Total Carnage is a multidirectional shooterarcade video game originally developed and published by Midway in North America on January 1992. Set in the fictional country of Kookistan during 1999, players assume the role of Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem from the Doomsday Squad in a last-ditch effort to overthrow dictator General Akhboob and his army of mutants from conquering the world, while also rescuing POWs held by his military force. Total Carnage was created by most of the same team who previously worked on Williams' 1990 arcade gameSmash TV and shares many gameplay elements with the aforementioned title. Initially released in the arcades, the game was later ported to other home computers and consoles by different third-party developers including the Amiga, Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, Game Boy, MS-DOS and Super Nintendo Entertainment System, with each one featuring several changes compared to the original version. The arcade original has since been re-released through compilations for various consoles. Conversions for both the Sega CD and Sega Genesis were also in development but never released. Total Carnage received positive reception from critics who reviewed the original arcade release, however it was considered a financial flop and failed to met its sales number target, while the home computer and console ports were met with mixed critical response. After the game did not managed to meet sales expectations, designer Mark Turmell would go on to work the highly successful NBA Jam.
Gameplay
Total Carnage is a multidirectional shooter game similar to Smash TV where players assume the role of Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem from the Doomsday Squad across three stages, each with a boss at the end that must be fought before progressing any further, in a last-ditch effort to overthrow dictator General Akhboob and his army of mutants from conquering the world by invading Akhboob's "Baby Milk Factory" base, while also rescuing POWs held by his military force as the main objective. Players move their respective characters with the left joystick, while the right joystick shoots bullets against enemies. Players can also enter a passwordat the beginning of the game to warp their player character into any location of the game. Getting hit by enemy fire or colliding against dangerous stage obstacles will result in losing a life and once all lives are lost, the game is over unless the players insert more credits into the arcade machine to continue playing. The weapons have been modified, at death, the user gets a rapid-fire gun instead of the normal gun, the rocket launcher now also shoots ball-bullets and is slower, the game also features two types of flamethrowers: one that shoots regular fire, one that shoots blue fire at larger ranges. The grenade lobber is faster than its Smash TV counterpart and shoots blue grenades, instead of yellow and grey ones. The game shares many gameplay elements with Williams' previous title, while also adding new ones as well including two-player simultaneous play, stage scrolling, large enemy vehicles, the ability to collect and place bombs, and a much wider range of gameplay scenarios.
Development
Arcade version
Total Carnage was created by most of the same team behind Williams' Smash TV, some of which would also later go on to work at other Midway franchise such as Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam. Mark Turmell served as lead developer and programmer of the project alongside Shawn Liptak and co-creator Eugene Jarvis. Artists Jim Gentile, John Tobias and Tony Goskie were responsible for the pixel art, while Jonathan Hey was in charge of its sound design. Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon was the voice of General Akhboob. Originally the game was programmed to display one of two endings upon completion of the Pleasure Dome bonus stage. One ending would feature the women and playable characters from Smash TV and was to be displayed if the player collected all the treasures in the dome. A second "bad" ending showed the same screen without the women along with a message challenging the player to collect all the dome's treasure. However, a bug in the game caused the "good" ending to be displayed with the "bad" ending text no matter how many treasures were collected. The bug was uncovered during the testing for 2012's Midway Arcade Origins compilation. In response, Turmell stated that he remembers writing working code for both endings, but was not sure why the code was changed. He suggested that he might have kept the bug as a joke on players and went unfixed in Origins.
Amiga version
The Amiga and CD32 versions were created by Scottish developer ICE Software, with Keith Weatherly and Simon Fox acting as programmers of the conversion, while Ellen Hopkins and Mike Jary were responsible for adapting the artwork as well. Both Weatherly and Fox recounted the development process and history of the Amiga version between 1993 and 1994 through publications such as The One for Amiga Games and Amiga Format. Weatherly and Fox stated that the conversion took over a year to develop with Midway supervising its production and the team originally had plans to integrate elements that were scrapped from the original arcade release but were ultimately discarded in the end. Midway provided both artwork and source code of the arcade original to the team at ICE, although adapting the former into the Amiga proved to be difficult, as both Weatherly and Fox stated that the number of colors and animations were reduced to fit the hardware.
Release
Total Carnage was first released in arcades by Midway on January 1992. In late 1993, The game was ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Black Pearl Software and published by Malibu Games. This version mimics the dual control aspect of the arcade original by mapping the console's four main buttons like a D-pad, enabling the player to shoot in one direction while running in another. On February 1994, a Game Boy port of the title was released by Malibu Games across North America and Europe. In mid-1994, it was also ported to the Amiga and Amiga CD32 by ICE Software. Around the same time period, a MS-DOS conversion by British developer Hand Made Software was released as well. The original arcade game was first re-released in 2004 as part of Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCubegame consoles. In 2005, an Atari Jaguar version by Hand Made Software that previously went unpublished was released worldwide by Songbird Productions, nearly ten years after work on the game originally began. The arcade version was later re-released in 2006 as part of Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition for the PC and in 2012 as part of Midway Arcade Origins for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Cancelled ports
Versions for both the Sega CD and Sega Genesis were in development by Black Pearl Software and planned to be published by Malibu Games but neither port were officially released to the public for unknown reasons, despite being advertised and previewed in a few video game magazines. A prototype cartridge of the Genesis port is currently under ownership of video game collector Jason Wilson.
Reception and legacy
According to Liptak, Total Carnage failed to reach the target of 2,000 arcade cabinets ordered. The game's slow sales resulted in Turmell taking on a different project for his next game, which would become the highly successful NBA Jam. In a coin-op feature, Sinclair User rated the arcade game a 96 and called it a "classic cartoon style cathartic experience", dubbing it the "best game of 1992". In 2009, the game's trademark was abandoned.
