COMMODORE 64 - SHADOW OF THE BEAST BY PSYGNOSIS - WITH BACKSID 6581 MODE

Channel:

Commodore 64 Sid vs Sid

Subscribers:

241

Published on May 24, 2023 5:03:14 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpM9CxLB7TU

Game:

Shadow of the Beast (1989)

Duration: 7:30

20 views

2

With Backsid 6581 mode. Firmware 2.1.1

Description

Wild shooting in appropriate surrounding.
With the horizontally scrolling shooter Sanxion the software house Thalamus delivered their first work for the C64 and ZX Spectrum in 1986. Together with Delta and Armalyte Sanxion forms a loosely connected trilogy around the "Project Damocles" and the fight against the H'siffian-Khanat.

Background story (long version)
As the rather extensive background story for a shooter game wants to make us believe, the world was brought to the border of an atom war by subtile manipulation of an intergalactic alien imperium. Only through the fortunate circumstance, that the alien technician stationed at the north pole pressed the wrong button when sending the success message and made for a planet-wide blackout by a massive electronic impulse, this threat was called to attention. East and west send their pointy-heads into the Arctic as fast as possible, where they find the remains of the crashed UFO and after a short inspection come to a horrible conclusion: the beer is empty! No, rubbish: Humanity is seen by aliens as a threat, which needs to be wiped out, before it conquers space and can become a danger. As the invasion fleet is already on its way, they delay the nuclear holocaust to later and agree, that the most modern technology of both superpowers and the remains of the UFO are united in one project named "Damocles". The aim of the project is to provide spaceships and pilots, with which ten sectors need to be passed and all infiltration efforts of the aliens have to be warded off.

Graphically, the programmers tried hard, but could only fail in trying to even roughly reach the original. The graphics are boldly pixelled, but in return the hero and the enemies are displayed nicely and big and the beautiful parallax scrolling pleases the observer's eye. If the hero does not move, he is hard to distinguish from the background, this becomes especially apparent at the beginning in the well. Concerning the gameplay it is strange that the enemies seem to flee from the player especially at the beginning and it is difficult to catch them again.
Concerning the sound the well composed and converted melodies enchant the ear and are luckily not interrupted by sound effects.
As the disk version loads very often, the cartridge version should be preferred.
In the intro you can see very cleary the wrong written name "PYSGNOSIS" (see above).

Other Statistics