ROM] section
* In this same section, make the listings for startup.POD and game.POD into all Caps as they are in the real folders
- Make sure HELLBEND.EXE is set to run in Windows 95 Compatibility
- Hit F4 during game to clean screen from graphical glitches
Game ran fine after this under Win10 22H2.
i dont have a disc drive, can anyone walk me through this like im 5? lol. ive been away from pc for like 20 years, currently using a basic HP laptop
used to get me really hyped up on adrenaline fingers sweating and all
the rip version will not work anymore
Man, I remember playing the demo that came with a PC in 1998, never got to play the whole thing. It was about as much as our family pc could run, it couldn't run games like Thief: The Dark Project without serious lag. 200 MHz of blazing fast processing power! lol
I find myself going back to these outdated games to finally get the chance to play them - and get a good laugh at how bad they really were.
does it play redbook audio ?? there's an option in the menu but it stutters if i choose cd audio musik option i run on windows 98se piii 500mhz
Hi all, I have been struggling for weeks, trying to install Enemy Nations. When I try to mount the setup file I get this error, " Failed to open the disk image file F:\autorun\autorun.exe.
Could not get the storage format of the medium 'F:\autorun\autorun.exe' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component: MediumWrap
Interface: IMedium {ad47ad09-787b-44ab-b343-a082a3f2dfb1}
Callee: IVirtualBox {d0a0163f-e254-4e5b-a1f2-011cf991c38d}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
"
Any help would be greatly appreciated. P&T
You can also email my Vcoke27@outlook.com
"disc image file corrupted"
anyone know how to get around this?
CD-KEY: 415-0027516
key?
A mixture of Terminal Velocity and Descent as a sequel to the Terminal Velocity-Clone Fury³....was not loved but had great complex levels with huge caves. Maybe because it was from microsoft.
I had hellbender on my old computer and cant seem to get it going with the online program download, and way you could help me
A simple but great shooter game. I fell in love with it when I discovered the demo level on the WIndows95 CD. I like this game for the great level design of the various planets and the giant enemy mothership.
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.