Shadow of the Beast

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Machine: Commodore Amiga, and many others

At the time Shadow of the Beast was legendary in the true sense of the word. There were whispers flooding my high school playground - "Have you seen Shadow of the Beast yet? No? It's like the best game ever!" It wasn't, even then. My mate finally got a copy for his Amiga and we all piled around his house and gathered around his screen as it booted up. WOW! Look at the graphics! WOW! Listen too the music! It was stunning - for the time it really was incredible to see it and hear it, but to play it, well that was a different story.

Shadow of the Beast is one of the dullest games in existence, you run left... or you run right... across a beautiful at first but then all too repetitive lanscape... sometimes you hit something. It was like some 60s Hannah-Barbara cartoon gone horribly awry. Yes it pushed graphics and sound to a new level but it did it without any imagination at all. The imagery is straight from some sub-Tolkein fantasy and the soundtrack is the most offensive 'pan-pipe moods' affair I have ever heard.

The joke of jokes is that Shadow of the Beast was so popular that it was ported on to every conceivable platform of the age, from the Sega Master System to the ZX Spectrum. These machines were clearly incapable of producing the required graphics or sound leaving just the terrible, terrible game. "Have you seen Shadow of the Beast yet?" "Yep. It's crap."

Jakey 21 Oct '03

If you hate Shadow of the Beast, bin it and try:

Guardian Heroes
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Gunstar Heroes
Breaking the sprite barrier. More...

Streets of Rage
A multi-player scrolling fighter that leaves a lasting impact. More...