Shadow fighter

Hi everyone, I'm Fabio from Naps Team...Shadow Fighter ? do you remember that
Well many of you don't know what we did in these years but we are still here, and alive !
www.facebook.com/ShadowFighterofficial/
www.facebook.com/naps.team/

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[vulture]

Only my favourite miggy game of all time

Welcome Fabio!

I'd like to know details about the development of Shadow Fighter and I'm sure gonna follow your FB!

Any chance you return to Amiga scene now that our games market is in much better condition?

I really hope you find a way to incorporate those extra 8 fighters in the game!

[Gzegzolka]

Nice to meet You. Shadow fighter was one of my favorites games on amiga.

Would it be possible to fix that terrible one-fire-button and add full cd32 pad support, like have 4 buttons for different actions?

[Marchie]

That game was awesome, nice one Fabio! (and Welcome!)

[Zener]

To me it is the best fighting game for Amiga in terms of playability

[aszu]

spent hours and hours playing it. as they say, take my money...

[Estrayk]

Was a very good fighting game! welcome Fabio.

[Shatterhand]

Yes, very good game. Played it a lot with friends back at the time Best original Amiga fighting game for sure (While I do think it's also a great game, IMO it played better than Fighting Spirit )

I also played Gekido on the PS1, nice game for the time

I remember reading a interview with you guys on The One magazine about Shadow Fighter, development took like 4 years because you had to do your army time, isn't true?

It's awesome you are here!

[Reido]

Great game, fond memories, dig it out every so often!

[Nishicorn]

Shadow Fighter!

This game got my blood pumping, and helped me survive some lonely, dark winter nights.

I don't get all the hate people seem to have for it - some people say it is like Yie~Ar Kung-Fu, another asked almost in shock and horror, when seeing me play this, "Why are you playing a game like this?!", and pointed me towards Tekken 2.

There must be something in this game that's obvious to other people, but I just can't see at all. Someone even described the characters looking like they don't have enough colors or something! I just don't see it - to me, this game looks, sounds and plays perfectly fine, there's nothing wrong with any area.

If you want to nitpick, there was only -one- thing that made me a bit stressed when playing this, and it was the long disk loading times (why did C64 and Amiga suffer from those so much? Couldn't Commodore design something appropriately fast, or couldn't programmers just code fast loading routines, or didn't they just care?).

Playing the WHDLoad-version fixes this, of course, so it's all good.

The AGA-graphics look better than the original ones, but it has the look of "slight improvement" insted of "completely re-drawn" graphics - a bit more color depth, a bit brighter colors here and there, and so on (I'd have to play more again to compare properly, though).

This was the first home fighter game that created real excitement since International Karate for me - nothing had been as interesting to play. Shadow Fighter, with its cool intro graphics reminded me of those Japanese game gems in the arcade side, and fast and intuitive gameplay to match.

The best part, though, is the great, exciting, pumping energy that gets you really into the game, and makes you want to play "just one more round".

The musics are a bit lackluster sometimes, but they have appropriately energetic quality to them and fast tempo that lets you keep high energy up, instead of the slow mess that so many games have, that bores you to tears and takes you out of the experience.

The female characters look appropriately kawaii in the best anime style, and I really admired Manx, the animations were so beautiful, and the movement so perfectly 'feline', the effects really interesting, and the sounds matched the whole thing perfectly.

All in all, it was a joy to play, and I ended up having three main favorite characters - Manx, Electra and Toshio.

Toshio had some really neat gameplay with those 'dragon fire' things, quick movement, and could utilize its small size so nicely in the fight. Toshio felt really agile and after enough practice, you felt truly in control of something very 'ninja' indeed.

Electra had those interesting electricity moves and effects, that made it so fun to play. I always love a bit of electricity in my games.

To me, Shadow Fighter was the home version of all those arcade fighters I always admired from afar - I could finally play something very 'anime' that's also very Street Fighter II, but in my opinion, better, because everything was a bit more quirky and energetic here, and I never quite got into the whole Street Fighter II-craze of the time - I liked it all right, but if I had to choose, Shadow Fighter was always closer to my heart.

