Shadow of the Beast

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Shadow of the Beast takes place in a fantasy world where an Evil Lord called Maletoth kills Aabron's (our hero's) father and casts a spell to transform the young boy into a wild, strong and ugly beast (Aabron actually looks much like the ancient Greek god, Pan). Now Aabron must avenge his father's death and break the curse, gaining back his human nature. On his task, he must fight armed enemies, bloodthirsty monsters, magician lords, skeletons, avoid traps and finally confront the menacing Maletoth. The journey is hard and Aabron needs ample energy in order to survive. His only weapons are his bare hands plus some rare tools that he can use on the way. In terms of gameplay, Shadow of the Beast is one of the most difficult games ever created for the Amiga so it takes patience and some good skills to survive. The whole action is pretty fast and the enemies are fiercely attacking to kill Aabron. But, apart from the enemy hordes there are also deadly traps, maze-like stages (etc the underground ones) and gigantic level bosses.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The C64 version is an awesome work on graphics, scrolling, gameplay and sound! Although its graphics are missing some of the original backgrounds (that are found on the CPC and ZX!) the game runs way faster on Commodore's 8bit computer. The sprites move fast, the scrolling is smooth and at least five levels of parallax scrolling are featured! There is nothing more to say about the awesome music of this version! All original tunes are greatly composed (thanks to the SID chip) and play during the game but with no sound effects. In general, the C64 version of the SOTB still remains the best among all other 8bit home computer versions.