Halloween has many traditions. The dressing up in costumes. The giving away of candy. Bobbing for apples. Pumpkin carving. Paying homage to Gorto. Now you can add one more holiday ritual to your already full plate of terror and merriment (terriment?): a race to the death. Halloween Racer for the Gameboy Color let’s you take Halloween and racing with you wherever you go. While the objective is as simple as winning the race, the ultimate test of Halloween Racer comes before the race begins. It is here that Halloween Racer’s true menace is revealed: the character selection screen.



Racer #1 – A Ghostly Suit of Armor Riding a Floating Triangle



A Halloween staple, the Ghostly Suit of Armor Riding a Floating Triangle (GSARFT), finds himself in a race in which he simply doesn’t belong. GSARFT doesn’t remember entering a race, signing a release form, or even what he ate for breakfast that morning. His companion, the aforementioned Floating Triangle, however, is a completely different story. A complete mute, the only language Floating Triangle knows is the language of speed, but she speaks with the eloquence of Garrison Keillor and the fervor of Gilbert Gottfried. She guides her witless friend GSARFT around the race track and keeps her silent vigil, never once asking for anything in return. We can all learn a little something from Floating Triangle.



Racer #2 – Scarecrow John



Scarecrow John is a bitter, bitter man. Just two consonants and one vowel away from being the life of the party, the guy everyone wants to hang out with; Scarecrow Joe. John is a ball of rage, wrapped in a layer of contempt, surrounded by a torrent of misanthropy, encased in a steel cage of slightly dick-ish. Rather than drive an interesting vehicle of some sort, Scarecrow John floats above the earth on apparent “magic legs”, like a hay filled Lt. Dan. I was tempted to suggest that Scarecrow John rides a futuristic hoverboard, but ever since Robert Zemekis duped us into thinking they were real in that The Making of Back to the Future featurette, I’ve been half a Scarecrow John myself. Thank god the news was broken by good Christian Kirk Cameron in his own The Making of Back to the Future featurette, not to be confused with the first The Making of Back to the Future featurette. Kirk later when on to star as Buck Williams in the Left Behind movie series, god bless him. Buck Williams, coincidentally, has the same name as the guy who played Forward for the Portland Trailblazers during the 80s and often practiced at my local gym. I mention this because one of Buck’s teammates was Kiki Vandewheghe, and I really like saying Kiki Vandewheghe.



Racer #3 – Just Witch



Our third racer is Just Witch. Just Witch is your pretty standard witch on a broom. There is nothing funny about Just Witch. She is perfectly ordinary. Does she ride a mop? Nope. Standard broom. In her navy blue jumpsuit, she races competitively, yet fairly, never daring to cheat or even trash talk her opponents. Upon being victorious, Just Witch is the picture of sportmanship, neither bragging or being overly modest. Were she to lose a race, Just Witch will gracefully admit defeat, whilst congratulating the winner on their fine racing skills. Just Witch annoys the piss out of me.



Halloween Racer plays out on a number of different venues that all look pretty much the same except for a change in background picture. If you remember playing Turbo on your Colecovision, you’ll know what you in for with Halloween Racer. Not since Turbo have I experienced such a sensation of sitting absolutely still and sliding back and forth avoiding obstacles while the road scrolls by underneath me as if on a conveyor belt. The obstacles you are tasked to dodge are the scariest things on a conveyor belt since Speedy Gonzales played an Easter trick on Daffy Duck at his south of the border chocolate bunny sweatshop.

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Spiders webs litter the ground, tornadoes tear up the asphalt, and snails slowly inch their way across. That’s right, snails. Conveniently forgetting the fact that every single one of it’s racers floats above the ground, Halloween Racer makes you dodge those snails, or pay dearly.











A quick search reveals that snails and Halloween are connected in ways far greater than I imagined.

Pinball. It’s not quite a video game, it’s not quite a sport. Pinball Quest for the NES. It’s not quite a pinball game, it’s not quite an RPG. It’s something….different. I’m not sure how, but Pinball Quest made it’s way to my cellphone and since I’m too damn busy to play games anymore, the only gaming I get is when I’m sitting on the Great White Throne in my bathroom. And so it was that I met Pinball Quest. POP!POP! VIVA!GOLF and CIRCUS are the three main tables to choose from. You’d think that a circus would warrant an exclamation point, especially after it’s used with such abandon on the other two tables, but you would be wrong. It’s a somber circus; the kind with sad clowns. All these things meant nothing to me. I was there for one thing, and one thing only: RPG MODE. Like some obscene cross between The Legend of Zelda and Balls of Steel, RPG MODE has you battling skeletons, witches and warlocks with your giant, steel ball of justice. You can purchase additional bumpers and upgraded paddles from the Devil himself. Yup, Old Scratch has found himself dealing in used pinball machine parts. I guess the soul trade is not what it used to be since the end of the Inquisition.



The first stage takes place in a forest where Pinball Quest throws you into a graveyard to battle it out with a series of juvenile delinquent headstones. The dead get no eternal rest in Pinball Quest, so you must destroy their headstones and piss on their bones. All of sudden, I’m Ol’ Dirty Bastard, cuz the first level is basic and easily mastered. It’s after this level that you have your first meeting with Beelzebub, and his appearance foreshadows an even greater evil just around the corner. For all I know, this is Satan’s last appearance in Pinball Quest, because I could not, for the life of me, get past this second level. See, if the ball happens slip past your flippers, it falls all the way to Level 1 where you must battle all the way back to the top. Now, it’s bad enough that the flippers react like they are underwater, but you’ve also got to contend with a warlock throwing magical rings that paralyze them, as well. These damn flippers are so slow, I hesitate to call them flippers, at all. They’re more like gentle touchers. I guess it doesn’t make much difference when the physics call for the ball to increase it’s velocity and angle by 300% at random intervals.



What the hell does all of this have to do with Halloween? Take a look down below…

I kind of blew my wad on Drac’s Night Out. What could possibly top a game that combines my two favorite things: booby traps and sports apparel? So, it’s with reluctance that we take a look at Halloween The New Nightmare for the PC. Essentially what appears to be a Quake mod, Halloween The New Nightmare is so terrible, I barely have the strength to make fun of it. Of course, we’re here to celebrate Halloween games, not disparage them. There must be something of redeeming value in Halloween The New Nightmare. It doesn’t appear to be based on any movie or license I’ve ever heard of, but I’m too tired to do any actual research on Halloween The New Nightmare. As far as I’ve seen, Halloween The New Nightmare was released sometime between 2004 and 2007. Every time I find it mentioned on a different web page, the date has changed. You run around blocky corridors, firing blocky weapons at blocky enemies, and picking up slightly less blocky, yet still pretty damn blocky power-ups. Perhaps Halloween The New Nightmare is based on the Lego license.

I think I’ve got something. Halloween The New Nightmare has some pretty cool music and some seriously hellish sound design. I’ve taken the liberty of changing the names of some of the choice sound files to the names of some of the default Windows XP sounds. Simply download them here:





Windows XP Startup.wav





Windows XP Shutdown.wav





Windows XP Error.wav





Windows XP Ding.wav





Windows XP Critical Stop.wav



Change the underscores (damn you, FileFront!) to spaces and place them in your friend or co-worker’s “C:\Windows\Media” folder on Halloween and wait for the fun to begin.