In my previous news entry, I announced Exeligmos, my upcoming game inspired by Fury³. I also mentioned how my uncle introduced me to Fury³ back in 1996, when he got it bundled with a Microsoft SideWinder 3D Pro joystick.

Recently, I bought a SideWinder 3D Pro of my own, hoping to revisit Fury³ and Hellbender the way they were originally meant to be played. Getting the joystick to work with Windows 11, however, turned out to be the first challenge. I found and purchased a Gameport-to-USB adapter from RG-Software, which allowed me to connect the joystick to my PC and use it in Windows.

Once the joystick was working in Windows, I turned my attention to the games themselves. Both Fury³ and Hellbender still had problems with joystick input, and their fullscreen modes presented additional challenges. With the help of Codex, I developed havGamePatcher to address these issues. Today, I'm releasing its first version.

havGamePatcher is a small Windows application for applying compatibility patches to classic PC games. It recognizes supported executables and creates patched copies while leaving the original files intact.

The first release supports the following retail editions:

• Fury³ (English): A joystick compatibility fix, plus an optional experimental fullscreen patch. The fullscreen patch stretches the picture to fill the monitor and allows cutscenes to fill the window in both windowed and fullscreen modes.
• Hellbender (English, French and German): A joystick compatibility fix, plus an optional experimental fullscreen patch that corrects issues with hardware-rendered textures, shading, sky, weapon and radar graphics.

With the joystick fixes applied, I could finally use the SideWinder 3D Pro to steer and use its assigned buttons in both games. The fullscreen patches are optional, unchecked by default, and their behavior may vary depending on the graphics driver and display setup.

The patcher applies these fixes through binary patching, modifying the machine code in a copy of the game's executable. The joystick fixes change existing instructions, while the fullscreen fixes also embed additional compiled code and redirect selected game routines to it. These changes are saved in the patched file before the game starts, so havGamePatcher doesn't need to remain running while you play.

To use the patcher, close the game, select its original executable or drag it into the window, choose any optional fixes, and click Create patched copy. The new executable is saved alongside the original with .patched added to its filename. Launch that copy to play with the fixes.

I've also recorded videos for Fury³ and Hellbender. Each video demonstrates how I apply the patches, followed by fullscreen gameplay using my SideWinder 3D Pro.

I recently purchased a Microsoft SideWinder Freestyle Pro as well, and I'm working on getting it running under Windows 11. That work is still in progress, and I'll share more when it's ready.

havGamePatcher is available to download from the project page, and its source code is available on GitHub.