Shadow of the Beast (Amiga)
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cover art by Roger Dean
Shadow of the Beast
Amiga 1989
            Series : Shadow of the Beast
         Developer : Reflections
         Publisher : Psygnosis
             Music : David Whittaker
            Genres : 2D Brawler
                     Action adventure
        Other Tags : Greatest Covers
                     Greatest Music
             Ports : Shadow of the Beast (1991 GEN)
                     Shadow of the Beast (1992 PCECD)
                     Shadow of the Beast (2016 PS4)
WP GB Mob FAQ IMDB YT img Goo StrW HOL

COMPLETED

My obsession with Shadow of the Beast started when the 12-year old me saw an ad for this Amiga game in a magazine. I was completely blown away by a couple of screenshots, this was a game I just had to have. When I got to play it, I was completely captivated by the mysterious world, the fast-paced action, and above else, David Whittakers fantastic music. This exotic-sounding soundtrack was unlike anything I had heard in a game - the new agy Korg M1 samples and driving basslines and drums was just about the coolest music I ever heard. I played it and thought about it a lot, to the point where I drew maps of the game in pencil and could run through the whole thing in my head. I managed to get to the end boss before dying, but thought the game to be too difficult to be completable. I didn't know how close I was to the end.

Shadow of the Beast
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Other Shadow of the Beast games:

Other games by Reflections:

screenshot
Punching bats in '89

Log entries

    1989-01-01
  • Shadow of the Beast was extremely impressive in its graphics and music, and it deeply captivated me from the first time I saw a commercial for it in a magazine. Completing it was too hard for me, even though I was pretty methodical, mapping out the enemy placement of the entire game on paper. I once reached the final boss fight with Lord Maletoth before dying, which I consider a great accomplishment...
    • 2015-07-29
  • I played a game of Beast for the first time in many years. I did reasonably well, getting halfway through the tree level and was murdered by some flying skulls.
    • 2015-07-31
  • Not all cracked ADFs are created equal. One without excessive disk swapping is called [cr_vf][t_+1_vf][a3] (Vision Factory).
  • I just played through the tree level, remembering the key and the health potion before the Lighting Hand upgrade, climbed up the well, grabbed a torch and went into the castle, where I immediately died. The one open world feature in this game is that you can actually visit the castle without going to the tree level first, and practice it, so maybe I should do that.
    • 2016-05-06
  • A new Beast is coming soon, and I felt like putting a little work into the Amiga original. I'm playing on FS-UAE, and made a save state in the Castle, so I can practice.
    • 2016-05-07
  • The Castle has 3 sections, each of them starts from the Castle entrance:
    1. Spanner: First, go up. Here, you first get +2 STRENGTH in a horrible room of daggers, deadly drops, and jumping freaks. Then you get +12 STRENGTH from 3 chests (if you get above 08, save a chest for the way back) and the Spanner from the far right. Then, +4 STRENGTH from a chest. This is the last STRENGTH in the entire Castle.
    2. Gun: The Gun section is to the left. You need the Spanner, and there are no STRENGTH in this section.
    3. Dragon: You go to the far right from the entrance and down to fight against the Dragon.
  • The Dragon has a simple exploitable pattern. Jump over the fireballs from the lower head to approach. When you are touching the Dragon shoot it a couple of times until the top head fires a fireball, then jump to the left to avoid the fireball from the middle head, and then jump right over the fireball from the bottom head and resume shooting.
  • The Jetpack level has two power up areas, both +8 STRENGTH, and it ends with a boss fight.
  • The Jetpack level is fairly easy compared to the rest of the game. It has a locked door at the end, and if you didn't get the key from Tree level, you are now stuck, and backtracking is blocked by purple goo. There isn't even any way to die, you have to commit suicide by pressing Esc.
  • Using only 2 hits, you can brute force the final boss of the Jetpack level by flying into its face and shooting real fast. The whole level seems doable starting with STRENGTH 4.
  • So far, the hardest part of the game seems to be the Gun and Dragon sections of the Castle due to the lack of STRENGTH potions. It is required to have 4 STRENGTH when you enter the dragon boss fight.
  • In the Tree level, head down toward the punch power-up, don't take it before you go below and pick up the key at the far left. Then take the power-up and go directly into the teleporter.
  • I made a savestate in the Castle Graveyard level with STRENGTH 03. It's super duper hard. I managed to reach the final boss using a lot of save states. I need to practice this a lot.
  • Getting through the Graveyard level with only STRENGTH 03 seems rough. Maybe I should try to optimize the Jetpack level?
  • OK, after working a bit on the Jetpack level, I managed to get through with STRENGTH 08. That seems doable, and will make the Graveyard much easier.
  • Huh, I just realized that the little jumping dudes in the early part of the Dragon path in the Castle don't respawn. This means that I can work my way through without being hit. Also, the Dragon can be spam-attacked and only hit me once.
  • Completed the game. YEEEEAAAHHH!!!!
    • Full playthrough
  • Congratulations. You have freed yourself from The shadow of the Beast
    • Training 1
  • After training all day, I played the game from start to finish in FS-UAE. It took me 27 years, but I finally did it. I streamed the training process and the final run on YouTube, and now I'm anxiously awaiting the videos being rendered. I really hope nothing went wrong.
    • Training 2
    2016-05-08
  • The YouTube recording is here.

videos

2016-05-07
Full playthrough
2016-05-07
Training 1
2016-05-07
Training 2

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