Hi there!

Another Amiga to C64 conversion from Psygnosis:

Shadow of the Beast probably was Psygnosis most famous game so far, I bet the Amiga version totally blew everyone away who saw it for the first time. Such gorgeous graphics and music weren't showcased on the system ever before.

The C64 conversion was made by DMA Design once again. After Ballistix, Blood Money and Menace they again delivered an amazingly close conversion of the Amiga game - too bad it was their last one already. It would've been great if they had still converted "Awesome" or "Shadow of the Beast 2" as well, but the star of the C64 was already sinking at the time. (Weird enough, Psygnosis' Lemmings was ported to the C64 in 1994, but that was from another team already, not DMA themselves.)

Booting up the C64 version for the first time I wasn't expecting much, but to my surprise the game manages the impossible: It really looks and sounds fantastic. From the moment you see the incredible multilayer parallax scrolling title screen of the game and hear the first few notes from the SID you know that the team tried very hard, to make the C64 version an experience just as memorable as on the Amiga.

Of course, as one shouldn't forget, the game actually never did much besides looking and sounding awesome. Being able to punch and kick, the player basically moves around the screen punching and kicking enemies until his energy runs out. This always happens sooner or later, since the enemies are often hitting the player fast and unexpected.

There's two basic workarounds for this: Using a trainer or save states. As usual I did the later and so after a good evenings work it ends:

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see its sequel "Shadow of the Beast 2", but first it'll continue with something different.

Greetings,

Manuel