| Developer: | Interactive Binary Illusions
Sub Zero | | | Release Date:
| | | Systems: | PC |
Spooky greetings to you all! Fancy looking at some classic Apogee shareware?
As Robbie Coltrane might say: it's 'alloween, 'arry!
I've been on a real VGA kick the last few months. I played through a whole bunch of Epic's eponymous MegaGames, taking in every pixel and reading through all the ordering information and whatnot. To my delight, one of the FTP servers listed in One Must Fall 2097's readme, ftp.funet.fi, survives to this day as an archive of itself in its prime! It's a wonderful time capsule of ninetiesness, where one can find all the shareware products from Apogee, Epic MegaGames, id, and others exactly as they would have been, just waiting for you to plunge yourself into their legendary free first episodes.
In the UK, we had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the 16-bit wedge-keyboard home computer era. A PC sound card alone could cost as much as a complete computer set-up from the previous generation. BBSes and internet access were the province of fancy awesome uncles and home-office workaholics so, for us, PC gaming before 1994 is a mysterious vortex of mystery.
When it comes to Apogee especially, there's so many games I've never heard of or only seen in mysterious order forms, since my pocket money at the time would never stretch to ordering mysterious packages from America. The only ones I'm really familiar with are Raptor: Call of the Shadows, and Rise of the Triad, I guess.
Which means I know nothing at all about tonight's game, Halloween Harry!
Yes, Halloween Harry takes place in the future ten years to the day!
Her first squad are M.I.A...
This briefing goes on and on and on. There's no voices, but in my head Halloween Harry is voiced by Leslie Nielsen. Harry doesn't think the aliens are righteous by the way. Diane's giving him the low-down on his weapons, including their favourite weapon "the awesome OMEGA!"
Music nerds may be interested to know that this is the earliest PC game I've played that has tracker music as opposed to AdLib music. That means instead of the Mega Drive-esque squeaky synthesized 'peep's and 'parp's of MS-DOS, Halloween Harry uses sound samples, just like an Amiga game. Specifically, it sounds like Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, since I think Harry's nicked some of their samples (YouTube link).
It wouldn't be an Apogee title if the game wasn't split up into episodes, but these banners were definitely rendered in a hurry. The sewer level inexplicably gets a different font, and the alien ship isn't inaccessible, just illegible.
Though really I have no reason to put this image here except to satisfy Ray's craving for pixel-art floppy disks.
MISSION 1: OFFICE BLOCK, ZONE 1.
We've located a major center of Alien activity within the Big Corps Law Firm on 3rd Avenue. Space Station Liberty has been retasked over the affected area so that we can teleport you safely inside. The Aliens are holding a number of office workers hostage and are slowly turning them into Zombies. Your first mission is to rescue them.
What... the Zombies?
No Harry. The hostages... You toast the zombies!
Why wouldn't we want to rescue the zombies? They were human once!
Our first mission is to rescue a bunch of lawyers from the aliens. Space Station Liberty has to make its money somehow I suppose.
I'm off to an amazing start, finding myself utterly trapped in an empty corridor two screens across. "Look for an exit above you.", she says. I don't see anything. Just a ceiling with ridges and lights.
Collecting the spinning floppy disks gets me more intel from Diane. I can press 'R' to switch my pointless, Jazz Jackrabbit-style weapon panel for a radar telling me where the hostages are. The walls and platforms of the level itself aren't shown on it, so the radar's almost entirely useless, hooray!
Look for captives nearby.
Huh? According to the radar, I think I passed one already.
This is level one.
Rescuing an innocent refills my health, yeah!
He doesn't care how busty or blonde you once were. If you're a zombie, he will douse you in napalm and burn off your flesh until you explode into a skeleton.
And then steal your money.
There's another hostage at the end of this duct. I'm making good time.
Halloween Harry feels like an early Atari ST game, with its chunky frame rate and odd blocky motion, but when you use the jet-pack, you can see the scrolling isn't tile-based at all, it just looks that way because of how Harry runs. Together with the tracker music, it reminds me of the Amiga version of Toki.
On that note, I'd recognise those numbers in the status bar anywhere:
It's functional, but it's very cheap and very cheesy. It's what you use when you need a font fast and don't mind your game looking like a home-made Amiga game.
It's a miracle that Halloween Harry runs as fast as it does. Not using the FM music chip means a big slab of the processor has to be dedicated to just playing the sampled music. I can't see the game using any special tricks for the graphics other than 'draw all the stuff real quick', either. They also chucked in parallax scrolling, which means drawing everything real quick twice. Despite this, it's playable even on really old systems. I'm very impressed!
I'm not sure exactly where I'm going. I'm trying to head toward the pink dots on the radar as they appear, but the routes are always blocked off by barriers and things. If there isn't a switch I need to toggle at the top of this tower of balconies, I'll eat a hat.
