Diablo: Hellfire - Retrospective

On the surface, Hellfire brought a lot of extra value to the core Diablo experience. The expansion’s optional story campaign and quests meshed well with the rest of the game’s gothic veneer, and players appreciated having a new character class to try out (the staff-wielding monk), new items to find, and new dungeons to explore. The expansion even added in helpful quality-of-life features such as a Warp spell that would quickly transport a player to a dungeon’s entrance, and a special persistent room called the Cornerstone of the World that allowed players to transfer items between their offline characters.

However, for all its surface-level improvements, Hellfire also had a few hidden surprises, and the reason they were hidden was because Blizzard had either vetoed them directly or because Synergistic knew they would be vetoed if Blizzard knew about them.

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Cacheperl said:

Hm, I think I never played this game as a bard … *tempted*

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JDR13 said:

That would be pretty hard to do.

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For starters, Synergistic hid not one but two additional playable character classes in Hellfire’s code, characters that could be unlocked by using a special cheat input. The Bard was a version of Diablo’s default Rogue class who could dual-wield weapons, introducing the mechanic ahead of its appearance in Diablo II, while the Barbarian was a version of Diablo’s Fighter class that used two-handed axes, again beating Diablo II’s Barbarian class to the punch. Synergistic even went ahead and hid an entire online multiplayer component in Hellfire’s code, a component that could also be enabled with a cheat input and functioned separately from the Battle.net service.

By the time Blizzard found out about the existence of the hidden features, it was too late to remove them since Hellfire had already shipped. Blizzard was understandably upset, but in Synergistic’s eyes the folks at Blizzard had also tried too hard to micromanage a project that wasn’t technically theirs. Synergistic saw Blizzard as the annoyingly overprotective parent who refused to fully hand over the reins, so the hidden Hellfire features were kept in as a means of subtle defiance. The warm reception Hellfire received from critics helped in quelling Blizzard’s wrath, and in a way Blizzard actually wound up shooting itself in the foot since the one major criticism aimed at Hellfire was its lack of Battle.net integration.

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Bonus Quests and Character Class
NOTE: The following code requires the latest version of Diablo: Hellfire. It will not work on the original version.

To access some secret Easter eggs in Hellfire, create a text file called command.txt and place it in your Hellfire directory. Next, place the following line in command.txt:<p> <p>multitest;cowquest;theoquest;bardtest;barbariantest <p>This enables LAN and modem games, two new quests (Cow Quest and Theo Quest), and two new character classes:<p> The Bard reuses the Rogue's art, but can wield two weapons at once and has the Identify spell as her natural ability.<p> Barbariantest lets you choose the Barbarian Class, which allows you to wield a 2-handed axe or sword and a shield. His innate ability is Rage, which gives +5 to all attributes for 1 minute, then -5 to all attributes for one minute, then normal attributes. His max magic, however, is 0.

Transfer Characters from Diablo
To transfer your characters from Diablo to Hellfire, find your save file and change the extension to .HSV. For example, if your file is called RASSILON.SV then rename it to RASSILON.HSV.

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Couchpotato said:

Well according to the article a cheat code unlocks both classes.

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