CarnEvil

About

CarnEvil is a 1998 arcade rail shooter from Midway Games that swaps space marauders for clowns with chainsaws. Players use a light gun to blast through a haunted carnival’s shifting attractions, from a creaking funhouse to a nightmare circus. The single-player and multiplayer modes task you with surviving waves of ghouls and gore-slicked monsters while dodging environmental hazards. The protagonist’s shotgun becomes a lifeline as they barrel through procedurally generated chaos, aiming to escape the resurrected ringmaster’s domain. The game stands out for its unapologetic over-the-top violence and macabre sense of humor. Its graphic content and dark comedy made it a polarizing hit in arcades, though it never made the leap to home consoles. Despite its age, CarnEvil remains a benchmark for the genre’s extremes, blending rapid-fire action with a twisted carnival aesthetic. Its cult following persists, with arcades still hosting the game as a relic of late-90s excess.

Storyline

The game is set in the fictional town of Greely Valley, Iowa. An urban legend claims that if a golden token is inserted into the jester's mouth on top of the tombstone of Ludwig von Tökkentäkker, a ringmaster buried in the cemetery, a haunted amusement park will rise from the earth. The game begins with group of kids taking a spooky hayride tour through the Greely Valley cemetery, courtesy of the local "ghost expert" Spooky Sam. The unnamed protagonist leaves the tour and approaches Tökkentäkker's tombstone to find a golden coin sitting in its slot. The protagonist inserts the coin into the jester's mouth, resulting in the legendary undead carnival rising from the ground. Trapped inside, he takes a shotgun from the shooting gallery and uses it to fight off hordes of undead monsters and other creatures in order to escape. After fighting through the Haunted House, Rickety Town, and the Freak Show, he enters the Big Top to face Tökkentäkker directly aboard his airship. Soon after killing Tökkentäkker, his airship is destroyed and the protagonist falls from it. In the morning, he and the only other survivor, Betty, wake up in front of the tombstone, where the coin falls back into its slot. The protagonist then takes the token and inserts it again into the mouth of the jester, much to Betty's horror.