I love the distinctiveness of 90s video games. These pixelated graphics and chiptune music have a charm that modern games just can't replicate...they were art, not just about approximating reality.
Ever since the c64 I have always hated when games tried to go for some sort or photorealism or naturalism instead of developing a distinct aestethic which carried it’s own vibe and narrative … it’s just lazy and unimaginative and unengaging. I want to be transported somewhere, I want to enter another world with different rules and with room for the unexpected.
@@whynottalklikeapirat boomers developed many early home computer games. Audience was more Gen X. Similar dynamic in 80 pop music and films, where you had adults making stuff for kids; of course the 80's were great if you were one. 👌👍 (edit: oops you actully said 90's, didn't you? ) 😂
I feel like this game could have been more popular if the main character weren't just some boring human. I mean, with a title like Shadow of the Beast, I'd want to play a beast! At least the character in Beast II was scruffy.
Its the same character. In beast one he's transformed into a beast, in 2 he's like half human in three you're transformed back to human and taking revenge on the wizard who transformed you in the first place. His name is Maletoth.
@@Cimone90 Yeah, I know that - but making him turn into a normal human makes the game less appealing. It's like the sequels to Bubble Bobble. Bub and Bob in their "original" human forms are just boring compared to the iconic adorable bubble blowing dinosaurs.
@@IsaacKuo Exactly!! I hate the stupid, boring, plain human look, too! I mean, in part one you were a cool looking beast creature, hence, the title of the game!
For me: SOB 1: best character design (at least for Aarbron, the main character) SOB 2: best environments and atmosphere SOB 3: best playability What do you think?
Well, the third is the only one actually doable - the second in particular was just a glorified tech demo, but was barely beatable using cheat codes (although I read a guy that claimed he completed it without them, but I am skeptical).
@@GiacomoSorbi I think there's some video on youtube where you can see people beating SOB 2 without the "Ten Pints" cheat code. That code was anyway the first thing I used to do in game, otherwise for us common mortals it would have been completely unplayable as you say. :)
"With the third Shadow of the Beast, the puzzles and gameplay depth were pushed further still. I actually took inspiration from text adventures to shape the complexity of the puzzles. Filling rooms with the correct amount of water, floating objects to stand on to reach switches... it was a far cry from the simple hack and slash of the original Shadow of the Beast." -- Martin Edmondson (game designer, graphic artist and founder of Reflections)
I always thought his line of thinking went "It was very difficult to complete Shadow of the Beast without cheating - it was almost impossible to complete Shadow 2 without cheating, this time it must be totally impossible"
Best Amiga games list : Turrican 2, Chaos Engine, Speedball 2, Cannon Fodder, Sensible World of Soccer, Disposable Hero, Super Frog, All Terrain Racing, Skidmarks, Lotus III, Another World, Leander, The Settlers, Stardust, Super Stardust, Apidiya, Battle Isle, Ruff n tumble, James Pond 2, Dune 2 Battle For Arrakis, Worms, Moonstone, Frontier Elite 2, LionHeart, Defender of The Crown, Traps n Treasure, Alien Breed Tower Assault, North and South, Battle Squadron and Shadow of the Beast 3. Amiga FTW
I'd never actually seen this in motion before, I had seen it reviewed in magazines but didn't think much of the graphics. However it is clear that they greatly improved upon the gameplay of the original (to take an example of a game that was full of 'wow' factor in terms of visuals), it looks really fun and well designed, many enemies are actually changing direction and aiming shots at the player when he passes them rather than moving and shooting rigidly in one direction, which was still common in most games of the time. The puzzles look well thought out and there is informative feedback for the player. The imagination of the devs is great, they came up with lots of interesting puzzles and enemies.
amiga 500 was an absolutly fantastic machine, tjete was great games out for the a500.... back then me and my friends was spending houres and weekends playing games.... among them... shadow of the beast... also making alot of music on the a500
@@reverendbluejeans1748 Gen X, thanks very much! My parents were Boomers and they had no idea how to even turn on my Amiga, let alone write software for it!
That's why Indiana Jones never got to use throwing stars in his movies, they would have been rated R. Although, this guy's hat feels less Indiana Jones fedora and more "barber shop quartet boater hat."
