Shadow of the Beast

Wow! Check out the specs on this game: twelve levels on multiplane scrolling, the fastest frame rate of any Lynx game, nearly a hundred different monsters, over 200 sound effects and over 30 minutes of original music! Visually, Shadow of the Beast is by far the finest Lynx game ever released, and it doesn't fare too badly in the audio department, either. The atmosphere generated by the side-scrolling beat-em-up is absolutely overwhelming - it's at least as evocative as any previous version of Psygnosis' recognizable title, if not more so.

Of course, the nagging criticism that has dogged every single version of Shadow of the Beast is that the game has sacrificed entertaining game play in favor of graphic excellence. The Lynx version is at times open to that argument, but it should be noted that that Digital Developments has made some attempt to make improvements on the original Shadow of the Beast, most notably by exploiting the hardware's scaling abilities at every given opportunity.

But, oh, the graphics! Bizarre alien landscapes, skeletal creatures, floating eyeballs and dragon beasts are the order of the day - it's like a living, breathing Roger Dean painting in the palm of your hand. The "boss" characters are huge, the character animation is super smooth and the environment is so off the wall that you never can tell who your next opponent will be.

One word of caution: Like the Lynx version of Batman Returns, this is an extremely difficult game that requires a lot of patience and skill. If you can get around that obstacle, you'll find a winner in Shadow of the Beast.