The two pillars obscured the fireball so I didn't know it was coming. Look how much health it took off!
Just what the heck kind of law firm is this?
And yeah of course the zombies aren't affected by the spikes. That'd be too easy.
Here she is. She could use a haircut.
Harry can't jump without using his jet-pack. Harry's jet-pack runs on fuel. Harry's flame-thrower runs on fuel. The same fuel. Now I'm defenseless unless until I can find another powerup machine.
If you don't keep finessing the jet-pack button when out of fuel, it cuts out. The level is almost entirely vertical as well, which doesn't help. There is a fuel machine somewhere far, far below me, but I don't know if I can be bothered going back for it.
Harry can only fire the flamethrower directly to the side, making fighting ground-hugging blob monsters and floating cherubs a real nightmare. I've got a whole collection of different weapons after buying bits and pieces from the weapon machines, but I don't want to waste them here in case I have to fight a boss at the exit, wherever that is.
I know, right. I had to look it up in a video myself.
There's a very slight clue in one of the data disks, but really, this sucks, especially since most barrels you'll find are indestructible.
I've got no flame-thrower fuel left, but I do have some thermo-grenades and heat-seeking missiles! I'll just... stand here motionless and let them emerge from my body. They won't expect that!
I didn't enjoy it all that much, I'm sorry to say. Here's to more interesting and varied graphics on level two.
At least for now we can enjoy this absolutely mesmerising end-screen, courtesy of some more old-school palette cycling.
The second level is a lot like the first, except with more ceiling goop. They've taken all my hard-earned away between stages, for reasons which completely elude me.
The music is very similar to before, but it's escalated - the manic panpipes from the last level have been joined by a xylophone that's whirling up and down the scale like a mad thing.
Harry's run makes him move like a rocket, and the jet-pack gives him maneuverability in the air, but these levels consist of tiny corridors full of dumb traps and xenomorph wannabes that slam into you at lightspeed from off-screen, without giving you any way to defend yourself.
There's no reason other than tradition for the game to offer you continues seeing as you're able to save between levels, but it's nice that they let players decide for themselves how perilous they'd like their mission to be.
I kind of don't want to continue. The game just isn't that fun.
| Halloween Harry high-score screen | Jazz Jackrabbit BBS ordering information |
Here's the high-score screen. Halloween Harry isn't looking too happy.
Perhaps all those spinning floppy disks and floating Gravis PC GamePads were an expression of the suffocating ennui that comes with living the life of an MS-DOS shareware game developer, where the world seems to contract around you and reduces itself to the items on your desk and your own discoloured reflection in the monitor glass.
Or perhaps Harry and Jazz are just talking to each other on IRC.
I feel a little bit let down by the lack of Halloween themery going on in this game - there's no bats flying around, no black cats, a few spiders, yes, but no webs. Damningly, there's not a pumpkin to be seen beyond the title screen. Sure, there's zombies, but aliens? Not your traditional Halloween beast. Is 'Halloween' just a cool macho name?
I'm going to take a break from MS-DOS and delve into Harry's past and find out! (And also because if I don't somebody in the comments will yell at me.)
A long time ago, on the other side of the world, there was a distant land named Australia. In this land, as everyone knows, everything was upside-down, and the people said things like 'crikey'. What many don't know is that they had their own computer named the MicroBee. The MicroBee was somewhere between the American Apple II and the British BBC Micro, and on this computer there was a sci-fi/horror crossover hero named "Halloween Harry".
It is the 21st century and from this futuristic new world comes an exciting new hero:- HALLOWEEN HARRY!
Yep, it's the same Harry, by the same designer, just from almost a decade earlier.
The original Halloween Harry is very much like Lode Runner.
In this shot, Harry is the space-suited figure in the lower right. He's got to pick up the Witches' Hat in the upper left and escape through the door while avoiding all the squatting demon fellows, sinister ceiling claws and the creepy hands emerging from the ground.
What the game lacks in animation (as everything appears on a grid), it makes up in tension. All the enemies continually stalk towards Harry, and your only defense is a 'garlic-blaster laser gun', containing thirteen (oooh!) rounds which kill anything in one hit. You've got to goad enemies away from the route you want to take and then sprint behind their back to grab the treasure or ammo before they catch you. Harry can climb up and down the chutes, but so can the enemies. Harry can't jump, and instantly dies after any fall, so it's easy to get yourself trapped. (That's probably why his successor chose a jet-pack!)
This game's pretty cool. I like it. It's hellish to play, and the disappearing/reappearing monster hands keep getting me, but I like these simple single-screen puzzle-type action games. I used to play a clone of Lode Runner named Mother Lode on my Amiga 500 for days as a kid.
