Shadow of the Beast on the FM Towns was first published in Japan only by Cross Media Soft – a brand of Victor Musical Industries (a subsidiary of JVC) – in 1991, and came on CD-ROM.
Tim Ansell, who programmed the FM Towns version of Shadow of the Beast (and Shadow of the Beast II), founded the famous British developer The Creative Assembly in 1987 and this was one of a number of contract ports that he did for Psygnosis in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The Amstrad CPC version of Shadow of the Beast was developed and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1990 and is similar to the ZX Spectrum version (which was also created by Gremlin), but with more on-screen colours. It requires 128K of RAM to run, so is for Amstrad 6128 machines and compatibles only, and is spread over two floppy disks.
The Atari ST port of Shadow of the Beast was converted by Mark McCubbin and published by Psygnosis in 1990. While it’s not a bad conversion it does lack the graphical fidelity of the Amiga original and is also missing quite a few features.
The Atari Lynx port of Shadow of the Beast was developed by Digital Developments and first published by Psygnosis in 1992. And it is surprisingly good.
The PC Engine CD version of Shadow of the Beast is – in my opinion – the best version of the game available. For two reasons: it has the most responsive controls of any version of Shadow of the Beast I’ve played (even compared to the Amiga original), and it’s also the best-looking and best-sounding version of the game too. It was developed by DMA Design and first published in 1992. In Japan it was released by Victor Interactive Software as “Mashou no Okite“, and in North America it was released for the TurboGrafx CD by Psygnosis/Turbo Technologies.
The Megadrive/Genesis conversion of Shadow of the Beast was developed by WJS Design* and published by Electronic Arts in North America and Europe in 1991 (Victor Interactive Software in Japan in 1992). It’s arguably one of the best versions of Shadow of the Beast out there.
Shadow of the Beast for the Sega Master System was developed by TecMagik and published by Psygnosis in 1992, and this port has some differences to the Amiga original – arguably to its detriment.
The Commodore 64 conversion of Shadow of the Beast was developed by DMA Design and published by Ocean Software in 1990. And it’s a reasonably good port of the scrolling fighting game, with decent graphics and atmospheric music.
***CANNED GAME***
The Super Nintendo version of Shadow of the Beast was prefixed with the word “Super” to differentiate it from other ports, and… it was cancelled before release and never officially made it out. It was developed by IGS (Information Global Service) and an unfinished prototype of the game was leaked in 1993.
Shadow of the Beast is a scrolling fighting/action game originating on the Amiga. It was enough of a success for publisher Psygnosis to convert it to various home computers and consoles. The ZX Spectrum version was developed by Gremlin Graphics and published in 1990, and it is not a bad port overall.
The King of Grabs 