Total Carnage
Total Carnage — frequently asked questions
- Is Total Carnage on Steam?
- No. Total Carnage is not distributed on Steam, so there is no Steam Charts or SteamDB player count for it. Its live popularity is tracked here via Twitch viewership instead.
- What platforms is Total Carnage on?
- Total Carnage is available on Arcade, Amiga CD32, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, DOS, Amiga, Atari Jaguar, CD32, Jaguar, Game Boy, MS-DOS, Super NES.
- When did Total Carnage release?
- Total Carnage was first released on December 31, 1991.
About Total Carnage
The names of the two player characters are Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem. Blast your way through the Baby Milk Factory and fight Orcus, the Mother of All Bosses. Collect keys to enter the Pleasure Domes. Many special weapons and secret areas.
Summary via IGDB.
Total Carnage on Wikipedia
Total Carnage is a twin-stick shooter arcade video game originally developed and published by Midway in North America in March 1992. Set in the fictional country of Kookistan during 1999, players assume the role of Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem from the Doomsday Squad in a last-ditch effort to overthrow dictator General Akhboob and his army of mutants from conquering the world, while also rescuing POWs held by his military force.
Source: Wikipedia (text under CC BY-SA 4.0).
Game details
- Platforms
- Arcade, Amiga CD32, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, DOS, Amiga, Atari Jaguar, CD32, Jaguar, Game Boy, MS-DOS, Super NES
- Developer
- Midway Games
- Publisher
- Midway Games
- Game modes
- Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative
- Themes
- Science fiction, Comedy, Warfare
Details via IGDB.
Reception
Every version compared
Prices, contemporary reception and the studio credited for each release
| Platform | Year | Loose | Complete | Sealed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atari Jaguar | 2005 | $86 | $95 | $180 |
Also released on: Arcade · Amiga CD32 · Super Nintendo Entertainment System · DOS · Amiga · CD32 · Jaguar · Game Boy · MS-DOS · Super NES. We haven’t priced or authenticated those versions yet.
Collector value & authenticity
Atari Jaguar · PriceCharting sold data · Verified 2026-07-24
- Region
- WW
- Released
- 2005
- Authenticity
- Med
Midway's 1992 arcade shooter, released for the Jaguar in 2005 — and sitting undated on library lists next to Cybermorph.
A Smash TV descendant by Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell with art by John Tobias — dense, loud, relentless, and built around a twin-stick control scheme the Jaguar pad cannot provide. The catalogue point is the date: this is a 2005 post-commercial release, thirteen years after the coin-op and nine after the console's discontinuation, and it appears on a great many "Atari Jaguar games" lists with no date qualifier.
How it was made
The Jaguar conversion's studio is not separately credited in the sources checked. Midway is credited for the original version, but on this era's ports the Jaguar conversion was frequently done by a different team — see the per-platform credits below before attributing it. Credited: designed by Eugene Jarvis, Mark Turmell; programmed by Mark Turmell, Shawn Liptak; art by Jim Gentile, John Tobias, Tony Goskie; music by Jonathan Hey.
Cartridge & preservation record
Cartridge ROM capacity 32 megabit (4 MB), measured from the preserved cartridge image.
Cartridge data from the No-Intro preservation database (metadata only — names, sizes and checksums, no game data).
How the Atari Jaguar version differs
Hand Made Software's Jaguar version went unpublished when the console died, and was finally released worldwide by Songbird Productions in 2005 — close to ten years after work on it began.
Sega CD and Genesis versions by Black Pearl Software were advertised and previewed but never released; a Genesis prototype cartridge is in private hands.
Also on other platforms
Arcade · Amiga · CD32 · Game Boy · MS-DOS · Super NES
How the other versions reviewed
| SNES | Allgame | 4/5 |
| Amiga | AmComputing | 50% |
| Amiga | AmFormat | 43% |
| Amiga | AmPower | 10% |
| Amiga | AmUI | 88% |
| Amiga | ASM | 2/12 |
| Amiga CD32 | ASM | 7/12 |
| Game Boy | ASM | 2/12 |
| SNES | GMaster | 90/100 |
| SNES | JP | 69% |
| SNES | PO | 75% |
| ARC | SUser | 96% |
| SNES | VGS | 64% |
These are the other versions’ scores, not this one’s. Ports of this era were frequently built by different studios, so they do not transfer.
Worth knowing
- A bug means nobody ever saw the good ending properly. Two endings were programmed for the Pleasure Dome bonus stage: a "good" one showing the women and playable characters from Smash TV if you collected every treasure, and a "bad" one showing the same screen without them plus a message daring you to go back and find the rest. A bug fires the good ending's artwork with the bad ending's text no matter how much you collected — so the reward for a perfect run is a screen telling you that you failed.
- The team that made it went on to make Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam. It was built by most of the Smash TV team at Williams: Mark Turmell as lead programmer with Shawn Liptak, and Robotron: 2084 co-creator Eugene Jarvis. The pixel art was by Jim Gentile, Tony Goskie and John Tobias — who would co-create Mortal Kombat — while Turmell went on to NBA Jam. Sound was Jonathan Hey's.
Before you buy
A modern-era release — say so plainly in the listing, because a buyer expecting period software will dispute it. Small run; verify availability before paying rarity prices.
Authenticity & condition — Atari Jaguar
Specific to the format this title shipped in
Buying a Jaguar cartridge
Cartridges are the durable half of this library — the risk is provenance, not decay. The platform has an active post-commercial scene, so the question is usually which era a cartridge is from rather than whether it still works.
- Ask for a photo of the label edge and the cartridge back. Reproductions are usually printed on adhesive photo stock and sit proud of the label recess.
- Donor shells are the common trick: sanding marks on the back, or adhesive ghosting where an older label was lifted, are the strongest signals.
- Cartridges are region-free on this platform, so a cheaper PAL copy plays on a North American console — a price difference is not evidence of a fake.
Total Carnage screenshots
Watch on YouTube
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