Shadow Fighter
Shadow Fighter, developed by NAPS Team and published by Gremlin in 1995.
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Player's Review
"17 CHARACTERS TO FIGHT - EXTRA 8 FIGHTERS AVAILABLE IN EARLY '95 WHICH
MEANS... MORE FIGHTERS THAN ANY OTHER AMIGA BEAT 'EM UP EASY PLAY 1 BUTTON JOYSTICK CONTROL SYSTEM. BLOOD OPTION DURING MATCH FOR ULTRAVIOLENCE. 1 OR 2 PLAYER OPTION; NATURALLY. 8MB OF FIGHTER GRAPHICS WITH OVER 150 FRAMES PER CHARACTER. AT LEAST 25 DIFFERENT MOVES PER FIGHTER. 80 COLOURS ON SCREEN. AN AVERAGE OF 64 PARALLAX LEVELS ON EVERY SCREEN UNIQUE TRAINING MODE WITH A SPECIALLY ARMED PUPPET, THE MACABRE PUPAZZ."
Well... that's the box blurb to encourage you to buy the game. I had already played the magazine demo several times over and that was enough for me to get out to the shop and pick up this game. Released in three versions taking advantage of there respective hardware, 500, 1200 and CD32. Street Fighter II was a poor port but got interest for developers to have a go with an Amiga specific fighting game taking advantage of it's unique or limited features. Body blows set the bar for others to follow and Mortal Kombat got a great Amiga port. Elfmania released with its amazing artwork and unique gameplay and Shadow Fighter arrived to try and set the bar for Amiga fighting games going forward. Did it succeed? In my eyes it did. Seventeen fighters all well animated and well drawn with plenty of special moves. 17 Animated backgrounds each with there own music or environmental sfx and there is even a bit of blood for good measure.
Before starting out, we need to talk about the bogus difficulty options. You can choose from easy - Six character options, ten fights. Normal - Twelve Character options, fourteen fights and Hard - Sixteen Character options and seventeen fights. You don't get to fight the Shadow Warrior on easy mode and character endings only appear in Hard mode. There is really no point is choosing anything other than Hard as you are locking out characters and endings and the opponent difficulty isn't much different between the three as they can still wipe you out in a four hit combo even on easy. Overall though this A500 version does seem more difficult than the A1200 game.
These fighting games live and die by how well they control. Being an Amiga game its a 1 button affair with special moves executed by a two or three direction plus fire combo. These moves are fairly simple, down-back-fire, back-back/up-fire and the likes but the game can be really annoying and seemingly random as to if its going to acknowledge the combo and get the move you want out and it can be frustrating when the opponent is on the offensive overriding your moves. For the basic moves, punch, kick, jump attacks all the moves execute as expected.
The initial longplay is played on Hard with music using Electra as this character has the most special moves. After completion I enter a cheat to play as the Pupazz using Environmental sfx, a frustrating experience trying to get any moves out I can tell you. I try to let the opponents show off there moves, losing a few rounds in the process. Your long energy bar is deceptive as you don't get much energy and is depleted after taking four or five hard hits. I go through the game a third time with Manx where the special moves are much easier to pull off doubling my first play score which wasn't the plan but nice. I close the video with the bad endings, your punishment for playing on easy or normal.
Overall, this is one of the great Amiga fighting games and one of the best Amiga game at that. Well produced and one of the last games to come out of gremlin before they moved onto newer consoles. The box states that there will be an eight character expansion pack but it was never to be. The only real negative thing I can think of is the disk loading which can be long and disk swapping with only limited support for two drives. I've done my best to hide the disk swaps in the video. The game looks great on Amiga 500 class machines but the AGA version for the 1200 adds more colours to the backgrounds and characters. The menus, character select screens are all standard that will even show on an A500. (game will stall when the fight opens).
Shadow Fighter will return in the Shadow Fighter 1200 longplay with three more character plays and hopefully all character endings.
