Hello, its blogging time again and its Halloween again and for this blog entry today, we're taking a look at an obscure 80's computer game that inspired a 90s shareware classic. And appropriately it comes from one of the scariest places I know: Australia!
Oh God! THE HORROR!
Okay okay, I meant that half jokingly, The only thing about Australia that's scary is the wildlife (Seriously, some of the animals and plants there can either kill you or put you in the hospital in under an hour!). So why are we here? Well were here because this is where the story behind the game we're covering starts, specifically in 1983, in a small town on the country side. While attending a local computer fair, teenager John Passfield discovered the game Colossal Cave Adventure. He was immediately enthralled by it and was eager to write his own games.
John Passfield
And after begging his parents to buy him a computer of his own, he eventually get ahold of one for Christmas of 1984. That computer was the only domestically made computer and one of the most popular in Australlia at the time: The Applied Technology Microbee.
The Applied Technology Microbee (1983)
The Microbee also has an interesting story to tell, sarting with applied Applied Technology themselves, founded in 1975 by Telecommunications engineer Owen Hill. at first they simply began making hobby kits for various Australian electronics magazines like Electronics Australia and ETI, as well as S-100 bus cards for hobbyist computers. But by 1978, Hill decided to pitch a computer design of his own.
An ad for Applied Technology's products in Electronics Australia (1977)
The design was effectively many of their S-100 bus cards combined onto a DG680 CPU, a Z80 Single board Computer. Later the S-100 bus was removed to decrease complexity and price. The end result was the Microbee, and it made its debut as a kit in the February 1982 issue of Your Computer Magazine for $399 Australian Dollars.
The cover of the Febuary 1982 issue of Your Computer featuring the Microbee kit
Eventually the computer caught the attention of the New South Wales Department of Education, and after a successful bid with them, the computer was repackaged in a two-tone beige and black case, and sold pre-built. The prebuilt versions started shipping in 1983 and soon the Microbee became one of the leading computers in Australlian educational market.
John took to programing immediately and durring his school holiday breaks he would sit down and write games. the first game he wrote was Chilly Willy, a clone of one his favorite games he played in arcades: Sega's Pengo, and got it published by Microbee's software publisher Honeysoft in 1984, with the game being sold on cassette tape.
Chilly Willy (1984)
After that game did well, he decied to write another one. Inspired by British ZX Spectrum games like Jet Set Willy and the 1984 film Ghostbusters, he came up with a game called Halloween Harry, and it made its debut in 1985, also being published by HoneySoft, but this time on disk as part of Honeysoft's Honeysoft Arcade Games Vol 4 compilation disk.
Halloween Harry (1985)
While were on the topic of disk drives, The Microbee used 2 different formats. Early on the Microbee used Single Sided, Single Density, 5.25 inch floppy drives, with drives being availible in moth singe and dual drive units.
Halloween Harry (1985)
While were on the topic of disk drives, The Microbee used 2 different formats. Early on the Microbee used Single Sided, Single Density, 5.25 inch floppy drives, with drives being availible in moth singe and dual drive units and also with the option to run CP/M 2.2.
Halloween Harry (1985)
But being released in 1983, it also had the chance to addopt the 3.5 floppy format from Sony, and it offered it as both seprate drives and for another computer called the Computer In A Book. This was effectivly a standard Microbee, but with an intergraded 3.5 inch drive in a book style case. The idea was that you could expand the system by volumes, so Volume 1 would contain the main computer with a disk drive and 64K of RAM, Volume 2 would contain the second drive with another 64K and so on, with a max of 4 different volumes.
The Microbee Computer In A Book
Pretty clever, but the problem was that due to the design they couldent be placed on a shelf like a book and the power supply also suffered from ventilation problems causing them to overheat.
But anyway back to the game, Starting up the game you're given a backstory which explains that in the 21st century an evil witch which has taken residence in a 13 storey building and its up to the titular ghosthunter Halloween Harry to defeat her.
Showing the influence of British ZX Spectrum Games, the gameplay bears a resemblence to Jet Set Willy and even its older brother Manic Miner Its a sinle scrren platformer where the goal is to collect items and reach the exit. However there are various monsters in the way, luckily you do have a wepon (Called a Garlic Gun in the manual) which can kill them. But you only have 13 shoots with 3 extra shots also being availible. There are 13 levels and with different items to collect in each one if you can collect the item and make it safely to the exit, but if any enemy touches you or you run out of time you die, lose all three lives and the game is over.
Halloween Harry gameplay
In terms of graphics, the game is pretty basic. Much like other computers we've talked about in the past it uses theSynertek 6545 CRT controller chip, a clone of the the Motorola MC6845 CRT controller chip, the same chip used in the BBC Micro, the Videx VideoTerm display cards for the Apple II, the later versions of the Commodore PET, and graphics cards for the IBM PC, including the MDA, Hercules, and CGA.
The chip provided text resolutions of 64 by 16 and 80 by 24 with faster clock speeds, and graphics resolutions of either 128 x 48 or 640 × 264 pixels in monochrome. While the machine was originally monocrome, it was possible to add an aditional 2K of RAM to allow for each charater to have 2 colors.
Same goes for the sound, the microbee usesa simple 2 octave speaker for mono sound. Not the best for games but it works.
Now its time to address the elephant in the room. If youre farmiliar with 90 shareware games, Youll know that Apogee Software released a game also called Halloween Harry, and thats no supprise as this game does have a relationship with that game as it was designed to be a remake.
But that beggs the question how did Halloween Harry go from being a 1985 Microbee in Australlia to a 1993 DOS Shareware title in America? Well after releasing Halloween Harry, John continued to write games including planing a sequal in 1986, but he never published them, as he was off to college.
After graduating with a degree in computer science, he took a job at a telecommunications company as a programmer. However he ended up hated it so much that it destroyed his interest in computers and started writing and drawing comics. Then while at a local comic shop run by his friend John Barry, Steve Stamatiadis Showed John an Amiga computer playing The Secret Of Monkey Island and suggested remaking Halloween Harry.
While hesitant at first, John agreed and soon work begain on a remake of the game for the Amiga. After getting 4 demo levels done, they looked for a distribution company called Medicom. Medicom just so happened to be the Australian distibuter for Apogee Software in the US. After Appogee saw the demos they contacted the 3 and asked them if they could turn the Amiga game into a DOS game, for Apogee to sell in the US.
The three agreed and after some conversion the game was released in the United States on October 10th, 1993 through shareware.
Halloween Harry (1993)
The game was quite different from its original Microbee version. It boasted 256 color VGA Grapics soundblaster music and sounds and even animated cutsceens. The plot is Earth is being invaded by aliens who turn humans into zombies in order to enslave them. Its up to Halloween Harry to save them
Halloween Harry gameplay
The game was an Immediate success and it soon became more famous than its predecesor, however Apogee saw one problem. Since the game was called Halloween Harry, many make the assumtion that it was a Halloween themed game, so they decided to change it to the more generic Alien Carnage instead
The later Alien Carnage release
Either way the game was still successful, spawing a sequal and even a cartoon seriess, but the cartoon was never made. Even today this game is regarded as one of Apogees most memorable titles. And to think that it all started with a humble obscure machine from the land down under. Thats all I have more my blog entry today, Happy Halloween, and thanks for reading, see you next time!
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