Shadow Dancer (Amiga) - An Unlimited Lives Challenge! - by LemonAmiga.com
49Shadow Dancer is a progressive arcade beat em up conversion, which was released by red hot U.K developers U.S Cold in 1991. It features the usual 'it'll do' graphics and audio, with a few sampled dog barks and Hoo-YAAAs along the way. But can we complete it with unlimited lives? Lets find out.
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12.π₯ Martin Roeleveld
Recorded: 14th March 2024
Narrated: 15th May 2024
Uploaded/available to backers: 18th Jan 2025
Back when I had my first Amiga, a second hand Amiga A500 in 1992, I remember the copied games more than some of the stacks of originals which came with the machine. I remember Shadow Dancer and Shadow Warriors, and a friend used to be in to Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja - and showed me how to get somewhere with them. I was never a progressive beat 'em up fan, but I wanted to look at one of those games for this series. Shadow Warriors froze very near the end of the game, and played really slowly even with NTSC, so I abandoned that 1hr of footage and went with this game instead. I remembered the dog, and the space shuttle at the end, but I couldn't remember much about the rest of it at that point, so I played this game cold.
When I booted up the game and stated the recorder, it was fun for a while and enjoyable, but soon it became clear that I would not be able to get very far. So I stopped the recorder, and skipped to the part I was stuck on using the cheat mode. The most difficult part was editing out all of my failed tries in the editor, and cutting over an hour of video down to 33mins. Eventually I lost interest with some levels and skipped to the next one. So this is yet another failed Unlimited Lives Challenge, of which I have not won any of them so far. I think the closest was Thundercats on the old Lemon C64 channel, and that was because I went the wrong way on the final level, and gave up.
Danscore:
The Amiga is a mixed bag when it comes to arcade conversions; from the pixel perfect Marble Madness, to the abominations of Out Run and Bionic Commando. From Saint Dragon and Pang to Street Fighter 2. Shadow Dancer falls in the middle of these two pillars, but it fails to Ninja Chop its way through the other wooden boards which stratify the Amiga progressive beat 'em up genre, all the way down to the cloth fibre which is Surf Ninjas. It seems competent in all of the departments, and some say the music is better than the arcade. Controls seem reasonable, and sending the dog out to leap like a bear onto the enemies never seems to get boring. Although I never understood why he wears a pure white ninja suit, when they are usually black? It also easy for me to confuse Double Dragon, Dragon Ninja, Shadow Dancer and Shadow Warriors, as they are all fairly poor. As U.S. Cold conversions go, I'd like to give it 6.5 out of 10, and up there with Mercs and the best of them. But the tight timing of enemies and remembering to always do everything by the book, soon becomes a slog, and it is worse than torture when you have infinite lives to waste. Perhaps veterans will give it a good score, but after the first few levels it quickly became apparent that I was never going to get anywhere with my pathetic skills. So I give this 6 out of 10. It seems better than pure average... but only just. If Im going for a progressive beat em up, there is always Lionheart, Wolfchild, and Golden Axe to fall back on, and stuff like First Samurai and the Turrican games, which dont require an arcade level of skill to complete them.