Halloween: The New Nightmare (Jadeware, 2001) Level 1: It's time to kick ass and kleg Deplas
8This is a playthrough of Halloween: The New Nightmare, the most Google-proof game ever made. As far as I can tell, this game was created by a bunch of French college kids in 2001 as a student project as their loving tribute to games like Quake. Well, about as much a tribute as the macaroni art you made for your mom when you were 5 at least. I've been interested in this game ever since MarphitimusBlackimus showed it off 8 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hE5qXieZms
I was instantly mesmerized by the "soundtrack" and 1994 Doom PWAD level design in a commercial product--one originally retailing for $24.95 at that! In late 2017, I was inspired to search for Halloween after New Blood's Dusk reminded me of it. To my surprise, I found out the original creator was offering it for free on his website with a native 64-bit version to boot!
http://www.jadegame.com/games/halloween
However, I was crushed to find out that the version offered on the website had broken controls. Fortunately, the free copy came with a key that I could redeem on a 2001 demo from Fileplanet:
https://www.fileplanet.com/88071/80000/fileinfo/Halloween-Demo-v1.999
Some notes on Halloween:
-Sadly, the avant-garde dubstep (...yeah, let's call it that) from Marphy Black's video is nowhere to be found in this version. You wouldn't even know how crushed I was when I discovered this.
-The skipping you hear in the music tracks is not a result of any glitches. It's really intended to sound like that.
-The only difference between the 2001 build and the 2004 build (not counting the broken controls) is that the first few levels aren't fullbright. That's it. Jadeware didn't even bother to fix the flame .GIF's transparency.
-Even though the game has weapon and ammo pickups, you are given all 4 weapons from the start with unlimited ammo. This seems to be unintentional, but hey--I'm not complaining.
-This game has some of the worst hit detection I have ever seen, which isn't helped by the fact that the guns have delayed firing and the Tromblon is NOT hitscan.
-Hard mode, as far as I can tell, is impossible to complete. It's not even just the fact that you take 20 damage from every attack, but rather that they don't give you nearly enough time to find all the letters and kill all the enemies.
-You're going to be seeing huge drops in framerate down to single-digits throughout this playthrough, but it's not because I'm running this on a potato or anything. Halloween actually runs like this and I have no idea what would remedy this besides an Intel i7-7700k overclocked to 5.0GHz.
-The use key doubles as a taunt button, which is why you'll hear Satan keep saying "Maybe you should try aiming next time" throughout the playthrough.
-Yes, the Tromblon sound effect is stolen from Quake 3.