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Beyond Shadowgate
TurboGrafx-16
’Tis a Pity Your Adventures Have Taken You Here
3/5 stars
The original “Shadowgate” was one of my favorite NES games. In general, I find that RPGs and Adventure games tend to stand-up better over the long-term than heavily Action-centric games, as their mechanics tend to be the type of thing that ‘ages well.’ With Adventure games especially, there are no worries about sloppy/unresponsive controls, slippery platforming, or unforgiving/punishing systems in place to handle character death. No, when it comes to old Adventure games, the biggest thing that keeps them from maintaining classic status is insane-moon-logic puzzles.
Because I loved “Shadowgate” so much in my formative years, I often wished there had been a sequel. When “Shadogate 64: Trial of the Four Towers” was released in 1999, it marked one of the exceedingly rare occasions when I bought a brand new retail game for full price… and as an N64 cart, that price was fairly steep. This sequel to my all-time favorite Adventure game disappointed me so severely that I actually returned it to the store for a refund (in those halcyon days when such a thing was possible with videogames).
Later, in my illicit explorations of all things emulation, I discovered that “Shadowgate 64” wasn’t actually the true sequel to my beloved “Shadowgate.” Instead, an obscure game released exclusively on the TurboGrafx-16’s CD-ROM attachment in 1993, “Beyond Shadowgate,” was the continuation of the story my young self found so infatuating. This game proved as mysterious and tantalizing as Castle Shadowgate itself, but with the help of RetroArch’s TurboGrafx-16 core and a collection of NTSC format TG-16 isos, I was finally able to experience this lost chapter in the history of adventure games. Unfortunately, not all lost artifacts are treasures.
Presentation
“Beyond Shadowgate” breaks with its predecessor very obviously in that it isn’t a first-person game. Instead, “Beyond Shadowgate” apes other old Adventure games like the ‘King’s Quest’ series by making the player’s character visible and moveable on screen at all times. Graphically, “Beyond Shadowgate” overreaches its technical boundaries quite a bit. The backdrops and characters are supposed to look ‘high quality,’ but typically just have a terrible grainy texture that not even a RetroArch smoothing shader can fix. Character designs are a mix of attempted normalcy (for human characters) and cartooniness (for monsters). Honestly, the human characters all look pretty terrible, but the cartoony enemies and creatures look remarkably good. It’s mainly a function of art style vs. graphical prowess, and the TG-16 doesn’t provide “Beyond Shadowgate” with the oomph it obviously wanted when it comes to realism.
As a CD-ROM game released in 1993, “Beyond Shadowgate” is kind of obsessed with bleeding edge (for 1993) audio tech. Instead of having a lot of text, most of the game is fully voiceacted (with no subtitles). The voiceacting is mostly awful and amateurish. The male characters in the game are almost universally cringe-inducing, though most of the women deliver their lines well. This game is obviously from an era before big-time Hollywood voiceacting in games… but it’s also from an era before competent Indie voiceacting as well. The recording quality isn’t even particularly good, with noticeable microphone hiss and compression flaws everywhere.
The soundtrack in “Beyond Shadowgate” is an immense disappointment. It certainly isn’t CD quality, and it’s completely lacking in the incredible, memorable earworms that made the original “Shadowgate” stand out in a sea of mostly silent ‘80s Adventure games. There is music in “Beyond Shadowgate,” but it’s completely forgettable. Sometimes, the background noise is just the ambient sounds of birds chirping.
Story
Taking place generations after the First Story of “Shadowgate,” “Beyond Shadowgate” picks up with one of the descendants of the hero who defeated the Behemoth and the Warlock Lord. Prince Erik is traveling abroad, attempting to expand his horizons before assuming the throne, when he receives an unsettling missive: Assassins have slain his father, the King.
Returning home, Erik consults with his late father’s advisor, one Belezar (who looks remarkably like “The Shark Tank’s” Mark Cuban), who informs him of the procedure for assuming the throne. These preparations are interrupted, however, when the royal guards seize Prince Erik and throw him in the dungeon, claiming to have captured the King’s assassin, and that the assassin claims to have been hired by Prince Erik himself.
Framed for his father’s murder and dealing with an overly ambitious Royal Advisor in Belezar, Prince Erik must escape from the dungeon, track down this usurper, and rescue his younger sister from Belezars presumably lascivious clutches.
This cheesy and predictable premise drives the puzzle-filled quest of Prince Erik through the dungeons of the castle – which isn’t even Castle Shadowgate – and into the surrounding region, which is presumably where the ‘beyond’ in the title comes from. Prince Erik spends most of his time wandering through fairly empty rooms and outdoor areas, talking with chatty NPCs who usually don’t have anything pertinent to say about the game’s immediate narrative or even its backstory and lore.
The game’s plot is merely ‘okay,’ even by 1993 standards. At least it’s there unlike many games from the same time period. In general, unless the player gets really stuck on a puzzle, “Beyond Shadowgate” only lasts a few hours. A secondary speed-run, knowing where everything is and how to solve every puzzle, takes an hour and half.
Gameplay
“Beyond Shadowgate” is, at its core, a fairly straight-forward Adventure game with a number of ‘Use [Inventory Item] on [Environmental Object]’ puzzles to proceed. Hints are given out by certain NPCs, though the descriptive text provided by looking at objects is generally useless, which is frustrating. Some of the puzzles have obvious solutions that STILL saw me consulting a FAQ because, apparently, Prince Erik can only put on a necklace or gauntlet to protect himself from a hazard when he is standing in a specific screen.
As a side-scrolling game instead of a first person game, the player’s perspective can do a lot to hamper gameplay, such as not being able to tell that it’s possible to walk off-screen in a given direction to find a new area. The game’s Adventure command UI has also received a major overhaul from the first game, where tapping the Select button over and over cycles between commands, which are limited to Look, Use, and Talk. Another button brings up the inventory, allowing the player to choose which item to Use or Look at. The game pauses while any of these commands is active, which wouldn’t be a big deal in any other Adventure game, but kind of is in “Beyond Shadowgate”… because of the combat.
Yes, “Beyond Shadowgate’s” biggest shortcoming is that, instead of overcoming every obstacle and enemy in the game via clever use of items and treating each encounter as a puzzle, Prince Erik must overcome most of the game’s hostiles by punching them or ducking under their attacks (or both). The controls for movement in “Beyond Shadowgate” are incredibly clunky and slow, plus Prince Erik’s reach isn’t that great, so even a player who knows what they’re doing can and will end up dead during the game’s many fights.
Fortunately, “Beyond Shadowgate” has the same ‘save anywhere’ mentality as its predecessor, and provides 3 slots for the player to record their progress. This is important, as there are many, many things in “Beyond Shadowgate,” besides fistfights, which are deadly.
Overall
The overreaching graphical stylings and lack of an engaging soundtrack combine to make “Beyond Shadowgate” feel much less impressive than its predecessor, despite the huge leap in technology. While the puzzles in this sequel are fairly well done, there are still a few illogical/nitpicky moments that can bring progress to a standstill, plus the injection of poorly-done combat encounters does nothing to improve the experience. “Beyond Shadowgate” still isn’t as egregiously terrible as “Shadowgate 64,” but this ‘Second Story’ pales significantly in comparison to the original.
Presentation: 2/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
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