The best SOtB game. It's a bit cryptic, sure, but not as much as the previous two installments. Excellent music and graphics, and atmosphere. The last boss is quite a dissapointment, though.
@@cochisecarter6298 Beast 3 was at least playable. I wish it was a bit longer. I wanted more "arcadey" stuff like the fighting against the warriors on level 1. The thing is, when you figure out the puzzles, the game has basically 0 replayability. It becomes a breeze to get through, since the game doesn't require a lot of skill, it's all about the puzzle solving. And there are some ways to break the game so you don't even have to solve all puzzles.
i can never get those f*****g balls right and the block always falls. ive been trying to finish this game for 22 years, i play it on and off whenever i'm feeling nostalgic, never finished it.
The aesthetic shift is a little strange, but it's probably the most playable of the three. I sure wish someone went back and rebalanced Beast 1 and 2 to make them actually enjoyable though.
"Despite being the most accessible game in the trilogy, Beast 3 suffers from its own share of issues, primarily the fact it's so damn short! As this video demonstrates, it can be beaten inside 30 minutes, provided you know what you're doing." Well, the SOTB2 Longplay is 30 minutes "long" too. But is far less accessable due to horrorible game logic. So I would say, SOTB3 is better - and here in every aspect. At least it's much more playable. Thanks to three lifes you also can risk a bit more. But yes. These single-shot items are a pain. They are less. And thanks to the fact, that the game was split into levels, it isn't as frustrating like SOTB2, where you can get stuck deep down during gameplay because you missed to save this guy held by a goblin or whatever.
Amazing Graphics, Music and Game... I love the Shadow of the Beast series (on Amiga). The puzzles were really great too, and most importantly, the player was easy to control.
Yeah, that is an example of a little bit of musical genius right there - even thought that as a kid. Film/Movie standard piece of synth work. Same with 'The Wall' in Turrican 2 etc.
Another one bites the dust. Great job @Al82: Retrogaming & Computing. SOTB series will always be special to me. Weird thing, the game is run with some nice eye candy but the music is top notch! Strange how Psygnosis never credited the "Wright brothers" on the main screen loop...
The first two were glorified tech demos, albeit visually and musically (and SFX) impressive, they were lacking in the gameplay department, in fact, I found them quite boring in that department. This was the only one that felt like an actual game
Pitfall Harry 3 looks awesome! As clever as this design work was, you don't just abandon your main character in a successful game. We should've been playing as the same beast from the first game in all the sequels.
Yeah all 3 shadow of the beast games had amazing music. The 2nd one is my personal favourite, especially the death music in 2, chilling goosebumpy good!
That was much more fun to watch than the others, thanks to all those puzzles! I can definitely see the influence from Infocom text adventure games. Somewhat silly that they stuck one of those sliding square games right in the middle of it though, LOL.
I would’ve loved to have seen AGA remakes of the Beast Trilogy. I’m guessing the closest to that might be the PC? Don’t know if they were ever ported to it.
Shadow of the beast series was done to be well done work ... pure art design ... IS MUCH HARD FORGET the music ! That show how have games being much more than simple gaming at point touching human better than some movies
it was, but the SOB series suffered what a lot of advanced amiga games back then did. it was an example of looks over substance. amazing visuals and music, but terrible gameplay.
The music in Fort Dourmoor is honestly a composition highlight not only for this franchise, but also in Tim Wright's musical discography. Oh my wow, the sense of tension and adrenaline in some of these areas is so awesome, a real shame it didn't have the same multi-platform opportunity as the first two games.
Difficulty is fine, provided you are given a chance. But the Beast games suffered from cheap harsh mechanics, particularly enemy shots firing ludicrously fast with no telegraphing, so you didn't stand a chance of reacting in the moment. Meaning all you could do is die and add those parts of the game to the list of things to memorize for your next run. The puzzles in Beast got too hard for me too, but I'm just a bit thick I guess. I come back to watch the playthroughs though since it was so good looking and sounding.
Shadow of the Beast and Magician Lord are two of the games I saw as a small child that made me adore pixel art for the rest of my life. Same with Art of Fighting (how the fighters showed damage to the face sprites during combat and the "camera" pulled back and zoomed in etc) never owned a neo geo but wanted one so bad lol
Magician Lord looks very nice and has some good songs, but the difficulty is absolute horseshit. It must only be fun to people who are willing to finish it a few times and learn to overcome all the ridiculous obstacles the game throws at you, such as enemies spawning in midair just a few centimeters away from your character.