I will glad to always be the one that defends Shadow Fighter's sometimes a bit bland and generic, but other times, mesmerizingly beautiful and inspiring graphics and animated backgrounds, its fluid, tight and wonderful gameplay, it's exciting energy and atmosphere, its subtle humor and pumping music and perfect sound effects. Heck, even the training mode is fun to play on its own! How many games can you say that about?

Shadow Fighter, among all fighting games I've played, got closest to my heart, possibly partially also because it's so Amiga - at a time, when PC was stomping Amiga with the DOS VGA games and OPL2 musics and speech and huge games that couldn't fit the Amiga anymore (at least without hard drives, which was normal on the PC side, but rare on the Amiga side)..

..it was games like Shadow Fighter that made me still have faith in the old Friend. If an energetic, inspiring game like this can be made for it, there's life in the old computer yet!

There were some other games that brought a small glimmer before I had to fall into the deep abyss and finally succumb to the urge to buy a PC. There was SlamTilt, Skidmarks, Great Courts Tennis II, BlitzBombers, Banshee, Xtreme Racing, Super Stardust, etc. and I loved all of those.

But there was something special that made me always want to return to the world of Shadow Fighter a bit more, even if just to admire the nice background sceneries with all that beautiful nature again.

I have loved many a fighting game before and since, Way of the Exploding Fist, International Karate, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat I and II, Tekken 2, Tekken Tag Tournament, Soul Calibur..

But none of the other games came as close to capturing my heart hopelessly - a game should be able to use more imagination than fighting games usually do. Or then they go to ridiculous extremes, which is not fun anymore.

Shadow Fighter stroke the perfect balance between 'cartoony with weird effects and creatures' and 'super-realistic with proper fighting moves', that no other game has found since. There are 'ridiculous' moves and effects, like the elctricity and some of the Manx's feline things - but at the same time, it always looks, sounds and feels realistic enough that it doesn't break the immersion.

I don't want some yoga guy to shoot a fireball from its crutch, but it's fun to see Manx do those 'fire-lookalike-slashes' taht look like over-exaggerated motionblur combined with something that's burning. How often do you see that in a game?

Shadow Fighter is a perfect fighting game for those that don't mind practicing a bit to perfect their skill before being able to truly score. It's not beginner-friendly, like Street Fighter or Tekken games, where you can accidentally kill your opponent without knowing what you did. There's a reason for that practice mode.

And when you have mastered your character, the gates of euphoric joy open - that's when the real fun starts, and never ends!

P.S. Is the katakana on the floor in the Japan stage supposed to say "Fabio"? The 'A' should be smaller for that, now it reads "Fuabio". You get 'FA', when you combine big 'FU' with small 'a'. You combined big 'FU' with big 'A', so it just reads 'Fuabio'.

EDIT: This doesn't seem to support IME, so I can't show you an example, which is a pity - everything should support japanese characters.

[AmigaHope]

The thing that bothered me about Shadow Fighter was its insistence on a one-button interface, which took much of the depth out of the game. A good fighting game has 4-6 different normals with their own buttons, each with their own priority, etc. and varying levels of specials depending on which buttons you use. The Fightin' Spirit developers realized this which is why you need a CD32 pad to play it "properly". In FS a controller player would utterly demolish someone using a single button joystick once they understood the ranges, frames, and priorities.

I'd love to see Shadow Fighter remade into a game with proper fighting controls.

[vulture]

@Nishicorn

I second the notion, such a brilliant fighter!

[Gzegzolka]

Yes, Shadow Fighter is awesome and it need a proper use of cd32 pad buttons.

[gimbal]

Loved the game even with only one button. Didn't love the loading times very much but you know - an A500 has limitations

[Shatterhand]

Loading times?

I was playing Shadow Fighter yesterday from Floppies just to test something random on my A600.

The loading times aren't bad at all. It's a lot better than on Super Street Fighter 2, Fightin Spirit or the Body Blows games. Disk swapping was also handled perfectly here.