C64: Shadow of the Beast

[sandruzzo]

Amazing conversion!

[ Show youtube player ]

[malko]

Never seen it before.
Simply : Whaou !!! and the music is also amazing

[ransom1122]

It's just the Euro version.

[BarryB]

It was Cartridge only as well!

[Hewitson]

Yes, it wasn't a bad conversion. Certainly has one of the best examples of parallax I've seen in 64 games.

[lmimmfn]

Well that's pretty damn impressive for a C64

[sandruzzo]

This make me think: Are we sure that all possible power was squeezed out of Amiga?

[Bren McGuire]

The Atari Lynx port was better, even better than the Amiga version because it was actually playable!

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

The Atari Lynx port was better, even better than the Amiga version because it was actually playable!

I remember most of SOTB playability problems were conceptual: lot of dead ends and unclear paths together with very limited lifespan and way to replenish it; was that improved on the Lynx?

[malko]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

The Atari Lynx port was better, even better than the Amiga version because it was actually playable!

So many bad players in the Amiga community. Really ?

This game is more than perfectly playable. Have a look at last year's "Round 4" ("Round 8" (Beast II), or this year "Round 1" (Beast III))

I would bet that people got so much impressed by the gfx & musics of the 1st one that they lost all their gaming competencies .

[dreadnought]

SOTB is playable but personally I find its basic gameplay so tedious that I couldn't ever be bothered with trying harder and getting anywhere past the initial few minutes (that's even before I encountered the other poor design decisions such as the aforementioned dead ends).

I only mean the original, perhaps things changed for the better in the sequels. But overall it's one of these Amiga games (like Agony or DotC) where the gameplay definitely has suffered because of fx being the priority.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I only mean the original, perhaps things changed for the better in the sequels. But overall it's one of these Amiga games (like Agony or DotC) where the gameplay definitely has suffered because of fx being the priority.

Don't know about 1 or 2 (I also played them rarely), but 3 is masterpiece for me. So cool quests, and very nice gameplay.
I am at the last level (4), and good thing you reminded me, so I try and finish it.

[sandruzzo]

Beast 2 Was far superior than 1 and 3. atmosphere, feeling, music, so immersive, even gfx was quiet good, and it served game play very well

[Nova]

i fall for beast 2 for the same reasons you do. perhaps not as brilliant in graphics as beast 1, but the overall atmosphere is simply amazing. i still remember being completely stunned by the intro and its dark ambient vision.

only drawback is the character sprite, i missed the little goatwarrior

@bren: you are right, the lynx version is really great. i used to own the master system version which i played on my ggear.

i wonder about your opinions on the fm-towns or pc-engine version.

[sandruzzo]

About music no one can match Amigas' version, and I think gfx too...
[ Show youtube player ]

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

This make me think: Are we sure that all possible power was squeezed out of Amiga?

Talking about OCS: Hmm, yes, it's quite squeezed out.

It's just that the C64s tile like character mode can animate stuff very cheaply compared to the Amiga, which gave the C64 a lot more room to grow over the years. This, plus some quirks to exploit they found over the years in its chipset.

[Anubis]

I still fail to grasp why is this game so popular?!

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Anubis

I still fail to grasp why is this game so popular?!

Parallax + pretty early release on the scene.
From what I read (mostly here), when SOTB 1 appeared on Amiga (1989), there's simply nothing (graphically) even close to that.
Many computer shops used that as an advantage, and displayed intro on the screen in the shops.

Now, you can imagine bunch of kids in 1989, looking on screen with big eyes, in envy, in some Amiga shop.

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by Anubis

I still fail to grasp why is this game so popular?!

It has some of the best audio and graphics on the Amiga, and certainly the best audio and graphics of it's time on release. 31 years have passed and I still absolutely LOVE the way it looks and sounds. You can criticize the gameplay, but I (and many others) enjoy it.

I continue to believe that had it offered easy and medium difficulties (20 and 16 hit points) as opposed to just hard (12 hit points), most of the criticism wouldn't exist.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Now, you can imagine bunch of kids in 1989, looking on screen with big eyes, in envy, in some Amiga shop.

I remember exactly this situation in a local Amiga shop on a saturday, in 1989, when someone had the cracked games disk with him, and was showing all the guys including me there the game..

Everybody went like apeshit crazy.

It was like the first time a non arcade game looked like that and it was one of those magical "wow, so THAT'S the Amiga"-moments of the early days.