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Welcome
to Game of the Week! Each week there will be a
new featured game on this page. The game may be good,
average or diabolically bad, it really doesn't matter!
Just look at the pics, read the text and enjoy the nostalgia!
:-) Game of the Week! is open to contributions so if you
would like to contribute
a game article for this page you're more than welcome
to! Every article we receive will be considered! |
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Shamus
1983 Synapse
Software
Programmed
by Jack L. Thornton Jr.
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Most
text of the present article comes from the review published
in the fifteenth issue of the British C64 magazine ZZAP!64
(street date: June 12th, 1986). |
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SHAMUS
Americana,
£2.99 cass, joystick
only
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The Shadow is out and about! Yes he is, and putting
yourself into the shoes of Shamus you must destroy him
and rid the world of his evil. HA! You thought we were
talking about THE Shadow, you know, ZZAP!'s goodly do-gooder
didn't you? Well, we're not. The Shadow in question
is a horrible meany who eats babies and enjoys reading
Mike Pattenden's gossip column, and as you can see,
anyone who is that evil just has to be destroyed.
Shamus
is an arcade adventure played in Sabre Wulf style
-- a flick screen game viewed from above but the sprites
are viewed from the side, sort of like a Picasso painting,
and what the intrepid hero must do is penetrate deep
into the core of the fortress of the nasty Shadow and
destroy it. This castle is made up of many rooms spread
over 32 screens through which Shamus trundles, picking
up whatever he can before his task is finished. Some
rooms have exits locked by padlocks and the only way
they can be opened is by finding the relevant coloured
key in another room. There are also mystery bonus question
marks and extra life potions which help the quest when
collected.
All
the walls are electrified and if Shamus touches one
the 'this is how to disrupt the tube train timetable'
syndrome comes into effect, turning him into a pile
of ashes and one of five lives is lost. The Shadow's
laser-spitting robots fill the rooms and these try and
kill our hero by shooting or by touching him with their
electrified exoskeletons. Luckily Shamus is armed with
a powerful Ion Shivs (TM, Pat Pending) laser rifle and
can shoot the deadly denizens before they damage his
frail and pink little bod.
Throughout
the quest the Shadow monitors progress made by Shamus,
and if the hapless fellow spends too much time in one
room the Shadow enters and gives chase, hell bent on
killing him. Shooting the evil character merely causes
him to pause for a second, but this pause gives Shamus
enough time to get out of the room and enter another.
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Poor
ol' Shamus, he's nearly as old as the off ice
crumbly, Malcolm, now. Though this game was a
great fave of mine in the golden age of software,
nowadays it really fails to thrill. Even the previously
impressive gameplay seems to be rather simple
indeed. Even for all you players out there who
may never have seen Shamus before, I'm
sure it would bore you silly -- compared to today's
releases it really is crude. Have a look maybe,
especially if you're a Robotron fan.
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Presentation
86%
Beautiful title screen logo, and several options.
Graphics
45%
Simple characters and backdrops.
Sound
69%
Good title screen music and spot
FX.
Hookability
56%
Mildly addictive initially.
Lastability
50%
Mildly playable -- eventually.
Value
For Money 55%
Low priced and -- mild.
Overall
51%
Fairly Liquid couldn't be any milder.
.
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Htmlized
by Dimitris
Kiminas (2 Mar 2006)
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