Every John Carpenter game: from Halloween on the Atari to Toxic Commando

John Carpenter made Halloween, The Thing and Escape from New York, and he is also a long-time and very keen gamer. Count every game he is connected to and you get ten: games based on his films, with his music, his face or his voice. The first came out on the Atari 2600 in 1983, the latest in September 2026. Below are all ten in order, with their scores, what Carpenter himself did on each, and which one to start with.

The timing is simple: Halloween: The Game just came out, Halloween is a month away, and Toxic Commando, with Carpenter's name in the title, has been on sale since March. More than half the games based on his films have come out since 2016.

Halloween, Atari 2600, October 1983: a babysitter against a nameless killer

The first game based on a Carpenter film arrived five years after the film itself. It came from Wizard Video, the video label of producer Charles Band, which held the home video rights to Halloween. Tim Martin, who had come over from the bankrupt Games by Apollo, programmed it.

You play a babysitter running between the floors of a house, leading children to safe rooms while a man with a knife wanders after you. Nobody in the game has a name, not even Michael. What it does have is Carpenter's main theme, which kicks in when the killer appears on screen. And it has something the film never did: catch the babysitter and her head vanishes, blood spurts from her neck, and she keeps running around like that.

It sold poorly in the year the US video game market crashed. Many cartridges shipped with no label at all, just a strip of tape with "Halloween" written on it in marker. Today it is a rarity Atari collectors hunt for. Wizard Video released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same year, so the two slasher licences met long before Gun Interactive came along.

Big Trouble in Little China, 1986: 34 percent from Zzap!64

The film hit cinemas in 1986, and that same year Electric Dreams put out a game for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC, designed by Mev Dinc. It is a scrolling brawler that, for some reason, runs from right to left. You switch between three heroes: Jack Burton with a gun, Wang Chi with swords and Egg Shen with magic.

It did not go down well. Your Sinclair first gave the Spectrum version 8 out of 10, then years later cut it to 52 percent in a retrospective. Zzap!64 rated the Commodore 64 version 34 percent and later dropped that to 18. Carpenter had nothing to do with it; it was a standard film licence.

Sentinel Returns, 1998: the first game with Carpenter's music

This is where Carpenter works on a game himself for the first time. Sentinel Returns is the sequel to Geoff Crammond's The Sentinel, an odd puzzle game about taking the high ground across 651 levels, released on PC and PlayStation under the Psygnosis label. Carpenter wrote its soundtrack, an album called "Earth/Air", arranged by Gary McKill.

The game itself is dark and uneasy, with white trees and boulders that seem to breathe, and Carpenter's gloomy synths suit it perfectly. The video above is the full soundtrack. It is worth a listen just to hear the hand behind The Thing and The Fog turn up in a game about abstract landscapes.

The Thing, 2002: a sequel to the film and over a million copies

Still the best Carpenter game there is. It was made by the British studio Computer Artworks and published by Vivendi Universal and Konami on PC, PS2 and Xbox. The story picks up where the 1982 film ends: Captain Blake's squad flies into the Antarctic station to find out what happened there.

The clever part is your squadmates. Any of them could be the Thing, and if your team does not trust you or is too scared, they stop following orders. For a 2002 action game that was a bold idea. Carpenter endorsed the game and let them use his likeness: he shows up as a scientist, Dr. Faraday.

Critics gave it 78 on PS2 and Xbox and 77 on PC, and it sold over a million copies. A sequel was already in the works, but Computer Artworks went under in 2003 and it never happened.

F.E.A.R. 3, 2011: Carpenter helps shape the cutscenes

Carpenter is a fan of the F.E.A.R. series and offered to help with the third one himself. According to Warner Bros. on the game's store page, he helped craft the cinematics for maximum fright, while comic writer Steve Niles co-wrote the story with the team. Developer Day 1 Studios, released on 21 June 2011 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

It ended up more about co-op shooting than fear, and fans of the first game noticed. Metacritic has it at 74 on PC from 34 reviews, and Steam at 71 percent positive from 13,692 reviews. It is still on sale there for $19.99.

Dead by Daylight, October 2016: the first licensed chapter

On 25 October 2016 Dead by Daylight got its Halloween chapter: Michael Myers as the killer called The Shape, Laurie Strode as a survivor, and a Haddonfield map. It was the game's first paid chapter and its first licensed one. That started a tradition that later brought in Freddy Krueger, Pinhead and dozens of other borrowed villains.