Okay, I think it's time I got back to work. Because I would like to show you a colour other than luminous green, beige, lavender or grey, I'm going to go to back to the nineties, on Easy mode this time, and get to the boss of Episode 1.
I'd hoped that the game would stop with the secret passages by this point, but nope, they're the main game mechanic. Who'd hide from alien invaders in an easy-to-find location, after all?
You've got to scoot about from one end of the level to the other, brushing Harry up against every wall that might conceal a secret route, flicking all the switches you can find and making another lap to see what doors they open, while having your health and money constantly chipped away at by the never-ending quick-respawning alien/zombie hordes. Thankfully, you can never accidentally un-flip a switch, and the frequent computers save your progress within the level, but you've got to have perfect awareness to not get lost in the towers. The game never penalised me for running out of time, but I wasn't playing on Hard.
There he is! Sentry Droid THX 1138, the final guardian of the Office Block! He's stomping and jumping and flickering around the screen like only a sprite that's just a little bit too big for the game to comfortably render can. He won't know what hit him!
It'll be the flame-thrower, because all of my other weapons ARE GONE!? Swizz of the century, right there. What the hell, Harry?
He's traded in all the stuff I was too afraid to waste for an infinite tank of flame-thrower fuel. Mobility and ammo are no longer a problem, so I just need to stay away from this guy's stompy feet and plasma bolts and this fight is in the bag.
Congratulations Harry! Big Corps Law Firm has been saved from evil Alien intent. Now the workers can return to work... cleaning their mobile phones and overcharging their clients.
Not a problem. All in a day's work.
Hooray! I've completed the shareware episode of Halloween Harry! Four awkward levels and a very easy boss. And now I never need to play it ever again. Except I do, because now I need to play...
The bods at Apogee thought that a game with 'Halloween' in the name might not sell so well outside of October, so they rang up Interactive Binary Illusions and suggested a re-release and a new name. He's still the same old Harry, she's still the same old Diane, the developers just rewrote some of the intermission dialogue and changed the level order around.
BIG Corp is now the end goal, where the alien mothership is docked. To reach it, Harry has to go on foot through the city's factory area, having first gained access to the city itself through...
It's a madhouse.
CONCLUSION
For me there's simply not all that much to like about the adventures of Harry. On foot, Harry's twitchy and blunders into enemies, in the air he's barely mobile at all and figuring out how to fire and fly simultaneously is impossible, making hitting enemies on the ceiling or on the floor or on ramps a real pain in the bums.
Harry and his enemies both have tons of health, so combat tends towards a scrappy style where you rush into enemies knowing you'll take damage but hoping they take more. If Harry could avoid enemies easier, it would feel more fair. Being able to use all those tantalising missile and laser weapons to attack from a distance would be a good start, but you need the money for flame-thrower fuel. Your money disappears between levels for no good reason so you ought to spend it before leaving the level, but the shops are never close to the exit, so by the time you've decided it's time to leave, you've probably wasted all your money going back and forth anyway.
The levels begin as mazes full of awkward secrets and get worse over time. Or if you're playing Alien Carnage they start off worse, get even worse, and then become semi-bearable as you enter the original Episode 1 half-way through the game. There are some tiny changes in Alien Carnage that make it easier to play - flame-thrower fuel is now free, letting you try out the other weapons instead of worrying about getting stuck down a pit.
I couldn't speak for how the games would have been received by the public at the time. I know what my six-year-old self would've thought: he'd've gotten frustrated inside of five minutes because he kept losing and the game wasn't cracked with cheats. (Which the full game does have!)
I enjoy games more when I'm making noticeable progress fast. Harry slows you down with its back and forth switch stuffing and hostage hunting through secret passages. That would be fine if moving about was fun in itself, like RoboCod and its slick, zany, colourful landscapes. Harry is too much effort. I had a lot more fun playing, I dunno, Quik the Thunder Rabbit. I just like cute colourful things, I suppose.
Not that Harry cares one mote about what I think of his game. The clever scheme of Apogee's to rename the game must have worked, well enough to let the company, now named 'Gee Whiz!', make a sequel: Halloween Harry in 'Zombie Wars' (MobyGames link) for Windows 3.1.
After Zombie Wars, Gee Whiz! went mad with power and started to plan Halloween Harry 3D and the Zombie Wars cartoon series! (external link)
It probably helped that the entire Australian game industry at this point consisted of Gee Whiz! and that's about it, much like how Jazz Jackrabbit represents the Netherlands, and the Overlynx pilot from Interpose does Norway.
So what happened to the brains behind Halloween Harry in the end?
Halloween Harry 3D and his cartoon didn't happen, but Gee Whiz! made a bunch of other stuff. Eventually the main Harry designers joined forces with a business boffin and formed a new studio named Krome, and created the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series! There's a happy ending!
