Shadow of The Beast, what a pile of crud on the Atari ST.

[ZEUSDAZ]

Shadow of The Beast on Amiga was a moment in time, a moment where if we could pin point that moment in the Amiga's life where we finally started to witness the beginning of ST ports coming to an end and start to witness the true power of the A500, this was it.


The game It'self certainly hasn't aged that well nor was it a particular good game back in the day but let's be honest it was a show stopper on the Amiga when it was released, that lush sounding music, the atmosphere and all the beautiful parallax scrolling certainly had many ST owners mopping up their tears,...then it was ported to the Atari ST,...oh good lord be careful for what you wish for


I myself was an ST owner back in 1988 before I sold it and bought my Amiga thanks to Hybris so I'm certainly no ST hater but even I have to admit this port is a choppy ugly piece of crud, makes many of us wonder what on earth were they thinking trying to port it in the first place, it stank.


This is a paid request by youtuber "I Like Roaming" who wants to see this land into the biggest poo tsunami.


SOTB Video Review: [ Show youtube player ]

[gimbal]

Shadow of the Beast without music... that's the only reason I would play it to begin with :/

[alexh]

What could have been.

https://twitter.com/keithclarkcouk/s...ZjFhjj8Hg&s=19

[Trunchis]

SotB ports range from decent to plain bad. Any software tailored to the strengths of one platform, especially one with so much custom hardware as the Amiga, is going to fare quite poorly when ported to other platforms without the same hardware capabilities.

[Megalomaniac]

The ST version of Wrath of the Demon is also proof of what could have been. I don't think anyone would claim that the ST could match what Amiga SoTB did, but it was certainly a lot closer than that would have you believe. Was this the first lame port FROM Amiga TO ST? It probably felt like karma for a lot of Amiga owners back then.

[RichL]

Are we being a little too harsh here? Yes it is shit but the Amiga original was more of a tech demo than a game - which took advantage of every extra chip the Amiga had that we all know the ST didn't have.

Game was shit full stop. Was just something (as everyone seems to say) run in the shop window for shock and awe and try and sell Amigas.

[Marce]

loi the zx spectrum version scroll better and have music+sfx
take a look

[ Show youtube player ]

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by ZEUSDAZ

Shadow of The Beast on Amiga was a moment in time, a moment where if we could pin point that moment in the Amiga's life where we finally started to witness the beginning of ST ports coming to an end and start to witness the true power of the A500, this was it.


The game It'self certainly hasn't aged that well nor was it a particular good game back in the day but let's be honest it was a show stopper on the Amiga when it was released, that lush sounding music, the atmosphere and all the beautiful parallax scrolling certainly had many ST owners mopping up their tears,...then it was ported to the Atari ST,...oh good lord be careful for what you wish for


I myself was an ST owner back in 1988 before I sold it and bought my Amiga thanks to Hybris so I'm certainly no ST hater but even I have to admit this port is a choppy ugly piece of crud, makes many of us wonder what on earth were they thinking trying to port it in the first place, it stank.


This is a paid request by youtuber "I Like Roaming" who wants to see this land into the biggest poo tsunami.


SOTB Video Review: [ Show youtube player ]

Zeus, the only replay factor on SOTB is the fantasy world devised by Roger Dean, and the incredible musics made by David Whitakker.

The Beat em up side is not that good. It's the world you evolve in, the atmosphere, the music.

Just for this, even with cheat mode, it's very pleasant to do.

[Megalomaniac]

Shadow of the Beast doesn't have great gameplay behind its technical marvels, but there were plenty of later games which did. It was the first game by a big non-US company which lead with the Amiga version rather than the ST, and it did things the ST couldn't do. How many STs were replaced on Christmas lists with Amigas that year as a direct result? (The farcical way the STe was launched (the included game didn't work on it...) almost certainly didn't help though)

[Marce]

about the eternal discussion if shadow of the best if is a demo or a game:

shadow of the best is not a demo and have a good gameplay
it happens the Amiga version is hard and it requires certain level of play-abilities that most of the players lack

however the PC engine version is better than the Amiga version in this because is easier and perhaps the best version of all shadow of the best out there

[CCRider]

Originally Posted by Marce

shadow of the best is not a demo and have a good gameplay

Lolwut

Originally Posted by Marce

however the PC engine version is better than the Amiga version in this because is easier and perhaps the best version of all shadow of the best out there

There's no PC Engine version.

