25 years ago today, Snake Logan was unleashed on the world!

Snake is the star of Bio Menace, which celebrates its 25th birthday today!  The game was originally released on Aug 3, 1993!  Bio Menace was the creation of Jim Norwood, who also went on to be one of the co-creators of the original version of Shadow Warrior!

Bio Menace was released at the hight of our time in the 90's putting out side scrollers.  We had a few published at this time (the original Duke Nukem, Commander Keen), so this was a popular game.  It was later released as freeware on Dec 23, 2005, so it has been free to play for some time now.

Before the game was released, when it was in development we referred to it as "Bio Hazard".  Given the nature of the plot line and the things you ran into, that fit the theme well.  However, before the game came out, we changed it to "Bio Menace".  When we asked Jim Norwood about that, he had this to say..

"That happened because it turned out that there was some rock band named BioHazard who already held the copyright to that name. I'm not sure why we couldn't still use the name anyway since my use was for a video game versus a music brand. You'd have to ask Scott and George about the why's on that one."

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JIM LOOKS BACK

We asked Jim this week to send us some thoughts looking back on Bio Menace now that it has reached it's silver anniversary.  

Bio Menace was really the first game that I ever designed, did all the level design, art, and code for as my first full on game project. And if that wasn't enough, it had to be a Trilogy!  That was quite a project for a lone dude that was completely new to the gaming industry, but, it got done eventually and we shipped that full Trilogy in the end.

Bobby Prince did the music and I used Id's Keen Dreams engine to back the 2D game. Having the Keen Dreams engine is the only thing that made doing this game alone possible.

As John Carmack used to quote, 'There really is no such thing as a trivial game.'  So true! Every game that is worth anything is going to take significant effort to finish and bring to market. However, I had some of the most fun working on this title that I've ever had working on any game since. Working nowadays in the AAA industry, I'm no longer the 'driving force' behind new IP's and as a Senior Engineer, I am a significant contributor to really large titles, but I'm really more now a piece of machinery in the giant teams required to ship such ambitious projects. That's just how this industry has evolved and I'm ok with that. But that doesn't stop me from looking back fondly on the glory days when I lone guy could make a great selling 2D platformer by himself. In some ways, those days have come back with mobile games, and then grew again to where even top tier mobile games are still going to require a competent team to create anything great.

I did manage to do another game called Tekken Bowling for iOS while I was at Namco where I was the sole programmer for the entire project, and I worked with only one designer and two artists on it. That was the closest I've come to making a game alone since the Bio Menace days.

--- Jim

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ANGRY COSMO?

One the Bio Menace game characters looks like he could be Cosmo, only his slightly more angrier brother.  Jim seemed confused by the question when we asked him about this, as this exchange shows:

Joe Siegler: Angry Cosmo - is that what that really was?

Jim Norwood: I actually cannot remember the Angry Cosmo except vaguely? Was it cool? LOL!

JS: Here you go.  Angry Cosmo...  :)  (with a picture sent to Jim)

JN: Haha nice. Ok, but that was one of the main creatures throughout the game. I thought you meant I had added actual Cosmo as an Easter egg.

JS: No no - most folks who played the game thought it was supposed to be Cosmo - just his angrier brother or something.  Seriously - even *I* thought that back before the game came out.

JN: Well, you are right. It sure as heck looks like Cosmo!

JS: The main difference is Cosmo has those spots on him, and the suckers. But visually your character is like an Angry Cosmo.

One of the more fun things that was in this game was something called "The Apogee Room". Was a very hidden section in one of the maps where Jim Norwood, Scott Miller, & George Broussard were visualized, along with a few computers and a ton of Apogee visual gags - mostly from Commander Keen & Duke Nukem.  Here's what Jim had to say about this..   "That was all me. I loved the Easter Eggs in Commander Keen at the time and I wanted to put something similar in Bio Menace - hence the Apogee Room. :)"

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BONUS FUN!

It's always fun looking back on games like this, but today, we're going a bit beyond than what we usually do for these anniversary stories.  We've dug into the archives and found a working copy (well, after some massaging) of one of the game's betas that we are releasing for free today!

The game was actually still called "Bio Hazard" at this point, and was dated July 15, 1992. 

We've also thrown in a PDF the "Secret Moves" paper that we used to send out with Bio Menace orders placed with us.

Big thanks to Jim Norwood for allowing this to be released, and for Evan Ramos for whipping it into shape.  There were some fiddly tech issues with this release that he goes into in greater detail in the release.txt file in the game directory about what fixes had to be made to the beta for release.  Make sure and read it for additional info, as some of it is quite interesting.

You can download the zip file here: ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/freeware/bh_071592.zip

Some other Bio Menace related links for you to check out:

1) Our original Bio Menace webpage here: http://legacy.3drealms.com/menace
2) Youtube Video showing you the Apogee Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4LD6FP5Lc
3) Frenkel's Bio Menace Maps: http://legacy.3drealms.com/menace/maps/index.html
4) Apogee Legacy Interview with Jim Norwood: http://legacy.3drealms.com/news/2006/01/the_apogee_legacy_1_jim_norwoo.html
5) 3D Realms' Bio Menace Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-yLPIdIiTE

Thanks for checking this all out, and thanks for playing our games these last 25-30 years or so!

