Death of a Showman

Death of a Showman is the opening mission in the 2006 video game Hitman: Blood Money (produced by IO Interactive and published by Eidos).

The mission serves as a training mission which was implemented to aid players new to the Hitman series and experienced players of the prequels. A training mission of such complexity as this has not been seen in the previous Hitman titles. Both Hitman: Codename 47 (PC) and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox) featured relatively short training missions whilst Hitman: Contracts had an extremely lacking training option in the main menu which was looked upon as poor by many players of the game. The main need for a relatively larger training mission was the amount of new and varied features implemented into the game.

The main premise was to kill Joseph "Swing King" Clarence, an ex-amusement park owner, who after the big wheel at his park collapsed, was forced to shut the park down. Since, it had become a crack factory and a gang hotspot. The area is crawling with gangsters, acting as 47's targets.

Due to the amount of new features that are introduced and displayed in this mission it was an obvious choice for the demo which was released AbOUT two or three weeks before the official release of the full game. This proved unpopular with many fans especially as it was an early build of the mission and numerous features which were included in the full game were not included in the demo which caused slight panic amongst Hitman fans.

The Hitman: Blood Money PC Demo is available for free download at the official website.1