Bio Menace

aka: Bio Hazard
Moby ID: 236
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

The CIA has learned that gigantic mutants are wreaking havoc in Metro City and their sources say that the destruction is caused by a scientist calling himself Dr. Mangle. For this reason, they send Snake Logan, the CIA's top secret agent, on a dangerous mission: fly over Metro City, investigate what’s going on, then report back to the captain. Unfortunately, Snake’s plane is shot down, forcing Snake to walk the streets and kill mutants.

There are three episodes in this game: In “Dr. Mangle's Lab” and “The Hidden Lab”, Snake must destroy two labs and Dr. Mangle himself. Just before he dies, Mangle tells him that he is forced by somebody known as Master Cain to do his bidding, or he would be killed, so in “Master Cain”, Snake sets out and destroy the creator himself.

All three episodes use the Commander Keen engine, which id Software used. It has a similar score box located at the top-left of the action screen, same menu system, same on-line help, and the same start-up screen where the game detects your sound card, video card, I/O devices, and the amount of memory you have. It even allows you to view the old status screen if you press [Space] during gameplay.

But the only differences are that Snake has eight units of health, so each time Snake collides with a mutant, he doesn’t get killed straight away unless he had one unit left. There are 12 levels in each episode. When you start a new game, as well as choosing the three difficulty modes, you get to practice every level except the very last one, which is the episode’s final boss.

Snake can use more than one weapon. For example, beside his trusty machine gun, he can also use lasers to fire through mutants, place land mines on the ground or throw grenades to blow them up.

Snake has to make his way through each level by blasting mutants while finding the exit. But to find it, he must first free a hostage located on each level. Some parts of each level are blocked off by a laser gate, and these include passages where the hostages are kept. To turn these off, Snake must search for a keycard or a crystal shard. There are lockers which store these, and can only be opened by obtaining gold keys.

Also in these locked doors are goodies that can boost your score, which could give you an extra life. You can also get an extra life by either collecting 50 gems or a mini-Snake. A few of the levels have a color sequence. This involves finding five different colors in a line, and then finding five switches that must be flipped in the correct order that corresponds to the sequence of colors. Doing this will allow you to get goodies that add many points to your score. However, failure to switch in the correct order will result in Snake falling down a pit of spikes or toxic waste. In some areas, you can also get a flask full of liquid that will make your invincible for 30 seconds. As normally, it does not work when Snake falls down a pit.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (DOS version)

7 People

Producer
Programming
Music / Sound Programming
Level / Scenario Design
BBS Support
Graphics / Artwork
Music
Engine Programmer
Engine Tools

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 61% (based on 5 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 55 ratings with 7 reviews)

No one-line summary available for users with contribution points less than 500,000

The Good
Snake Logan, a top CIA agent, is called in to investigate incidents where gigantic mutants are causing destruction in Metro City, and to find out where they are coming from. So he must fly over Metro City, investigate what is going on, then report back to the captain. Unfortunately, Snake’s plane is shot down, forcing him to walk the streets and kill mutants.

Playing this game reminds me of when I played the Commander Keen games – the start-up screen, in-game menus, and even the same sort of gameplay where you run to the other side of the stage, possibly finding crystal shards and using them to unlock barriers. You also have to rescue hostages before you reach the exit. When you do this, they will give you some information on the enemies on each stage and give you a keycard that you will use to open the exit.

One bit of the gameplay that I really like is collecting the gold keys and opening the cabinets that require them, in order to find items that increases your score. They are not floating in the air, making it less than easy for a player to stock up on infinite lives.

The enemies are clever and require more than one shot to destroy. There are much tougher enemies you encounter in the later stages, and these also go for hazards. (The turret guns, for instance, attempt to wound you before you can take action, even if you do not see them on screen yet.) The enemies that I enjoyed are the purple blobs, as well as the green alien that looks like Cosmo without the spots. I like how big and aggressive that the bosses are in all three episodes. In my opinion, they outnumber the bosses in other Apogee games.

Although the game uses EGA graphics, they are colorful and made me feel like I am actually walking through cities, parks, construction sites, sewers, and factories, each with their own dangers and annoyances.

The sound of the weapons that you use in the game are perfect, in that they sound similar to the weapons used in cartoon shows. The grenades make a cute explosion sound when they impact with something. The sounds of the robots are awesome when you kill them – they make a low, growling noise. There is some energetic music, some of them blend in with the environment that you are in.