Joe Siegler
Apogee Software / 3D Realms
Aug 3, 2018

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==============================================================================

TECHNICAL STUFF FOR THIS BETA RELEASE:

There are several interesting things to note in this prototype. First and foremost, it can be seen that the final game's Episode 2 was originally slotted to be Episode 1. The final boss of the episode is a floating head of Dr. Mangle (whose art can still be found in the final game's data) rather than The Enforcer, though their behavior is functionally similar, if not identical. The in-level save feature inherited as part of the Keen Galaxy engine is still active in this build, before being disabled for technical reasons in the final game. Some of the item sprites differ in this beta. I'm sure there are more curiosities waiting to be discovered and documented.

Unfortunately, some of the files that make up the game's graphics banks were found to have experienced some kind of data corruption. The data was collected into a zip file that passed all checksum tests, meaning whatever happened took place before archival. My collaborator NY00123 stepped up and repaired the damage by inspecting it with various tools, including one of his own design, and cross-referencing with the final BM2 where necessary.

In testing, NY discovered a crash that manifests at two points in the episode, and we agreed that he would make a one-byte edit to fix the problem, improving Quality of Life for players. As copy protection, the executable performs a date check that aims to make the beta expire after a certain time. Bypassing this would require changing the system clock or intercepting the call with a TSR, but since we already modified the exe, he simply disabled the check with another one-byte change. Additionally, the executable requires a password to be entered on the command line, so we inspected the exe to find it and have provided it for you as part of PLAY.BAT. (If you wish to compare our modified exe with the original, you will need to use UNLZEXE to unpack both files.)

Unmodified versions of all edited files, as well as the original internal beta tester documentation text files, are available in the folder named "ORIGINAL". Below you can find a detailed technical description of modifications made, written by NY00123.

-Evan Ramos / Hendricks266

==============================================================================

BHAZARD1.EXE, EGAGRAPH.BH1 and EGAHEAD.BH1 were modified. Details are given
below. This text file, PLAY.BAT, and SecretMoves.pdf were not originally present.

Original timestamps (local timezone information is unavailable):

ABOUT.BH1    1992-03-22 16:40:04
AUDIOHED.BH1 1992-06-10 12:44:24
AUDIOT.BH1   1992-06-10 12:44:22
BHAZARD1.EXE 1992-07-15 22:36:40 *
CONTEXT.BH1  1992-03-15 16:24:26
CONTRART.BH1 1992-03-22 18:26:14
DEMO0.BH1    1992-07-14 03:07:12
EGADICT.BH1  1992-07-13 19:03:44
EGAGRAPH.BH1 1992-07-13 19:03:44 *
EGAHEAD.BH1  1992-07-13 19:03:44 *
ENDART.BH1   1992-07-12 19:12:16
GAMEMAPS.BH1 1992-06-17 17:17:48
GAMETEXT.BH1 1992-03-15 16:24:26
GFXINFOE.BH1 1992-07-13 19:03:46
HELPART.BH1  1992-03-22 18:07:42
MAPHEAD.BH1  1992-07-12 19:23:50
MAPTEMP.BH1  1992-07-12 19:23:46
MAPTHEAD.BH1 1992-07-12 19:23:44
MUSEINFO.BH1 1992-06-10 12:44:22
ORDERART.BH1 1992-03-23 02:09:16
README2.TXT  1992-07-15 17:06:40 *
README.TXT   1992-06-29 20:58:54 *
STORYART.BH1 1992-03-22 18:07:42
STORY.BH1    1992-03-22 16:40:04
TEDINFO.BH1  1992-07-12 19:23:48
TEDINFOE.BH1 1992-03-15 16:24:26

* The unmodified original copies can be found under "ORIGINAL".

BHAZARD1.EXE had the following edits applied, changing exactly two bytes
of code (in the LZEXE-unpacked EXE):
- The beta expiration date check (which is somewhat buggy) is skipped.
- With the original EXE, if you try to read the color sequence in "Ant Caves"
(level 3) or activate the easter egg in "Specimens Labs" (level 10), the game
will abort from a call to the StartMusic function with (virtual) level
number 20 (21st level). Based on the note from README2.TXT saying that
the amount of playable levels was reduced by 6, this was fixed
so StartMusic is called with the value of 14, leading to
playback of "Resting" (as in the final game).

The original EGA data is partially corrupted, so EGAGRAPH.BH1 and EGAHEAD.BH1
had to be recreated. ModId was used for exporting and importing graphics.
- The presence of two complete 16x16 tiles in the initially exported data gave
the hint that 7725 bytes shall be removed from some offset in EGAGRAPH.BH1
(done at offset 0x16308). This assisted with getting virtually all tiles,
which were the same as in Bio Menace ep. 2 for most. A small amount of missing
or partially corrupted tiles were simply copied from BM2.
- An internal tool was written for displaying the sprites, including the
separate EGA planes. At some point, it could let one "move" the EGA planes
around and export them as separate BMP files. Eventually, most sprites were
actually copied from BM2 as-is. It's only most of the player sprites and
other few sprites which needed more edits.
- After modifying the tool for usage with masked 8x8 tiles, it was found out
that they were exactly the same as in BM2. As for unmasked 8x8 tiles, it was
separately found out that such tiles were only added between BH1 and BM2,
not removed or replaced.
- A portion of the "This is -NOT- Shareware" picture had to be recreated.
The rest of the unmasked pictures remained intact, while the only
masked picture (used in the menu) was copied from BM2.

-NY00123
