Shadow Fighter

Lester1 2019-06-06
I bought this on my A1200, but for some reason I didn't know about AGA version. That's unfortunate because I think it's one of a small number of examples of games where having extra colours actually made a significant difference. Although the backgrounds in OCS/ECS looked good, the characters always looked distinctly low grade to me, which I now recognise as being because of a serious lack of colour (look at the 4th screenshot on here - each character only has 3 or 4 colours at most, and there is so much white and brown). Playing the AGA version now, the characters look as good as any other game in the genre.

A very well programmed Amiga-exclusive fighter. I had the poster on the wall in my cupboard for a while.
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Dottor_Psycho 2017-01-10
(7/10)
The amount of technical work done on Shadow Fighter is impressive and the game itself has, despite its many influences from here and there, a very distinctive look and feel. On the other hand a lot of the potential this game has cannot be expressed due to a single design choice and that is that controls revolve around a single fire button. Being Shadow Fighter not a IK+ type of game but indeed a mid-90's vs fighter it would have needed to support at least a second fire button for kicks if not the CD32 pad. Said that, controls are as smooth as they could be with a single button controller and once they are mastered there is some serious fun to be had with Shadow Fighter (7/10).
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mahenou 2017-01-03
(10/10)
Best Amiga fighter by far ! Extremely playable, tons of characters / powers, amazing GFX effects, great music... Love it.
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Puzzle Rattrap 2013-02-26
(1/10)
Looked the part, superficially speaking, but like Body Blows, the designers didn't capture the rewarding gameplay of Street Fighter II and the top Neo Geo beat 'em ups. Everything feels awkward, floaty and jittery.
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tertronostalgic 2012-05-26
(9/10)
Yep - best Amiga beat em up ever - 9/10 - I wonder what happened to the extra characters that were supposed to follow as an add on extra?
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PortugueseWarrior 2012-05-23
(9/10)
Probably the best 1-on-1 beat'em-up for the Amiga. Technically brilliant and the gameplay is good too. Cheers, N.A.P.S.!
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habib23q 2011-12-16
(9/10)
It was about the last and best 1 on 1 fighting game on the amiga!! The aga version was better looking but played the same!!
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Vinniebabe 2009-05-29
(10/10)
In my top 5 all time amiga games easily. I prefered this to Street Fighter if I'm honest. It was never as popular but was easily more fun and had some great characters
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Arsace 2009-03-10
(9/10)
I never understood what's about all these 1vs1 beat'em ups, i always ended moving my joystick randomly and pressing the button like a crazy, anyway i remember i enjoyed to play this game with my friend (both just randomly pressing buttons and joystick) ahah, the graphics were amazing, and the tons of layers of parallax were great, the ground had a 3d effect that was incredible on an amiga 500.
Anyway my favorite charachter was that sort of tiger-girl, i had a thing for her... And Electra was my second favorite... But i cant say i ever understand how to play these games, the Beatem'up folia was a sort of 2nd generation thing, i was more a 1st generation older coin-upper, so for me coin-up just means one word: SHOOT-EM UP!!!
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Spartan 2008-09-21
(10/10)


A Remake of this would be good.
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Spartan 2008-02-03
(10/10)
A Game made by sicilian guys ,it simply rocks. NA.P.S. Means "na putiti sugari" ,translated You can suck my .... . Typing in the Menu Screen "mbarividinzoccuafarimbari" (means fella see what you have to do) quickly, you can play with Shadow Character.

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Zenon 2007-11-23
(8/10)
Best fighting game for Amiga
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Graham Humphrey 2007-05-31
(9/10)
Proof that the Amiga can handle beat-em-ups. The developers created a neat special move system designed for a one-button joystick and was hence a lot more playable and responsive than something like the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2. Good fun in one-player mode, excellent in two-player mode, and generally put together very well indeed. Puts the more high-profile games to shame.
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elend 2007-04-05
One of the best beat'em ups on the Amiga. Those guys should have ported the Street Fighter series. Excellent!
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Kai 2007-03-22
(8/10)
Great beat'em up! (81%)
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Killbot 2006-09-07
(7/10)
A beat 'em up in the classic style of Street Fighter 2 or King of Fighters, Shadow Fighter was right up there with Body Blows and Elfmania in terms of one-on-one fighting on the Amiga. The graphics were hit and miss (The backgrounds generally looked great, whereas some of the character designs were downright awful) but the controls were silky smooth and the various moves easy to pull off. It certainly put the Amiga conversion of SF2 to shame.

The only problems were slightly excessive loading times and some disappointing AI that saw the some of the computer characters simply repeat their most powerful moves over and over. This was most noticable with Jurgen, who would spend half of each bout firing his gun at you making him needlessly hard to defeat.

Of course, with any Street Fighter style game the 2-player mode is key and that was where Shadow Fighter shone. The only problem was convincing a friend to play a 2D fighter on the Amiga in the era of Virtua Fighter and Tekken!

7/10
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Jello 2005-08-12
(8/10)
Ouch, imagine a game whit the graphic of Elfmania and the gameplay and characters of Shadow Fighter...
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Wolverine 2005-06-23
As good as beat 'em ups ever got on Amiga. Still nothing compared to the mighty arcade and console conversions of SFII but still played very well despite the slight amaturish artwork and uninspired characters. Best Amiga fighter bar none.
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Chaotica 2005-03-26
(10/10)
After so many years of playing Street Fighter 2 on the arcades and playing Mortal Kombat II on my best friends SNES and waiting, hoping, praying for a good beat em up on Amiga to finally arrive...waiting through Amiga beat em ups that were either terrible, okay but "not quite there," or that were good in their own right, but still not console or arcade quality...finally...after so long...this beauty arrives. It's got everything an Amiga starved beat em up fan wants - speed, intense gameplay, pretty graphics, heaps of characters,a variety of locations, good AI, lots of moves and special moves, cool background music, combos, bonouses, perfects...everything! It even has a good disk swapping system, and a great and intuitive use of a single button joystick. After so long waiting for that great Amiga beat em up, this is it! Worth the wait!
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Tearaway 2005-02-28
This has the best elements of virtually every beat 'em up ever made, all designed around the Amiga's capabilities, and by some extremely gifted programmers. The trainer mode is a delight in its own right.
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Shunichiro 2005-01-30
(9/10)
Shadow Fighter may look somewhat homespun but that's part of its charm. The game is obviously a labour of love and it's made on Amiga's conditions. Technically very competent with fast-moving big sprites clobbing each other over multilayered foregrounds and animated backdrops. What's more important, the one-button playability is intuitive and responsive. It just goes on to show you don't necessarily need dozens of buttons for varied beu action. Sadly the promised character disk was never published.
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Fizza 2005-01-17
(10/10)
I second that, the only game that could come close to matching it was the Mortal Kombat series (honourable mention to IK+ though). This got everything right that nearly all the other beat 'em ups on the Amiga got wrong IMHO.
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Trantor 2004-12-08
(10/10)
The best one on one fighter on the Amiga, and not because it has the most moves or the biggest sprites, but because it really is tailored to the Amiga. The move combos aren't insanely complicated, and fit well on a one button joystick. Loading times are somewhat measured, the graphics fast and fluid (even if they are a bit colorless). The background scrolling and blood effects just add to the super polish. If you haven't played this (probably because you jumped out of the Amiga scene before it was released) do yourself a favor and see how nice a fighter can be on the old A500.
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