Controls are easy to learn and use. [Ctrl] to jump, [Right Alt] to fire, and [Enter] to throw grenades. I like these controls. They were easy to learn straight away when I played my first Apogee game.

The Bad
You cannot just save anywhere in a stage. Part of the beauty of playing the Keen games is that you can save anytime at anywhere in the game – whether it be the world map or normal level. In Bio Menace, however, saving the game in the middle of a stage is useless, as restoring it will only take you way back to the start of the level. Sure, there are restart beacons, but I just am not used to them yet.

You cannot change weapons in the game, from a useless weapon to a weapon that does more arm to enemies. If you have the plasma bolts, for example, and you get the machine gun, then you will lose the plasma bolts, regardless of how much ammo is still left in it. And there isn't a key (on the keyboard) where you can change weapons. The same problem goes for grenades and land mines.

Bio Menace was released with a severe bug. Every time you kill the first purple blob or shoot it, the games just locks up. Since DOSBox does not fix the problem, you are forced to use a third-party patch or just add a STACKS command in CONFIG.SYS

The Bottom Line
Overall, a good game with excellent music. Bio Menace uses IDÂ’s Commander Keen engine. If you like platform games like Commander Keen, then this game is worth paying $5 for. ***

DOS · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2007

Very nice game, but full of bugs

The Good
This is one of the better Apogee-style games, I have enjoyed it a lot.

The Bad
This game has some terrible bugs. Some versions of the game start up with a screen of troubleshooting tips to get the game running. On most of my old computers it crashes when you start playing (typically, the first time you shoot). I never got it working on a recent computer (such as a Pentium with Windows 95).

The Bottom Line
If it was more stable, it would be a typical Apogee platform game. It uses the Keen engine, so the gameplay is much the same as Keen, but the theme is more like Duke Nukem.

DOS · by rey_ (296) · 2001

Harmless but unexciting side-scroller

The Good
It's hard to say anything bad about Bio Menace, it feels like punching a little kid in the face. It was created almost entirely by one man, Jim Norwood, who did all the design, art, programming, sound etc by himself, only falling back on id Software for the game engine and music. Being a one man show, Bio Menace took years to create, and when it came out it looked severely dated alongside games like Duke Nukem 2. It didn't sell well, which is a shame because Bio Menace actually isn't that bad a game.

It's a left-to-right sidescroller and plays quite similarly to Commander Keen 2 (in fact, it uses the same engine) only with less emphasis on platform jumping and more emphasis on blowing crap up. You play as inveterate tough guy Snake Logan, who has been sent to deal with a rogue scientist who is mutating an entire city with toxic slime. You collect keys, de-activate traps, rescue hostages, and kill enemies. That basically sums up the whole game.

Bio Menace was released in a time when 3D shooters like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were becoming popular, and Norwood must have realised 2D sidescrollers wouldn't be viable for much longer. In Bio Menace we see many small nods to the future of action gaming that help place it above the average Commander Keen rip off. It's much more realistic than its contemporaries, you have actual paramilitary weapons like machine-guns and grenades to play with and the game progresses in a more or less cohesive fashion, with Snake Logan first exploring city apartments and then underground laboratories and the like.

This brings me to another point in Bio Menace's favor, it has a much better realised game world than most other sidescrollers. Take the destroyed city for example: you see ruined helicopters and overturned cars and half-destroyed buildings and other signs that indicate hell has been let loose. There are no floating platforms or other gravity-defying devices, you need a ladder to get to high places. Bonuses and powerups aren't just magically floating around waiting for you to get them, usually they're found in cabinets and cupboards you need keys to open. Bio Menace is also extremely violent for an 16-color EGA game, mangled corpses litter the streets and enemies explode into bloody chunks when shot. So I don't mislead anyone, Bio Menace is still an arcadish platform game at heart, only with a slightly more mature and realistic edge.

Like in Commander Keen 2 you have to rescue hostages and can chat with them to pick up clues, and thus the game treats us to some of the worst cornball dialogue since Full Metal Jacket ("I'm gonna dust that little dweeb! He can't do this and escape!"). Funny character interactions have often been the salvation of games that lack stories, and Bio Menace doesn't disappoint.

In the Apogee tradition we've got a whole police line-up of zany and weird monsters, ranging from overgrown slugs and cockroaches to huge bio-mechanical tanks that shoot grenades and laser-beams in no apparent pattern (one memorable level has you storming a series of "trenches" filled with these tanks, which could have been an exercise in frustration but is designed so cleverly it becomes one of the coolest parts of the game). Another area where Bio Menace truly shines is in the boss battles, with your final showdown against the nefarious Master Cain being one of those classic "gotta upload it to YouTube" moments.

