Alien Carnage / Halloween Harry
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Alien Carnage, originally released as Halloween Harry, is a side-scrolling platform game developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and SubZero Software, and distributed by Apogee Software. The game features 256-colour VGA graphics and background music in MOD format. Alien Carnage is composed of four episodes. The first episode was released as shareware, and the rest were distributed commercially. In May 2007, John Passfield and 3D Realms released Alien Carnage as freeware.
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I played this as the Halloween Harry release, felt like an upscaled Duke Nukem 1 with similar platforms and movements.
https://3drealms.com/catalog/alien-carnage_48/
I’ve always seen Alien Carnage more like Duke Nukem II in terms of technology, and the game structure with 4 episodes in a single program is also similar. VGA graphics actually put it ahead of Duke Nukem II, but somehow it felt less polished to me when I played it. The jetpack was a particularly cool element.
I’ve played through this a couple of times, but I have mixed feelings about it. It’s one of those games that seem like it checks all the boxes on paper – nice graphics, cool guns, varied enemies, a jetpack.
But in reality the gameplay only occasionally pops, and mostly feels lukewarm.
Somehow I much prefer the original Duke Nukem.
(But possibly I like Halloween Harry better than DN2)
Wow, that means you like the original Duke Nukem better than Duke Nukem II!
I never played the original Duke Nukem to my shame. The beeper sounds and lack of music killed it for me (after getting used to DN2). 🙁
Yep, I think I can say in my opinion Duke Nukem 1 > Duke Nukem 2!
At the risk of getting too far off topic, I’d probably say that the controls and gameplay just feel tighter, the levels are more creative, and the graphics are more fun.
To get back on topic, Halloween Harry’s controls seem tighter than DN2 and the graphics make better use of the pallette. On balance the level design is probably equal between Harry and Dukem 2, but the jetpack makes them much less frustrating to navigate.
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