Shadow Fighter
Shadow Fighter (AGA), developed by NAPS Team and published by Gremlin in 1995.
| 
Screenshot |
Player's Review
"17 CHARACTERS TO FIGHT - EXTRA 8 FIGHTERS AVAILABLE IN EARLY '95 WHICHMEANS... 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 A1200 version does seem a little easier than the A500 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. It's fair to saythe game is not balanced in any way.
The initial longplay is played on Hard with music using Krhome as this character has almost no special moves making fights a little more challenging. Not the most interesting character to watch I know. After completion I enter a cheat to play as the Shadow Fighter using Environmental sfx. 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 three or four or five hard hits. I play a third round with Kury and feel a bit cheated to find it has the same ending as manx. I also play this round using a pause cheat to enable Turbo mode! I end the fighting with a quick vs round against Pupazz the training doll. The video closes with the bad endings awarded by playing on easy or Normal followed by the endings for all the unplayed characters.
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. Thankfully this version comes with a janky but functional HD installer to speed things up. Worth noting this version adds a press fire to start a fight as it loads them quicker than the a500 game. The game looks great on Amiga AGA machines but the A500 version is only toned down slightly in the number of background and character colours still looking great overall and there is not a lot of difference between the two really although I did notice there wheels on not animate on the truck level in this version.
00:00:00Titles
00:01:13 Play as Krhome
00:34:08 Krhome Ending
00:37:08 Play as Shadow
01:05:23 Shadow Ending
01:08:20 Play as Kury
01:29:34 Kury Ending
01:32:22 quick vs Pupazz
01:35:18 Bad Endings
01:36:15 Slamdunk Ending
01:36:34 Electra Ending
01:37:30Soria Ending
01:38:05 Yurgen Ending
01:38:34 Cody Ending
01:39:12 Fakir Ending
01:39:44 Salvador Ending
01:40:26 Toni Ending
01:40:57 Lee Chen Ending
01:41:43 Manx Ending
01:42:18 Top Knot Ending
01:42:49 Pupazz Ending
01:43:35 Yarado Ending
01:44:16 Okura Ending
01:44:51 Toshio Ending
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 A1200 version does seem a little easier than the A500 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. It's fair to saythe game is not balanced in any way.
The initial longplay is played on Hard with music using Krhome as this character has almost no special moves making fights a little more challenging. Not the most interesting character to watch I know. After completion I enter a cheat to play as the Shadow Fighter using Environmental sfx. 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 three or four or five hard hits. I play a third round with Kury and feel a bit cheated to find it has the same ending as manx. I also play this round using a pause cheat to enable Turbo mode! I end the fighting with a quick vs round against Pupazz the training doll. The video closes with the bad endings awarded by playing on easy or Normal followed by the endings for all the unplayed characters.
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. Thankfully this version comes with a janky but functional HD installer to speed things up. Worth noting this version adds a press fire to start a fight as it loads them quicker than the a500 game. The game looks great on Amiga AGA machines but the A500 version is only toned down slightly in the number of background and character colours still looking great overall and there is not a lot of difference between the two really although I did notice there wheels on not animate on the truck level in this version.
00:00:00Titles
00:01:13 Play as Krhome
00:34:08 Krhome Ending
00:37:08 Play as Shadow
01:05:23 Shadow Ending
01:08:20 Play as Kury
01:29:34 Kury Ending
01:32:22 quick vs Pupazz
01:35:18 Bad Endings
01:36:15 Slamdunk Ending
01:36:34 Electra Ending
01:37:30Soria Ending
01:38:05 Yurgen Ending
01:38:34 Cody Ending
01:39:12 Fakir Ending
01:39:44 Salvador Ending
01:40:26 Toni Ending
01:40:57 Lee Chen Ending
01:41:43 Manx Ending
01:42:18 Top Knot Ending
01:42:49 Pupazz Ending
01:43:35 Yarado Ending
01:44:16 Okura Ending
01:44:51 Toshio Ending
No Comments have been Posted.