00:00:00Titles
00:01:17 Play as Electra
00:37:05 Electra Ending
00:40:46 Play as Pupazz
01:22:47 Pupazz Ending
01:26:07 Play as Manx
01:38:38 Manx Ending
02:02:26 Bad Endings
MEANS... MORE FIGHTERS THAN ANY OTHER AMIGA BEAT 'EM UP EASY PLAY 1 BUTTON JOYSTICK CONTROL SYSTEM. BLOOD OPTION DURING MATCH FOR ULTRAVIOLENCE. 1 OR 2 PLAYER OPTION; NATURALLY. 8MB OF FIGHTER GRAPHICS WITH OVER 150 FRAMES PER CHARACTER. AT LEAST 25 DIFFERENT MOVES PER FIGHTER. 80 COLOURS ON SCREEN. AN AVERAGE OF 64 PARALLAX LEVELS ON EVERY SCREEN UNIQUE TRAINING MODE WITH A SPECIALLY ARMED PUPPET, THE MACABRE PUPAZZ."
Well... that's the box blurb to encourage you to buy the game. I had already played the magazine demo several times over and that was enough for me to get out to the shop and pick up this game. Released in three versions taking advantage of there respective hardware, 500, 1200 and CD32. Street Fighter II was a poor port but got interest for developers to have a go with an Amiga specific fighting game taking advantage of it's unique or limited features. Body blows set the bar for others to follow and Mortal Kombat got a great Amiga port. Elfmania released with its amazing artwork and unique gameplay and Shadow Fighter arrived to try and set the bar for Amiga fighting games going forward. Did it succeed? In my eyes it did. Seventeen fighters all well animated and well drawn with plenty of special moves. 17 Animated backgrounds each with there own music or environmental sfx and there is even a bit of blood for good measure.
Before starting out, we need to talk about the bogus difficulty options. You can choose from easy - Six character options, ten fights. Normal - Twelve Character options, fourteen fights and Hard - Sixteen Character options and seventeen fights. You don't get to fight the Shadow Warrior on easy mode and character endings only appear in Hard mode. There is really no point is choosing anything other than Hard as you are locking out characters and endings and the opponent difficulty isn't much different between the three as they can still wipe you out in a four hit combo even on easy. Overall though this A500 version does seem more difficult than the A1200 game.
These fighting games live and die by how well they control. Being an Amiga game its a 1 button affair with special moves executed by a two or three direction plus fire combo. These moves are fairly simple, down-back-fire, back-back/up-fire and the likes but the game can be really annoying and seemingly random as to if its going to acknowledge the combo and get the move you want out and it can be frustrating when the opponent is on the offensive overriding your moves. For the basic moves, punch, kick, jump attacks all the moves execute as expected.
The initial longplay is played on Hard with music using Electra as this character has the most special moves. After completion I enter a cheat to play as the Pupazz using Environmental sfx, a frustrating experience trying to get any moves out I can tell you. I try to let the opponents show off there moves, losing a few rounds in the process. Your long energy bar is deceptive as you don't get much energy and is depleted after taking four or five hard hits. I go through the game a third time with Manx where the special moves are much easier to pull off doubling my first play score which wasn't the plan but nice. I close the video with the bad endings, your punishment for playing on easy or normal.
Overall, this is one of the great Amiga fighting games and one of the best Amiga game at that. Well produced and one of the last games to come out of gremlin before they moved onto newer consoles. The box states that there will be an eight character expansion pack but it was never to be. The only real negative thing I can think of is the disk loading which can be long and disk swapping with only limited support for two drives. I've done my best to hide the disk swaps in the video. The game looks great on Amiga 500 class machines but the AGA version for the 1200 adds more colours to the backgrounds and characters. The menus, character select screens are all standard that will even show on an A500. (game will stall when the fight opens).
Shadow Fighter will return in the Shadow Fighter 1200 longplay with three more character plays and hopefully all character endings.
00:00:00Titles
00:01:17 Play as Electra
00:37:05 Electra Ending
00:40:46 Play as Pupazz
01:22:47 Pupazz Ending
01:26:07 Play as Manx
01:38:38 Manx Ending
02:02:26 Bad Endings
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