Shadow Blasters
| Shadow Blasters | |
|---|---|
 Shadow Blasters box art (North American version) | |
| Developer(s) | Sigma Enterprises |
| Publisher(s) | Sage's Creation |
| Composer(s) | Kim Songdong |
| Platform(s) | Sega Genesis |
| Genre(s) | Sidescroller Platformer |
| Mode(s) | 1 to 2 players (simultaneously) |
Shadow Blasters (四天明王 Shiten Myouou) is a video game developed by Sigma Enterprises Inc. for the Sega Genesis video game console in 1990 . It was released in North America and Japan.
Story=
The evil god Ashura has unleashed hordes of monsters and demons onto Earth, hoping to take control of the planet as well as the hearts of men. The powerful god Hyprion has recruited four of Earth's most powerful warriors and assembled them into a team to fight the encroaching darkness. The player assumes control of this group of warriors in order to defeat Ashura.
Gameplay
The game is a standard sidescrolling platform game. The player can control one character at a time and can choose from a pool of four characters. Each character is able to walk, jump, crouch, and fire a projectile weapon unique to that character. For the most part, the player is free to move forward and backward through a given level as desired. As the player progresses, characters become more powerful by picking up power-ups for the attributes of speed, jump, and power. Power-ups do not "roll over" into the character pool if the current character is at the maximum for the respective attribute - a character can only gain attribute points from a power-up if that character is in play when the power-up is collected.
The first part of the game consists of six levels: Mountain, Street, Glenn, Harbor, Forest, and Future. One unique aspect of this game is that these six levels may be played in any order the player desires. The second part of the game consists of two levels and a final battle, arranged in a predetermined order.
There are four characters that player can choose from: the ninja warriors Horatio and Tiffany, a Buddhist monk Marco, and a Japanese fencer Leo. Each character has four distinct stages to his or her weapon. The player can switch characters at any point during game play simply by going to the character select screen and choosing a different character. While this is a powerful asset, once a character dies, he or she cannot ever be revived. This effectively limits the total "lives" of the player to four - once the last character is dead, the game is over.
| Character | Sex | Weapon 1 | Weapon 2 | Weapon 3 | Weapon 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horatio | Male | Shuriken | Fireball | Large Fireball | Fire Dragon |
| Marco | Male | Electric Orb | Lightning Blast | Lightning Bolt | 3 Lightning Bolts |
| Leo | Male | Dagger | Boomerang | Dual Boomerang | Large Boomerang |
| Tiffany | Female | Bomb | Small Tornado | Dual Tornado | Large Homing Tornado |
References
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