Alien Carnage

aka: Alien Carnage: Halloween Harry, Halloween Harry
Moby ID: 522
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

Alien Carnage (also known as Halloween Harry) is a follow-up to the 1985 game Halloween Harry, created for the Microbee System by John Passfield in 1985, but it has very little in common with the original game.

In this side-scrolling platformer, earth is being invaded by aliens who turn humans into zombies in order to enslave them. Harry is the only saviour of earth, and he has to traverse different levels and rescue the kidnapped humans. There are many different weapons to collect, and most have a limited amount of ammo.

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Credits (DOS version)

10 People (9 developers, 1 thanks)

Written by
Graphics by
Music by
Map Design by
VGA Routines by
Music Interface by
Cover Illustration
Manual Design
Special Thanks to
  • The Apogee Beta Testers

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 6 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 43 ratings with 4 reviews)

Whoopee-doo! Apogee makes their first VGA game!

The Good
Apogee is best known for creating their finest platform games for the PC, such as Duke Nukem, Monster Bash, Bio Menace, etc. The trouble was, with all of them, they were in EGA. So sometime in 1993, Apogee got together one day and decided to push the latest technologies to the limit with the release of Halloween Harry. It featured jaw-dropping VGA graphics and digital music consisting of MOD files since MOD was a popular music format. Not only that, it featured several cinematic sequences that were only viewed at the start of each mission, as well as the end.

Later, Apogee renamed the game Alien Carnage. The name was probably changed because It wasn't related to Halloween at all. Furthermore, each of the episodes was reorganized and the game had a lower price than Halloween Harry. For this reason, Halloween Harry wasnÂ’t supported since Alien CarnageÂ’s release.

In the year 2030 AD, Harry is called in to Space Station Liberty where his lovely boss, Diane, briefs him about Aliens taking over the earth and taking hostages with them. Not only that, but the government was told by the Alien Leader that they have 24 hours to surrender their planet, or innocent civilians will turn into zombies that will help destroy the planet.

Harry is beamed down to Earth where he must find his way through office blocks, factories, sewers, and finally, the alien ship. While he gets through each level, Harry must also rescue hostages that either walk around or are stuck to the floor with green crap. Harry can use his radar to help him find them easier. Harry canÂ’t access the elevator to get to the next level without rescuing hostages first.

Some hostages are blocked by walls that can only open if Harry flips a switch. Each switch has a color block under it. When flipped, the wall that has a color block, that corresponds to the one under the switch, will open up. It is easy to get lost in a level while finding the right wall and switch, so it pays to know the level really well.

There are four missions in which Harry must accomplish, which are basically destroying the bosses at the end of each mission. Including the boss level, there are five levels in which Harry must flame zombies and rescue hostages. He comes equipped with a flame thrower, which also serves as a jetpack. Unfortunately, the flame thrower relies on a lot of fuel in order to function. When Harry hasnÂ’t got enough left, he canÂ’t use his frame thrower to flame zombies and canÂ’t use his jetpack to get to hard-to-reach places. Also in each level, there are rotating disks, and collecting these will allow Diane to tell you of any dangers or secret passages nearby. And believe me, you will need to go through the secret passages.

When Harry flames a zombie, he can get a coin that can be used to get better weapons, including micro nukes, missiles, photons, and the Omega. Each coin is worth five credits, but he can get more by shooting green drums using his flame thrower to collect money bags that drop down from nowhere. All the weapons in the game have a limited supply, and using all your supply up causes the game to default to the previous weapon that has ammo still in it.

Harry has three lives and he loses a life when his energy is depleted, and, as usual, he loses energy by touching a zombie or come in contact with a set of spikes. Chances are, however, that he may come across a hot dog, a walnut, or a cup of coffee once in a while to get his energy back up. If he loses a life, Harry will start again at the start of each level unless he passes a terminal.