I wouldn't recommend you try to find Halloween Harry in one of those Apogee nostalgia packs they sometimes sell. Not because you won't enjoy it, but because you don't have to!
In 2007, Alien Carnage was released as freeware by the designers, so you can download the full game (3drealms.com link) and have a go at saving New York from the awful Aliens yourself! If you're not a nerd and just want to jump into it, you can find many fine sites (none of which are endorsed or tested by Super Adventures) that will let you play the game emulated in your browser without downloading anything if you search (Google link).
Have a good weekend everyone!
PS. I know I've mentioned this before, but there's also a Super Adventures Discord server you can visit. Mecha-neko's not actually there, but other people are! Some of them even type things sometimes, it's great.
By the way, if you play Harry through DOSBox, you'll see a strange effect where the menus are drawn, fade out, then fade in again slowly. This is a long-standing incompatibility with DOSBox and isn't supposed to happen - I won Office Block on my real DOS machine. To stop these slow fades happening, make a new DOSBox config for Halloween Harry and change the machine= line to read machine=vgaonly.
ReplyDeleteThe next game is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the love box also appears in Metal Gear Survive, so maybe it's that and you're being trickier than I thought.
It is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker!
DeleteI tried to convince mecha-neko to write about Metal Gear Survive, but he loves the game so much that he couldn't bear to tear his eyes away from the screen long enough to make notes.
Crikey, it does sound like an Amiga game, although I'm getting Pinball Dreams rather than Lotus Turbo Challenge. Much of a muchness though.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens when you run out of ammo in this? Do you get a basic but infinite weapon? I'm going to guess no, because of how unfair it seems in every other way possible.
When you're out of fuel for the flame-thrower and you've got no special weapons, that's it. Harry can't shoot.
DeleteAs I expected. Bastards.
DeleteSometimes, in certain areas, money bags can appear like in Gods or Bubble Bobble, but a lot of these secret triggers need to be shot rather than walked through, so...
DeleteThe game becomes a lot more fun when you know where everything is beforehand so you can dash from objective to objective without wasting your time or money unnecessarily. The fifth or sixth time through Harry's Office Block you can become a blur and use Missiles exclusively since they kill almost everything in one hit and go through walls, but the scenery isn't varied and exciting enough to make those multiple preparatory playthroughs that thrilling. It's a struggle, and getting stuck just reduces the fun to zero.
I guess I'm thinking of Yo! Joe! here - there, even when you go the wrong way it's the right way and there's bonuses.
I'll have to play Zombie Wars at some point and see if they changed it!
It's not a sequel or anything but if Doom 2 wads/mods are something you dig, there's a decent 8 map one vaguely themed around Halloween Harry entitled Alien Bastards as well. https://www.moddb.com/games/doom-ii/addons/dbp13-alien-bastards
ReplyDeleteIt seems that FUNET is the Finnish university network, which is where Linus Torvalds uploaded the first release of Linux, back in 1991, to nic.funet.fi/pub/OS/Linux. It's like deeper magic from before the dawn of time.
ReplyDeleteIt still has Atari ST and NeXT software. The Amiga section has Soundtracker, and a directory called "ancient" that has a bunch of files taken from a server called FINTUVM in 1990! There aren't many files on the internet with a creation date of 1990.
I remember this game rather fondly - back in a time where I was strapped for pocket money, first episodes of shareware games were my primary source for new games, and this one (along with Jazz Jackrabbit and Traffic Department 2192) was one of the better designed ones, even if it was still inferior to Amiga- or console platformers. For a DOS action game, it was alright.
ReplyDeleteI remember that back in those days, my sister was learning Russian in school and was in a student's exchange program, and we had a young lad from Charkov (modern-day Ukraine, though back then it was part of the Commonwealth of Independent States) staying with us for a couple of weeks. He had never used an IBM PC before, let alone played games on one. He absolutely fell in love with this game! I guess Not having any frame of reference might have been a factor here, but he so taken in by that little shareware episode that he basically spent most of his time with us just playing this one game.
Haha awesome! :D Glad I could bring back some memories.
DeleteI remember being pretty happy with this game back in the day – though I had forgotten about that insanity with the destructible barrels, and the other barriers that you're supposed to blow up with missiles are hardly fair at all. But it was an interesting twist on things compared to Keen and Duke Nukem.
ReplyDeleteBefore they made Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, the developers also made Flight of the Amazon Queen, a rather delightful point-and-click adventure that was eventually released as freeware and is now easily playable with ScummVM. It is easy to recommend if you enjoy that sort of thing.
Yeah, I've beaten Flight of the Amazon Queen. :) I especially liked the tiny 'Interview' add-on that comes with it where Joe can talk to the developers. If you want to see it on the site, ask Ray.
Delete