Shadow Dancer Longplay (Amiga) [50 FPS]
17Developed by Images Software and published by US Gold in 1991.
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Having completed my longplay of the arcade version of Shadow Dancer and finding it solid if unremarkable, I decided to play through the Amiga version as a comparison. I owned the Amiga version and seemed to remember it being a pretty good game, so I was curious to see whether it was as good as I remembered, or whether it amounted to little more than rose-tinted memories.
The first thing that you notice about any game, even before you lay hands on it are the graphics; how good does it look? Initial impressions are favourable, with big, bold character sprites in vivid (if slightly gaudy) colours and background level art that is pretty close to the arcade original. After doing a side-by-side comparison, I think that the developers probably had to create the graphical assets from scratch rather than obtaining copies from the arcade version. Even so, the art guys did a good job as the game certainly looks the part.
The Amiga version's music is, in my opinion, a big improvement over the arcade original. Matthew Simmonds deviated from the original source material and produced some catchy tunes and decent sound effects.
On the subject of gameplay, everything from the arcade has found it's way into the Amiga version, including a very good implementation of the iconic shuriken-hurling bonus round. Certain things have even been improved, such as the fight against the end boss; judging when she will attack is much more predictable now and allows you to dodge and counter-attack more effectively.
Unfortunately, the game isn't without faults. The scrolling of the play-field is very sluggish compared the arcade. I did notice that the characters controls were not as responsive as they could be, which made turning quickly to attack challenging at times.
The player's dog has a habit of getting stuck on or under parts of the scenery, so it's not uncommon to have advanced several screens before realising that he isn't following, so you then have to backtrack to get him. The stupid hound will also harass the wrong enemy, sometimes picking the enemy furthest away from the player instead of the nearest, meaning that you have to deal quickly with any enemies on-screen if you're to prevent your dog from getting hurt.
On the subject of backtracking, one of the biggest issues I noticed was that certain enemies kept respawning regardless of how many times you killed them. Walking back to the position where you killed the enemy will quite often result in the enemy reappearing in their original position, forcing you into killing them yet again. This can make the game especially frustrating where you manage to clear out a particularly tough section, only to have all the enemies respawn if you return to that particular location.
Despite these frustrations, I still think that this is pretty good attempt at converting the arcade game to the Amiga. I certainly swore a good many times both under my breath (and out loud...) whilst recording, but the bottom line is it could have been much worse. Games of this sort are never a long-term endeavour, but Amiga owners shouldn't feel disappointed about owning this version if they liked the arcade game.
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