It's for the PCE-CD, which is a different beast (huh) altogether. Just like a MegaCD-equipped Mega Drive isn't just a Mega Drive.

[Retro-Nerd]

It's for the PCE-CD, which is a different beast (huh) altogether. Just like a MegaCD-equipped Mega Drive isn't just a Mega Drive.

Not really. The Mega CD has its own 68000er CPU with 12,5MHz. And an additional graphics chip with scaling an rotating abilities, 8 PCM channels audio too . The PC-Engine CD adds a bit more RAM and instructions via the System Cards. But it's nothing compared to the Mega CD.

[CCRider]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Not really. The Mega CD has its own 68000er CPU with 12,5MHz. And an additional graphics chip with scaling an rotating abilities, 8 PCM channels audio too . The PC-Engine CD adds a bit more RAM and instructions via the System Cards. But it's nothing compared to the Mega CD.

...but the CD add-on for the PCE turns its game library orders of magnitude more interesting.

What justifies the shitloads of money spent on a MegaCD, again?

[Retro-Nerd]

That's true. But a lot of them still in Japanese. The Mega CD had actually good games.


Snatcher (English)
Lord's of Thunder
Lunar SS/EB
Popful Mail
Terminator (much better than the cartridge version)
Final Fight (good arcade port)
Keio Flying Squadron
Heart of an Alien
Shining Force CD (port of the Game Gear titles)

But i agee. The PC-Engine CD/TurboGrafx-16 CD version of Beast has the best playability. And a damn good CD soundtrack.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by alexh

What could have been.

https://twitter.com/keithclarkcouk/s...ZjFhjj8Hg&s=19

The weird thing is, I didn't even know the STE existed back in the day.
And i was quite into reading gaming mags etc in 1989.

It's like nobody cared.

[coder76]

Atari ST didn't have a blitter or support for hardware horizontal scrolling, no sprites, copper, or dualplayfield. Its sound chip was also poor compared to Amiga's sound chip. Go ahead, try to do a better version on the Amiga, without using Amiga's custom chips except for screen setup. That means plotting out all pixels with the 68000 CPU and also scrolling, like on Atari ST.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

The weird thing is, I didn't even know the STE existed back in the day.
And i was quite into reading gaming mags etc in 1989.
It's like nobody cared.

I think you must have missed it. Maybe it was already out when you started reading them? It was a big deal in ACE and Amiga/ST format.

[Megalomaniac]

The ST version of Wrath of the Demon, with lovely full-screen parallaxing and much better music, albeit much the same limited gameplay, proves that they could have done better with ST Beast. Actually, the C64 versions of both Shadow (though that's admittedly a cartridge) and Wrath don't look THAT much worse than ST Beast.

ST owners did suffer from this later - the ST versions of Cannon Fodder and Robocod were both borderline unplayable because of the scrolling (and both got rave reviews in the ST magazines of the time...). I don't think any of the tricks discussed in that ST scrolling thread would be workable for multidirectional scrolling like those games need. I guess ST Beast technically did convert the gameplay quite well.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by alexh

I think you must have missed it. Maybe it was already out when you started reading them? It was a big deal in ACE and Amiga/ST format.

Mmhm no, started reading Happy Computer (from which the gaming part evolved later on into Powerplay) from around early 1986, and up into 1991. Also ASM and a couple of others. Plus some 68000er and the Amiga Magazine.

But no special ST magazines, I have to admit.

But I cannot remember the STE being a thing back then, on the contrary to the Mega ST series, which even a couple of people I knew had, since they did a lot of text writing and DTP stuff, which these machines were amazing for back in the day.

Also I spent a lot of time in computer stores back then to meet other Amiga scene(and general homecomputer) people, and I never saw an STE I think. At least not consciously.

Very weird.

add/edit: Checked it, there was a test of the STE in the very last Happy Computer in February 1990 before it rebranded, and I remember not buying the mag anymore in late 89 because it had lost all that fun stuff and was on its way to become a boring PC magazine that got rebranded and finally cancelled a few issues later.

[Megalomaniac]

Guess it depends where you lived. STs outsold Amigas massively in the UK in its early days (3 times as many STs here as Amigas in mid-1988 according to issue 1 of ST/Amiga Format), and even though Amigas were selling faster by the time the STe launched there were still more STs in use, so over here the STe was a big deal (though not entirely for the right reasons). Germany was Amiga dominated by then, the US likewise, think it was only really France where the ST was never outsold by the Amiga.