Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage

A favorite title of mine that I was introduced to early in my PC gaming days, Alien Carnage (known at the time I first played it as Halloween Harry) is a story of a good game that met an untimely end.

Developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and SubZero Software and published by Apogee, the game had all the hallmarks of a great 90s action platformer: muscle-bound hero, lots of weapons and a crazy alien plot to take over the world.  It fit perfectly in line with other Apogee titles like Duke Nukem and Bio Menace, but with beautiful VGA graphics, a rocking soundtrack and a plot that involves aliens transforming people into zombies.

Originally released in October 1993 under the title Halloween Harry and then re-released in 1994 as Alien Carnage, the game has a somewhat colorful past.  After the initial release, Apogee grew concerned that the game’s title would lead people to believe it was a seasonal game connected to Halloween, when in fact the title was simply a fun reference to the protagonist saving humankind from enslavement as zombies.  To counter this, Apogee convinced the creators to change the title to the far-more generic “Alien Carnage”.  In addition, they also slightly adjusted the plot and level order.  In the original release, the story states that an alien ship burrows underneath the city, and the episode layout has you first infiltrating a high-rise office building, then gradually making your way into the city sewer system to the alien ship.  Perhaps to create a more natural progression, the Alien Carnage release changed the story so that the ship attached itself to the top of the same high-rise, and Harry begins by clearing aliens from the sewers and then ascending the building.

However, since Apogee’s shareware model makes the first episode of a game available for free, whereas in Halloween Harry you could download and play the high-rise segment, for Alien Carnage you could download and play the sewer segment.  This meant that fully half of the game was available for free.  Of course, Apogee did not broadcast this, and even including a note with the re-release that apart from minor plot adjustments and the name change the game was the same, so there was no need to download it again.  Of course, it didn’t take much effort to realize that the change meant the shareware episode being offered as Alien Carnage was completely different.

One of the elements that made Alien Carnage really stand out from a gameplay perspective is that, despite being a platform game, Harry cannot jump.  Instead, he has a jetback he can use to fly from platform to platform, or just sail around the level if you like.  Also, your primary weapon is a flame-thrower, which throws out a continuous, short-range stream of flame in from of your character that can pass through multiple enemies at a time.  The trade-off is that the flame thrower and your jet-pack share a fuel gauge.  The gauge is reasonably generous, but you won’t want it running down.  Fortunately, there are refueling stations throughout the levels you can return to if you run out.

In addition to your primary weapon, there are also vending machines that dispense additional firepower (money for them is acquired by slaying enemies), such as a photon gun that does about the same damage as the flame thrower, but fires the length of the screen, or a grenade launcher that tosses small explosive canisters.  In addition to the cool-factor of a game that makes your primary weapon a flame-thrower, this is also the only game of which I am aware wherein the grenade launcher is an indispensable weapon.  Harry can only toss the canisters about as far as his flame-thrower travels, but they do significantly more damage, and when paired with a jet-pack, it means you can fly above your foes and rain down death from above, and that never gets old.

Each episode ends with a confrontation with a large boss enemy.  During these confrontations you are limited to the use of your flame-thrower, but the game does away with fuel consumption making this less of a frustration and more of an interesting challenge.  Overall, the game just shines and really deserved to be the start of a franchise.

Unfortunately, the developers tried just that.  In 1996, a sequel was released, titled Zombie Wars (apparently picking up where Apogee’s generic title-change took off).  Although somewhat more ambitious, introducing NPC characters and allowing you to play as both Harry and Diane (present in Harry as your mission control officer), the game was not released by Apogee and lacked polish.  The developers had plans to further the series after Zombie Wars, intending to create a third title and even planning out a children’s cartoon series (which, by the way, would have been awesome) but the series never progressed beyond its frail sophomore offering.  However, Alien Carnage was released as freeware in 2007, so now everyone can enjoy the zombie-slaying goodness of the original title.