Does Satan's Hollow have an ending?
While searching for a definitive answer, I decided that finding a high scores list might be able to answer this question. I managed to find this thread, which is congratulating a player on beating the previous world record:
Satan's Hollow
- Ben Falls - 7,839,315 <~~~~ new MARP record!
- gastrainga - 3,327,260
There is a link to another site that apparently has videos of the world record plays here. The comment on the top score (mentioned in the thread) indicates that he managed to score a ridiculous 789 flags before reaching a game over.
Another comment in the thread indicates that while this is the current MAME Action Replay high score, the world record lies somewhere in the 40 million range:
Looking at the TG scoreboard it looks like the score to chase is just over 40 million.....but due to the way Satan's Hollow scores, Ben might actually not be that far off.
Another person referenced the fact that this "Ben" has high scores at the Barcade in Brooklyn, NY. If this is true, then his high scores are indeed documented here. Impressively, the high score on Satan's Hollow is even higher than the "just shy of 11m" referenced in the thread:
Satan's Hollow 16,543,350 BEN
While these scores seem absurd, I found second reference to the 40m score in this article:
In the end, my high score was right around 36,000. That puts me just... 43,050,000 points shy of the world record high score. But I've got a good feeling about this next quarter...
Based on all of this, I think it is safe to say that Satan's Hollow is, indeed, an endless game.