A playthrough of Electronic Arts' 1991 action game for the Sega Genesis, Shadow of the Beast.

The Sega Genesis version of Shadow of the Beast was the first console port of Psygnosis's 1989 Amiga mega-hit to hit the market. The TurboGrafx, Sega Master System, and Atari Lynx all came along the following year.

I already spoke about the core game in some detail when I posted my playthrough of DMA Design's TurboGrafx-CD version ([ Ссылка ]), so I won't be rehashing all of that here. Please check that out if you're interested.

I remember the Genesis game being a big deal when it came out. It got a lot of attention for the quality of its graphics, ads touting its "13 levels of challenging arcade action" and "8 megs of ultra-compression memory" were everywhere in magazines around the time of its release, and the distinctly EA-style box art was eye-catching and stylish.

Taken at face value, the Genesis port comes off as a fair approximation of the original game. Though there were some clear cutbacks made to the color, parallax scrolling effects, and overall level of detail, the game looks quite similar to its Amiga counterpart. None of the levels, items, or "puzzles" were cut in the transition, and the music remains more-or-less intact, though the FM renditions of the tunes don't do the soundtrack any favors.

The gameplay doesn't fare quite as well, unfortunately. The Amiga game was designed to run at the PAL standard of 50 Hz, but since no adjustments were made to account for the timing differences between video standards, the 60 Hz NTSC Genesis version runs 20% faster than intended. The controls require the same level of pixel-perfect precision as the Amiga game's did, but the increased speed makes the game significantly harder - as if the original wasn't already known for its challenge! - and the lack of a continue option feels outright cruel, especially when progress relies as much on trail-and-error as it does here. The game also suffers from random crashes, so that's not great.

The problems don't make the game unplayable, but unless you have strong nostalgic ties to the Genesis version, you'll probably have a lot more fun playing it on an Amiga, TurboGrafx, or Master System.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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