Plus it's free, which doesn't hurt. They even patched it for XP.

The Bad
While it's a bit more sophisticated than your average Commander Keen clone, I still consider Bio Menace to be one of the minor entries in Apogee's line-up. Gameplay is the same generic side-scroller action we've seen in a million other games, and combined with the usual indy game problems like shoddy graphics and numerous bugs its sort of hard to call Bio Menace an overlooked classic.

On to more specific issues, the game doesn't let you save in-game (although we have checkpoints) and there are numerous annoyances like how you can't choose what weapon you use (you're stuck with whatever got picked up first until you run out of ammo for it) and inconsistent level length. Some levels can be breezed through in 2 minutes or less with no lives lost while others are trial-and-error nightmares that can take hours to beat. The actual level design is occasionally really good (see above) but all too often to game falls back on stock "abandoned tech base" themed levels that are made unnecessarily harder through booby traps and tripwires and other retarded puzzles. In other words: filler levels.

The graphics don't completely suck but they are incredibly dated next to the 256 color glory of Duke Nukem 2. Even Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy looks better, mainly because it has a subtle hint of perspective that is missing in Bio Menace. Animation is fine, though most of the detail has been put the main character's movements at the expense of the rest of the game. On a minor ranting note: Snake Logan must be one of the dorkiest-looking heroes ever in an Apogee game. No kidding, he's got a pancho villa mustache. Look guys, I know this game was designed under great technological restraints but I don't want to ever play as someone who looks like G Gordon Liddy with a bad comb-over. Okay?

As other reviewers have noted the game comes with a ton of bugs that range from slow performance to the game freezing every time you fire a shot. It's a shame really, since most of Apogee's games are rock-solid products and in many cases can be played with no emulation software whatsoever. With the XP patch it is fairly stable, but be advised.

The Bottom Line
Apogee has published a lot of games like this, some better, some worse. Bio Menace is an OK game, but nothing sets it apart from the pack except for relatively smart gameplay and obviously the fact that it's free. Jim Norwood went on to bigger and better things (he was the lead guy on Shadow Warrior) but it certainly won't kill you to play Bio Menace. And any "lone wolf" developers might like to use this first game of a great developer as inspiration.

DOS · by Maw (832) · 2007

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

Compatibility

Found on Apogee's website:

Bio Menace is the only game that Apogee has not been able to get to run under Windows95/98 reliably under any condition.

Development

It took two years to create the game, mainly because Jim Norwood created practically every asset on his own, from game code, to art, to sound, to level design. The one significant area not created by Norwood is the game's engine. It was created by id Software, and was the engine original used for the second trilogy of Commander Keen games, starting with Goodbye, Galaxy

Freeware release

On December 23, 2005, Apogee/3D Realms made this game available as freeware. It was a "Christmas present" to their fans. The full registered game contains all three episodes and can be downloaded from their FTP server.

References

Among the hostages you have to save is Commander Keen, from id Software's series of games of the same name. When you rescue him (he's on level 6 of the 2nd episode) you say "Just doing my duty, Captain Keen" to which he replies "It's COMMANDER Keen!" For the curious, people mixing up Commander Keen's title is one of the in-jokes of the series.

Trilogy

Like most Apogee platformers Bio Menace is actually a trilogy. The first part of the trilogy came in two versions: a shareware version and a non-shareware version. The two other parts are not shareware. The names of the three episodes are:1. Dr. Mangle's Lab- The Hidden Lab- Master Cain

Information also contributed by Carlos Aquino, Maw, Roedle and Sciere

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Bio Hazard Battle
Released 1992 on Genesis, 2010 on Windows, 2018 on Linux...
Bio Freaks
Released 1998 on Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Windows
Bio-Prototype
Released 2022 on Windows, Nintendo Switch, 2023 on Android
Bio-Ship Paladin
Released 1990 on Arcade, Genesis, 2021 on Nintendo Switch
Bio Soup
Released 2017 on Windows
Bio Challenge
Released 1989 on Amiga, Atari ST
Bio-Defense
Released 1984 on Atari 8-bit
Perfect Weapon
Released 1996 on PlayStation, Windows, 2010 on PSP...
Menace
Released 1983 on ZX Spectrum

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 236
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tomer Gabel.

Windows added by 666gonzo666. Macintosh, Linux added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: Kate Jones, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance.

Game added August 21, 1999. Last modified March 14, 2024.