Shadow Of The Beast II (Amiga) - Part 1: Why Is This - Octotiggy
18Oh cool-- a sequel! I'm sure the developers learned from all the mistakes they made with the first game.
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Shadow of the Beast is a side-scrolling platform video game produced by Reflections and published by Psygnosis in 1989. The original version was released for the Commodore Amiga, and was later ported to many other systems. Shadow of the Beast is considered revolutionary at the time, because of its graphics, with many more colours on screen and up to twelve levels of parallax scrolling backdrops, were of a level rarely if ever seen before in action games. It was also notable for its atmospheric score composed by David Whittaker that used high-quality instrument samples.
Shadow of the Beast was followed by two sequels, Shadow of the Beast II in 1990 and Shadow of the Beast III in 1992. A remake is in development for the PlayStation 4.
Shadow of the Beast II finds the hero in half-beast form, wandering the lands of Karamoon in search of his kidnapped sister. She had been taken away from her mother's cottage by the dragon-form of the Beast Mage, Zelek, servant to Maletoth. Along the way, Aarbron befriends the wise dragon Barloom and must defeat the evil dragon Ishran. Tree Pygmies in the forest and the goblins in the Crystal Caverns serve as foes.
As in the first game, the cover art for Shadow of the Beast II was created by Roger Dean and the game was packaged with a promotional black T-shirt that featured Dean's artwork.
The music for Beast 2 & 3 was composed and produced by Tim Wright. These titles featured a more extensive soundtrack and utilised ethnic samples taken from among other sources the same Korg M1 synthesizer that was sampled by David Whittaker for the original game (although in this case, it was the rack-mounted version the Korg M1/R). Beast 2 contained a total of 17 tracks, most notable of which are the title theme and the game over theme, both of which feature real sampled electric guitars. Beast 3 contained a total of 24 tracks again featuring ethnic instrumentation, but this time dabbling with the addition of some more synthetic sounds. The tracks in neither Beast 2 nor Beast 3 have been formally named by the composer, they are generally referred to by their location within the game. The FM-Towns and PC Engine Super CD-ROM ports of Shadow of the Beast features a soundtrack arranged by D.C. Productions Ltd. (Chris Howlett and Ian Henderson).
After Shadow of the Beast's enormous success on the Amiga, it was ported to almost every other computer and video games console of the time. Namely, the Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, SNES – unreleased, Sega Genesis/Genesis, Sega Master System, Atari Lynx, FM-Towns and PC-Engine TurboCD.
Shadow of the Beast and Shadow of the Beast II were reviewed in 1991 in Dragon #169 by Patricia Hartley, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave both games 5 out of 5 stars.
Computer Gaming World gave Shadow of the Beast III a mixed review. The magazine called the graphic "very good" and music "excellent" but criticized the puzzles' high level of difficulty, lack of a savegame feature, and slow load times (and copy protection that prevented the use of a hard drive), stating "I have grown tired of arcade games that punish the player rather than reward them for their efforts".
A re-imagined version of Shadow of the Beast was revealed at Gamescom 2013, developed by Heavy Spectrum Entertainment Labs and will be published by Sony Computer Entertainment exclusively for the PlayStation 4.
Graphics from Shadow of the Beast and Shadow of the Beast II were featured in two special levels in the original Lemmings game (Amiga, Sega Genesis, PC, Super Nintendo, and Atari ST versions), called "A Beast of a Level" and "A Beast II of a Level". These references were supported by cameo versions of the title music from each version, in this case both pieces were arranged by Tim Wright.
Shadow of the Beast. (2016, January 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shadow_of_the_Beast&oldid=700603698