Total Carnage

Did You Know?

• The game's characters are patterned after John Rambo, and the setting was influenced by the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
• The game's trademark was abandoned in 2009.

Gameplay

Total Carnage is a multidirectional shooter where players control Captain Carnage or Major Mayhem from the Doomsday Squad across three stages, each ending with a boss. The objective is to overthrow dictator General Akhboob and rescue POWs. Players move with the left joystick and shoot with the right; a password system allows warping to any location. Getting hit costs a life, and all lives lost ends the game unless more credits are inserted. The game adds scrolling stages, large enemy vehicles, collectible bombs that explode after a delay, and a wider range of scenarios compared to Smash TV.

Development

Total Carnage was built by many of the same people who made Smash TV, with Mark Turmell leading development and programming alongside Shawn Liptak and Eugene Jarvis, a co-creator of Robotron: 2084. Pixel art came from Jim Gentile, John Tobias, and Tony Goskie, while Jonathan Hey handled sound design. Ed Boon, co-creator of Mortal Kombat, voiced General Akhboob. The game originally had two possible endings for the Pleasure Dome bonus stage, but a glitch caused the good ending to appear with the bad ending’s text no matter how many treasures the player collected. Turmell said he remembered writing correct code for both endings but was unsure why it was altered.

Ports

The Amiga and CD32 versions were developed by International Computer Entertainment, with Keith Weatherly and Simon Fox as programmers and Ellen Hopkins and Mike Jary adapting artwork. The conversion took over a year, with Midway supervising and providing source code and artwork, though colors and animations were reduced for the Amiga. Versions for Sega CD and Genesis were developed by Black Pearl Software and planned for publication by Malibu Games, but neither was officially released; a prototype Genesis cartridge is owned by collector Jason Wilson.

Release

Total Carnage first appeared in arcades in January 1992. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System port was developed by Solid Software and published by THQ division Malibu Games in late 1993, using the console's four main buttons to mimic dual-stick control. A Game Boy port followed in February 1994, and Amiga and CD32 versions were released in mid-1994. An MS-DOS conversion by Hand Made Software appeared around the same time. The arcade game was re-released in compilations including Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (2004), Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition (2006), and Midway Arcade Origins (2012).