I think the Devs were trying to convey the fact Aabron is now fully human - I guess putting him in trousers and a hat was supposed to convey the restoration of his humanity 😁
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays Seeing the world going from somekind of Fantasy settting with some Sci-Fi to a middle 20th century looking world with old ruins also feels very weird. Is like they went to a totally different timeline between games.
@@cochisecarter6298 I agree, the quality of the three games is top notch but loses a lot of charm from the moment you go from playing as a super cool alien beastman to a naked troglodyte and the ninja cowboy. They should have made it as on each game the bad guy turns him into a beastman again.
The only game out of this series that hads ACTUAL good gameplay. Don't get me wrong SOTB1 and 2 were great as far as the visuals and the sound/music, but the games were lacking gameplay wise. They were more like glorified tech demos than games. This was the only title from the series that actually felt like an actual game
Hi, is this game played on real Amiga or emulator ? Music in this video play faster then on my A1200. I love this trilogy Shadow od the Beast. Nice animation, music and amazing atmosphere.
I find the character difficult to distinguish from the background unless he's moving. And its not for lack of colors available on the Amiga series. Then again the background changes color tones between levels and sometimes within the levels themselves. Challenging to find the right colors for the character and sprites.
Do you know how long and aggravating to get the answers to these puzzels!? Back in the day, these games didn't have restarts or do over....if you mess up, restart the game. How i remember the time i was stuck at the 3 world where i dropped the slab because the roller balls were too far spread out or, on the other worlds where you have to position the table on the right spot AND get the correct to foot from under the table first. You can still see @@UCzoMKoGaZXlfLhRkYIOpYlA hesitating from time to time, to double think not to make a mistake or he would have to reshoot the video :P Man, you have been deceived :)
@@unphoto the only puzzle that bugged me when I bought the game in october 1992 was the one with the fishes. Took me two week-ends to complete the game, whereas Beast1 took me at least two months and never managed to beat Beast2
Is it really shorter than SOtB 2? I doubt it, it's at least similar in length. The previous episode feels long mostly because of the more cryptic puzzles.
I was always on the fence with SOTB III. It's arguably the most playable of all 3 and was an improvement on the insane difficulty of Beast II. However, I felt Beast 2 was the most polished; beautiful graphics and sound so it felt like a step back in that regard.
SOTB3 unfortunately has a few parts that you can do incorrectly and force you to restart the level. It's one of those games that really justify the use of savestates on emulators.
I much preferred Beast 1+ 2 although the music in 3 is lovely.I didn't like that it was levels rather than open world, and don't get me started on the hat.
@@lbat5276 Both SOTB2 and 3 have great music. I like it so much I even made bass tabs for a few songs. It really helps that all those songs come in .MOD files, which can be played with a tracker. It lets you isolate tracks.
@@Ohio.Gozaimasu Heh I did that with the 'aaah' sound from the amiga game Gods. I was trying to make the sound on a real synthesiser but it just wasn't sounding right! I don't know what they were using back then.
Am I the only one thinking that this third opus looks awful? Come on guys the first Shadow Of The Beast looked so beautiful! This one looks so bleak and uninspired. :/
@Demo Lition Yeah, I'm pretty sure Midwinter is a youngen. Anybody who was actually familiar with what computers were capable of at the time would realize this is some amazing graphics... To everybody else, it would just look ugly
@@CopiousDoinksLLC SotB3 was released in 1992. By then you already had games like Wing Commander, King's Quest V, and other 256 color games on PC. While SotB3 looks great by Amiga standards and the smooth scrolling is excellent, the writing was on the wall. The following year (1993), Doom was released on PC.
@@CopiousDoinksLLC Even compared to the original SotB game this one looks a bit ugly, very brown and grey in its colour scheme, though it has some nice art work and good gameplay of course.
@@kevinwng By Amiga standards it wasn't great at all, it looked rather brown and a bit ugly, that's what struck me at the time when I saw it in magazines. There were plenty of better looking games on the Amiga.
![Shadow of the Beast III Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
