Off. Tha. Hook.

After too many hours on my 360, I finally relapsed once again into my retro phase. This time, I strolled into the local oldies store and traded Call Of Duty: World At War for a Nintendo 64, and a game I’ve been wanting to play for a while now; Shadow Man.

Rather than deliver a formulaic review on a rapidly aging gem such as this, I dare thee to hit the jump on the first chapter of my experience with it. I think you’ll enjoy this.

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Chapter 1: What in the Hell is Shadow Man?!

I plowed through this game quite a while ago, but still am remembering nearly every detail about this obscure license.

To me, Shadow Man was introduced to me through this title. To some others, it was through graphic novels, although most people missed the original issues. Originally a 44 issue story by Valiant Comics, Acclaim ratified the Shadow Man universe with it’s introduction to the comic world, and this game was a direct cash cow affiliated with it.

Back in 1999, I had an unusual urge to purchase Shadow Man, rather than rent it. I rented Goldeneye for 3 years before buying it, but an Acclaim title I never played before? Why not? I bought my last car at a car auction without test driving it, let alone start it. Don’t take my advice on purchases, I’m no Clark Howard. Then again, I do wear a headset most of the day, and rant about shit I don’t know anything about…

Truly, it was the advertising at the time that got me, and it was in the midst of an ongoing console war between (what else?) the Playstation and Nintendo 64. In simplicity, fanboys of the PSX boasted about the low cost, high ROM Compact Disk approach to games. Even though the N64 had a vastly superior array of graphical prowess from it’s launch, it’s memory and higher price tag of cartridges was an ongoing problem. To attempt to counter this, a few games were released (pushed, in some cases) to have as much dialog and FMV crammed into the carts as possible.

During this campaign, it was boasted that the game had “adult themes”, with “hours of dialog”, if I recall one ad correctly. More on that later.

Anyways, since I was the proud owner of a N64 (AND PSX) with the Expansion Pak (also known as the only surviving piece of the 64DD), I popped this attractive-looking game in, and gave it a go. Needless to say, I knew at the time I was playing an Acclaim game. It really was hit-or miss here, since this was in a time where Acclaim didn’t ALWAYS fuck up (Turok 1 and 2 are in my favorite FPS’s ever).

The first thing I was treated to was an AWESOME introduction, with a haunting yet energetic tone to Shadow Man’s theme. Being fully charged-up, I pressed start with apprehension to begin my “new journey”. Too bad I had to immediately restart to free up memory to save my “new journey”, since this game was one of a hundred CART based games that lacked memory back-up of it’s own. “72 pages (out of 120) to save ONE progress. BULLSHIT!“

And so it begins…

The lore of Shadow Man begins in 1888, where Jack The Ripper is making his one and only confession to his heinous crimes, explaining that he needed to find the souls of his victims by splitting them open. But before he completes his work and commits suicide, he’s approached by a tall, blood-soaked character by the name Legion.

Legion explains that Jack’s searching of dark souls inside his victims wasn’t far off from the truth, but in fact exist in SOME people. After a brief explanation about dark souls, Legion asks Jack for his help in erecting a Cathedral Of Pain in which to bring about the Apocalypse, and for that, he needed to kill himself. And Jack does exactly that.

I remind you, that this is 1999, and on a Nintendo console. This is some heavy shit here.

Cue in modern era, where Nettie, a Voodoo goddess of some sort,  informs Shadow Man (Michael in the day world) about visions of impending doom to the Earth. She says to meet her in Louisiana and she’ll explain everything he needs to do.

For those at this point more interested in the details of the storyline (which is really, quite amazing), a quick wicki will give you a better base on the origins of each character.

This is where the game actually starts:

You are in Louisiana, it’s dusk, and the game looks like shit. And controls like shit. And (I failed to mention) sounds like shit. The graphics are muddled and blocky without hi res , and choppy with hi res (with the Expansion Pak). The controls are like Tomb Raider, but stickier. The dialog (HOURS OF IT, I SWEAR) is acceptably muddled, but the sound effects are repetitive, loud, muddled and irritating. I wasn’t happy already, 60 seconds into it.

After I glitched on my third or fourth jump and got (permanently) hung up, I quit. And I was pissed. “$60 down the drain”, I said. Another Acclaim rip-off with nice graphics (not really), and NO gameplay. Back to GoldenEye again…

But that’s when, 3 or so days later, I saw the ad for this game, yet again. And with it, that haunting theme kicked into my head.  “Maybe I’ll just plug it in and listen to that damn theme one more time…”

It doesn’t end here, but this chapter does. Tune in next time for how this game actually doesn’t suck after all, and why! Good day, friends!

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