Michael stayed in the store for over nine years. The chapter was delisted on 19 January 2026, ahead of the new Halloween game. If you bought it before then, you still have him. More on him and the rest in our guide to every Dead by Daylight killer.

Call of Duty, September 2024: Michael Myers in Warzone

On 17 September 2024 Activision launched Season 6 of Modern Warfare III and Warzone with The Haunting event, and Michael Myers became an operator. He came instantly with the Battle Pass, along with the "Haddonfield Takedown" finishing move and a Holger 556 blueprint with his face on it.

It is the shortest appearance on this list, and the biggest by reach: a masked Michael running around Warzone maps next to soldiers and monsters. It meant nothing directly for Carpenter, but for people who have never seen the film it probably did more for the character than all the 80s games combined.

The Thing: Remastered, December 2024: 90 percent on Steam

On 5 December 2024 Nightdive Studios, the specialists in bringing old shooters back, released a remaster of The Thing. The same twenty levels with updated graphics and controls, but underneath it is the 2002 game. It costs $29.99 on Steam.

Players liked it more than anything else on this list: 90 percent positive from 1,424 reviews. Critics were tougher, 67 on PC and 72 on Xbox Series X. They praise the careful restoration and knock the mechanics that have aged over twenty-odd years: constant hints and a not very bright squad. Here is how the remaster looks in a player's recording:

Toxic Commando, March 2026: his name, his music and his voice

The only game with Carpenter's name right in the title. It was announced at Summer Game Fest in June 2023 and released by Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment on 12 March 2026 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series. It is a four-player co-op shooter in the spirit of 80s action films: scientists wake up the Sludge God, he turns people into zombies, and a team of mercenaries is hired to clean up the mess.

Carpenter did more than lend his name. He wrote the music with his son Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, the same trio behind the scores for the new Halloween films. In the animated trailer he voices the zombie god himself. And at the announcement he summed the game up: "They blow up real good and there are a ton of them."

Metacritic has it at 72 on PC from 43 reviews and 73 on PS5; Steam at 73 percent positive from 7,233. Everyone agrees on one thing: the shooting is fun, the originality is thin. It costs $39.99.

Halloween: The Game, September 2026: Michael in third person

The newest Carpenter game came out on 8 September 2026. It was made by IllFonic, the studio behind Friday the 13th: The Game, and published by IllFonic and Gun Interactive. Inside are a one-versus-four asymmetric multiplayer mode and a six-chapter story seen through Michael's own eyes, and Carpenter's main theme once again comes in right on cue.

We gave it 5 out of 10: the film's details and the music are there, but performance, a blurry image and the character models let it down. The details are in our Halloween: The Game review. On Steam it sits at 67 percent positive, the lowest of every game on this list that has reviews. Here is how it looks without the marketing gloss:

Not his games, but they would not exist without him: Metal Gear and Dead Space

Solid Snake takes his name from Snake Plissken in Escape from New York, one of the heroes Hideo Kojima pieced his soldier together from. Kojima never hid it: in Metal Gear Solid 2 Snake goes by the alias Iroquois Pliskin. David Hayter, Snake's voice, has said he deliberately avoided sounding like Kurt Russell.

Dead Space works the other way round. The third game is said to draw on The Thing, The Fog and Halloween, and when Carpenter was asked which game he would like to adapt, he picked Dead Space: "That would make a real great movie."

What Carpenter plays himself

Carpenter plays seriously and a lot, and there is hardly any horror among his favourites. In an October 2022 interview with AV Club he said he started with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1992, and that games are "a lot more fun than directing movies".

He has also said that gameplay matters more to him than story. That is an unexpected thing to hear from a man who wrote many of his own films.

All ten games in one table

Four of the ten landed in the 2020s, and the decade is not over yet. You can see how much the appetite for slashers and 80s horror has grown: licences that sat idle for years are being picked up again.

Critics and players agree on one thing: The Thing has been the best Carpenter game for twenty-four years. Critics put the 2002 original first, Steam players the remaster. And the newest one, Halloween: The Game, comes last with players.

Where to start

Halloween for the Atari 2600 and Big Trouble in Little China are not sold officially today; you will only find them on old hardware. The Dead by Daylight Halloween chapter can no longer be bought either. If you like this format, we did the same deep dive into every Clive Barker game.

Read also

Every Clive Barker game, from Nightbreed to Hellraiser: Revival, and what happened to them

Halloween: The Game review: great details, heavy performance and a confusing score system