remember Shadow of the Beast?

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skykiii

skykiii

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Jun 17, 2018

Usually I do these threads for games I like or consider underrated.

Shadow of the Beast though is... an odd case.

The actual gameplay is not good, like at all. I tried to play it on an Amiga emulator and quickly found it to be an irritating experience, made worse by A) being a "where the fuck do you go?" game and B) you only get one life, no saves, no continues. Die once and you restart.

... But damn do I love the vibes!

Shadow of the Beast may not be fun to play, but watching a longplay from someone who knows what they're doing, it can feel like an experience. The visual and audio aesthetic are weird, surreal, dreamy, somehow both unsettling but at the same time, pleasant. It brings me back to the 16-bit days like nothing else.

Honestly, I sort of wish there were more games that had this kind of feel. It seems like they mostly died out after the 16-bit era ended. Someone once told me that Dark Souls is close, but Dark Souls is more morose and depressing--Shadow of the Beast has a weird sort of pleasantness about it.

Shadow of the Beast had two sequels, and I think there was an attempt at a revival. Most notably, Beast II has the best game over sequence ever:


Like.... that doesn't even feel like a game over sequence. It feels more like your soul ascended or something. Actually if I didn't know that was the Game Over sequence, I would assume this guy is getting a cosmic power-up.

Anyway, anyone know games that have similar vibes?
 
I never had an Amiga or played the game, but the multiple layers of parallax scrolling in the overworld are really impressive.
 
I never had an Amiga but I was really impressed with the way this game looked when I read about it in a magazine. Eventually I was able to get the TurboGrafx CD version of it and along with the visuals it has a great soundtrack:


It does, unfortunately, play like dog shit so it's not a game I'd recommend.
 
I remember playing this on Amiga a million years ago. Love the atmosphere and music.
 
One of the most brutally difficult series of games I have ever played. Makes Castlevania look like a Fisher Price educational toy.

I do agree the presentation was really solid though.
 
I discovered this series while looking for amiga music in YT. Immediately hooked me with the ethereal aesthetic of both the game and music. The amiga was ahead of its time but unfortunately it couldn't keep the momentum on its later years.
 
The music from SotB 2 and 3 is amazing and I can listen to it on repeat. I even tabbed some of the soundtrack from 3 for bass. I'm really glad that it's available in MOD format and I can play it in a tracker and isolate channels.

I finished 3 on an emulator a few years ago and it was enjoyable. I love the paralax scrolling. If you're going to play it, I'd recommend creating lots of save states because there's a few parts where you can get 100% stuck and you have to restart the level.

 
Calandrino said:
One of the PS4's countless high-quality exclusives
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This just reminded me that Sony owns Psygnosis now, which is probably the reason a lot of their Amiga classics don't get ported to modern platforms--in particular Lemmings seems like its stuck on Sony. Sucks, Lemmings would be perfect for a platform like the Switch.
 
skykiii said:
Anyway, anyone know games that have similar vibes?
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I notice nobody attempted to answer your question. Though it's not really similar at all, the shmup Apidya is probably the best Amiga action game I have played. That one delivers the cool atmosphere and Chris Huelsbeck music while actually playing well. It's a lot better than Agony (the owl shmup) despite not being as well-known.

Was gonna say it's a pity it's doomed to be an unknown game trapped on ancient hardware forever, but turns out it's getting remade/remastered/rereleased/etc after all:

 
I only know it because it was the theme (including the music) to one of the levels in Lemmings (at least the Mac version).
 
Xarpho's Return said:
I only know it because it was the theme (including the music) to one of the levels in Lemmings (at least the Mac version).
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"A Beast of a Level" is also in the Amiga and MS-DOS versions, I think its in the Sega Genesis version as well.

Lemmings had a couple of levels that were shout-outs to other games Psygnosis published, tho I've heard that by the time of the Windows release these levels all got replaced.

Calandrino said:
Was gonna say it's a pity it's doomed to be an unknown game trapped on ancient hardware forever, but turns out it's getting remade/remastered/rereleased/etc after all:
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So what I'm hearing is this game actually escaped the shadow of the beast ;)
 
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