The graphics, and also the sound and music, are excellent. Besides Mystic Towers, Apogee has never used the MOD format to compose music, making it sounds a bit electronic. ThereÂ’s a program that comes equipped with the original Halloween Harry, which lets you listen to all the tunes in the game. For some reason, Apogee removed this program when they were creating Alien Carnage.

The Bad
This game was programmed in Pascal, and you can tell if you attempt to run the game on a fast computer: It will produce a “Runtime Error 200”. If this happens, you might want to disable the L2 cache in the BIOS.

The Bottom Line
A good game that outsmarts any Apogee game. If you like programs that involve rescuing hostages while getting through the level, then this game is for you. ***

DOS · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2003

A truely great game!

The Good
Everything! I used to play a different version called Halloween Harry, but they're basically the same. The graphics are excellent, the music is great (really!), the controls are more than decent and the gameplay is as addictive as they get!

The Bad
Nothing! It really is that good.

The Bottom Line
A greatly underappreciated game most people will find enjoyable.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2001

General rule: Flamethrowers are sweeeet. HeHeHe....

The Good
Beautiful VGA graphics!! This was the first Apogee game (along with Raptor) that was simply gorgeous to look at, with vivid colors, lush details (I loved those office levels early on!) and plenty of good animations and fxs. Furthermore as standard for all Apogee games, the controls are silky smooth making for a very satisfying experience even if it takes a bit to get used to the new way of "jumping".

The use of heavy-duty weaponry and especially the implementation of the flamethrower and the jetpack made for an interesting twist in gameplay since it worked as an effective way to ditch the jumping puzzles and kept the focus on the action. Ditto the updates that your partner gave you from HQ. They may not seem like much but it all amounted to a clever twist that kept you playing what was essentially a standard platformer, and certainly brought the game up from being just a Duke Nukem wanna-be!

And dammit, it's always sweet to torch a zombie with a flamethrower!

The Bad
Didn't break any new ground really. Heck, if you start thinking about it the hostages are just another way of having you pick up keys or stars, or whatever.

The Bottom Line
Standard side-scroller gameplay wise. But man, is it sweeet :))

Big guns, beautiful graphics and plenty of smooth action. That's Halloween Harry, perfect for when you feel the need to torch some aliens.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2002

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Freeware release

On May 24, 2007 Alien Carnage was released as freeware by 3D Realms with the permission of John Passfield. The game had previously been discontinued from their product line on April 21, 2000 due to it having problems running on Windows. They recommend using DOSBox to run the game on Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Halloween Harry

Before it was named Alien Carnage, the name of the game was Halloween Harry. The name was supposedly changed so the game would have more appeal all throughout the year rather than just Halloween. The two versions play exactly the same, but Alien Carnage swapped Block 1: Office and Block 3: Sewers, as well as rotating the music for Blocks 1-3 around.

Music

The music in Halloween Harry was done with .mod files, slightly altered to not play in a standard mod player

Release history

This game's first publicly available version as Halloween Harry was version 1.1 released on October 10th 1993. Version 1.0 of the shareware version was an incomplete version released only to a UK magazine.

When the game was released as Alien Carnage, its version 1.0 release was released on November 2nd 1994.

References

The 3rd level boss, a "sentry droid", is labelled THX-1138 -- George Lucas's first movie, made even before Star Wars. (This is a common injoke in the game industry.)

Shareware content

A shareware version of Alien Carnage was released which had "Block 1: Sewers" playable. Halloween Harry's shareware version had "Block 1: Office" playable. Due to this, half the game ended up being released as shareware.

Studio.exe

The game includes a Studio.exe file in its directory (originally included as a bonus for acquiring the full version) which allows to play all the music from the game.

Information also contributed by Scaryfun, Tomer Gabel, WildKard, Xantheous, Yakumo and Zovni.

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  • MobyGames ID: 522
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Accatone.

Linux added by Plok. Windows added by 666gonzo666. Macintosh added by Koterminus.

Additional contributors: Derrick 'Knight' Steele, Frenkel, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, piltdown_man, Jo Li KMC, Plok, MrFlibble.

Game added December 4, 1999. Last modified February 23, 2024.