The sequel to the original Shadowgate. ICOM developed it exclusively for the NEC TurboGrafx-CD. It was one of a handful of US exclusives for the system.
Beyond Shadowgate is one of a few TurboGrafx-CD games I selected for this year's Octurbo because it builds on an old game I have a lot of fondness for. In this case, that would be the 1987 ICOM MacVenture game Shadowgate. Shadowgate has a reputation for killing its players over and over with something close to a sadistic reverie; a design decision I don't think was entirely a simple hold-over from the far less forgiving text adventures that ICOM's employees cut their teeth with. It may sound cynical, but if you're building an adventure game that dials up the unnecessary and random deaths some several magnitudes more than ought to be acceptable, it's more likely to create a lasting impression on the player. It also starts to come back around to funny again, like Sideshow Bob and his thousand rakes to the face, though maybe that's just the Battered Person Syndrome talking. Sierra would become the masters of the cheap and funny death in due time, but there's something about how easily the Grim Reaper finds you in Shadowgate that almost seems farcical.
Beyond Shadowgate may change a few things -- the game is now a third-person affair, letting you move around the screen and fight -- it still feels like the same old brutally unfair Shadowgate. The presentation's a little spotty in places (if you saw Ghost Manor from last year's Octurbo, Beyond Shadowgate feels graphically similar, which is to say fairly ugly with melon-domed characters) but it definitely gets the feel and personality right. Hoo boy, does it ever.
Shadowgate Doesn't Have Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System. The Game Itself is Your Nemesis
Welcome to Beyond Shadowgate! What am I doing to this poor demon? Well, when you gotta go...The intro recounts the story of Shadowgate (spoilers for a 27 year old game): The Warlock had just summoned the Behemoth from the netherworld, but is dragged down to Hell with it when the hero destroys the control crystal.The hero returns home the victor and begets a royal lineage, all charged with protecting the secrets of Castle Shadowgate.The most recent being this weenie, Prince Erik. He's just been informed that his father, the erstwhile King, has been assassinated.Though as soon as he makes it home, he is arrested. The assassin framed him for the murder! The real killer is probably that sinister vizier guy! I've seen Aladdin!Erik's younger sister Elizabeth knows he is innocent, and surreptitiously hands him an item as he is thrown in prison.Beyond Shadowgate's two buttons lets you duck and punch, which isn't going to get me out of this cell any time soon. Time to test a few other buttons.Most of the adventure game elements are directed by the Select button, of all things, including checking inventory and switching an icon from "look" to "interact with" to "use current item".Using the matchstick Liz gave us, we start a fire and entice a guard in here. One swift punch to the back of the head later, and we're officially on a jailbreak.Just had to pick up the guard's keys (and his bucket) and use them on the door to escape. Simple enough.There's a couple guards patrolling the hallway when I get out, but they're mysteriously zapped in the face by this floating ball.Which turns out to be the ghost of Erik's dead dad, King Aronde. He claims he'll keep an eye on us, which presumably is to say he'll be watching us die over and over. Eating ghost popcorn.Checking the other rooms, I immediately interrupt something personal. Sorry! I'll see myself out.This one had a guard in it. I'm starting to think that a medieval jail might be a dangerous place.Oh hey, Death. Long time no see, buddy.As if knowing how easy it is to die in this game, the developers very kindly installed a save system that lets you save anywhere. On multiple slots, even.I couldn't get anything out of this fellow. I couldn't even steal his sweet green jammies.A hole! I bet there's something awesome in here.Yes! A corrosive slime that immediately kills me. Just what I always wanted.Further to the right just leads to even more laughing guards. I think I'll try those first rooms again.You can punch the torturer to death, though it's not easy to do without getting lashed a whole lot, and he can take more hits than you can. Best tactic I've found is to treat this game like Double Dragon and try to get close to them using the back/foreground to stay out of their range. I try talking to this guy (he gets out a single "Rosebud!". Cute) but I can't seem to do anything for him yet. I'll come back for you, my friend. Likewise, the single guard in here isn't quite so powerful if you find a way around him. I grab this pepper from the table. It's not a sword, but it's a culinary weapon at least?Jeez, I was gone three minutes. I guess I didn't notice the oven underneath the chair.Getting less fond of all the skeletons, I sneak past the two guards in the corridor and get in this entirely new room with a skeleton in it. Could this be the exit?Only one way to find out!Oh, c'mon!Right, let's just keep walking past these doors. Surely there's a way out somewhere?I find a comely lass manacled to a wall. I manage to figure out that this big skull stick is a lever, finally. And... she turned into this thing. At least it didn't kill me. Probably will later, though.Whoa, an actual guy prisoner, not a monster or a skeleton.He bugs out as soon as I tell him he can leave, and I get a free paddlebat out of it.I can presumably distract a creature (of any age) with this. Still something vaguely anachronistic about it though.This room has... nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Moving on, then.I would like to get down this trapdoor, but there's a problem. This deer demon (deermon?) doesn't seem happy to see Erik, and I daren't get any closer. I would stand here and taunt him for a while, except I suspect I already know what this game does to smug players.Remembering that there was another lever in the big hole room, I push it and drop the skeleton down the hole. The big plant can just munch of that instead for all I care.I show him the full moon as I make the possibly unwise decision to squeeze through this pipe. There's only one other exit in this room, and it didn't go so well last time....and drop into a room with this weird scaly, spinny thing.That... wow. I guess I'm not supposed to get in its way. The thing almost bisected me.Escaping to the right leads me to this picturesque chasm. I suspect I might be in Shadowgate proper now.Well this seems harmless enough.Oh... crap.Okay, so going right is out. What's to the left? This neat little wooden elevator.Apparently Shadowgate is steam-powered. And the anachronisms keep on coming. Well, it has been several centuries since the first game, in all fairness.Aww, I found this hungry little dinosaur guy. He latches onto my leg playfully as-...Dammit. I think I'm done for today.
Beyond Shadowgate doesn't give you a whole lot of information about its surroundings, and I think adding combat to the game is ultimately detrimental because it's never quite clear if you're meant to avoid fights, meant to puzzle your way around them or meant to take out certain creatures because they need to go away before you can do something else in the area (that item on the ground near the caterpillar thing, for instance, won't allow itself to be picked up while the creature still lives). I'm also not clear what repercussions I'll be suffering by letting that she-beast wild, or letting that guy in the torture chair die. If it turns out to be one of those cases where I've made the game permanently unwinnable, that's not going to be fun for me. Especially if all the save slots get recorded over after such a stalemate event has already occurred.
Still, the game doesn't look too bad and it definitely keeps within the spirit of the original. It's interesting to note that the most recent Shadowgate remake, the ones the GB guys just checked out, already has a sequel in the works which it teased after the end credits: a sequel named "Beyond Shadowgate". It seems like an entirely original game, but you never know...
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