Shadow of the Beast III

Shadow of the Beast III
Developer(s)	Reflections Interactive
Publisher(s)	Psygnosis
Composer(s)	Tim Wright
Platform(s)	Amiga
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player

Shadow of the Beast III is a platform game developed by Reflections and published by Psygnosis in 1993 exclusively for the Amiga in 1993.

It is the sequel to Shadow of the Beast and Shadow of the Beast II.

Plot and gameplay

In this game, Aarbron has regained his human shape but must defeat Maletoth once and for all to become fully human. Shadow of the Beast III has four distinct stages instead of one big area. The game places less of an emphasis on the action elements so prominent in the first two games, instead preferring a more cerebral approach.

Producton

The package did not contain a T-shirt; instead, a badge with a game logo was included. A Sega Genesis version was considered and even developed at some point, with Matt Furniss tasked as the composer.

The music for Beast 2 & 3 was composed and produced by Tim Wright. These titles featured a more extensive soundtrack and utilised ethnic samples taken from among other sources the same Korg M1 synthesizer that was sampled by David Whittaker for the original game (although in this case, it was the rack-mounted version the Korg M1/R). Beast 3 contained a total of 24 tracks again featuring ethnic instrumentation, but this time dabbling with the addition of some more synthetic sounds.

Reception

Computer Gaming World gave Shadow of the Beast III a mixed review. The magazine called the graphics "very good" and music "excellent" but criticized the puzzles' high level of difficulty, lack of a save game feature, and slow load times (and copy protection that prevented the use of a hard drive), stating "I have grown tired of arcade games that punish the player rather than reward them for their efforts".

External links

• Shadow of the Beast III at MobyGames