Shadowman Remastered: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch

[SteveH]

 This has just appeared on the Xbox store (£16.99) I remember loving this and the sequel back in the day. I think I played the N64 version first and then played it again on the Dreamcast. 

 Here is the blurb showing the enhancements:

Shadow Man: Remastered is a complete overhaul of the classic game with restored, previously cut content!

 

3 New Levels:

"Summer Camp, Florida" (Day and Night)

"Salvage Yard, Mojave Desert" (Day and Night)

"Asylum Station 2 - Experimentation Rooms"

 

New Audio (from the original games composer, Tim Haywood):

Remastered music and SFX New music and SFX for the restored levels

Restored cut/unused voice dialog in levels

 

Art Updates:

HD Textures for all levels and objects

Nvidia Intro Cutscene Textures

HD HUD and inventory icons plus a new icon for the Shadow Gun

Restored unused animations

Restored several cut and censored models from the original levels N64 Gad Icons

 

Gameplay Improvements:

New weapon wheel to select weapons faster as time is slowed down

Improved controls

Improved destructible objects using Bullet Physics

Auto targeting

Tweaked/improved AI

Levels rearranged as originally intended

A ton of fixes across the entire game to each level from object to geometry fixes

Fixes to the localization for English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian

Over 30 achievements

 

New Weapons:

A second Violator (Consistent with the N64 version)

Sawed-off Shotgun (replaces the second regular shotgun)

New model and many sound variations for the Shadow Gun

 

New Enemies:

Yort Yort Floater

The Seraph Queen

Seraph

Dead Worm

Unused zombie restored in Station 2

One arm Tenement Zombie.

 

Rendering Improvements:

Dynamic Per Pixel Lighting

Clustered Forward Shadow Mapping

Order-independent transparency

 

New Post Processing Effects:

Ambient Occlusion

Antialiasing

Anisotropic Filtering

Motion Blur

Film Grain

Depth of Field

 

Secrets: All the secrets from the N64/Dreamcast/PC included in this remaster Plus many more to be discovered!

 

 

[Monkeyspill]

My Dreamcast version was scratched and wouldn’t play past a certain point. Electronics Boutique refused to replace or refund it because it booted to the title screen. It was when they used to keep discs behind the counter in cardboard sleeves. That’s my main memory of Shadow Man unfortunately.

[BadgerFarmer]

I got into it on N64. It felt like a kind of edgy Zelda. But looking back I'm not sure it was ever that great really. I've not been desperate to play it again, anyway.

[Nathan Wind]

I played through most of the DC version a couple of years ago, and a fair chunk of the N64 one. It’s held up pretty well, actually. Meanders a bit but the atmosphere is great. It’s one of those good 7/10 games there used to be loads of that you don’t really get any more.

[Stanley]

55 minutes ago, BadgerFarmer said:

I got into it on N64. It felt like a kind of edgy Zelda. But looking back I'm not sure it was ever that great really. I've not been desperate to play it again, anyway.

Yeah I seem to remember it was massive and became a bit confusing at times. The Moonlight Sonata intro was great though. 

[Fierce Poodle]

I can’t imagine this has aged well. The level design at the time was awful.

[Stanley]

2 minutes ago, Fierce Poodle said:

I can’t imagine this has aged well. The level design at the time was awful.

It was poorly signposted wasn’t it, perhaps they’ve added objective markers now although it’s not listed in the gameplay improvements.

[JohnC]

I tried it on PC back in the day, but there was some bug or incompatibility or something making it unplayable. It was like the lighting was missing. Everything was super dark. If I pressed his face against a wall and moved about, I could just about make out some pixels moving. Too much shadow, man.

[yashiro]

Back in what day? I played it on a lot of hardware prior to the original launch. It was one of the first games to do hardware accelerated lighting so some cards/drivers might have been wonky.

 

All the voodoo cards worked, even the banshee. Same goes for Riva TNT. Even the Geforce 256 which no one knew existed, other than moneybags publishers. Matrox were not good for 3d.

[SteveH]

2 hours ago, BadgerFarmer said:

I got into it on N64. It felt like a kind of edgy Zelda. But looking back I'm not sure it was ever that great really. I've not been desperate to play it again, anyway.

I do recall at the time it was touted as a kind of mature Zelda by a few reviewers/magazines. I'm hoping it had held up well because I splurged on it as soon as I saw it was for sale. 

[JohnC]

6 minutes ago, yashiro said:

Back in what day? I played it on a lot of hardware prior to the original launch. It was one of the first games to do hardware accelerated lighting so some cards/drivers might have been wonky.

Early 2000s I suppose. I think the second game was on the horizon at the time, though that wasn't PC.

[bankies]

Played this on the N64 and then the Dream cast which was the better version.

 

The second game came out on ps2 but I didn't think it was as good as first game.

 

Off to download this now...

[Pekoe]

I played and completed it on the PlayStation One. Later levels struggled so much it was like moving through treacle watching a cartoon flip book.

[yashiro]

Aye, it was shite. We never planned to do it. Got strong armed into it by the publisher. Same goes for Dreamcast but that machine could do 3d so it wasn't a trainwreck. It did ship with audio bugs though.

[kiroquai]

Got the N64 version of this from a really small second-hand games shop in Poole in autumn 1999 I think - actually have really fond memories of it. I didn't complete all that many games back then but I stuck with this right to the end.

 

Always been a bit wary of going back as that generation as a whole hasn't aged amazingly for the most part, but definitely interested in taking a look at the remaster

[Garwoofoo]

I really enjoyed the N64 version back in the day, it even had a high-resolution mode if you owned the memory expansion pack. It was so brown Priti Patel would have tried to deport it but it was pretty atmospheric for its time. I remember running through the Tube station level marvelling that a game was actually set in a real place I knew.

 

Looking at footage of this "remaster", it looks almost identical to the original but with slightly more garish lighting.

[Steven]

I seem to remember getting quite far into it and hitting a game breaking section where my character was trapped and upon restarting I ended back up there every time.

 

Such joy.

[Xipe Totec]

3 hours ago, Pekoe said:

I played and completed it on the PlayStation One. Later levels struggled so much it was like moving through treacle watching a cartoon flip book.

Same here, loved it at the time despite the flaws & picked it up on DC later. Don't remember if I finished it twice though.

 

Didn't play much of the sequel, I remember it being generic 3rd person shooty crap with none of the atmosphere of the first.

[CarloOos]

I may be going mad, but I’m sure I remember reading that this game was made in Teesside.

[Keyboard Koala]

The game was indeed made in Teeside.

 

It was one of my all-time favourite N64 games back in 1999, but having tried it not so long ago on my PS classic, I can say that it has aged terribly.

[Thwomp]

9 minutes ago, CarloOos said:

I may be going mad, but I’m sure I remember reading that this game was made in Teesside.

 

Yeah, Acclaim Teeside I read. 

 

I've always wanted to try this game. I think I remember seeing footage of the PS1 version and it was hard to make out anything, just brown on brown. I'll definitely buy the remaster though.

[SteveH]

 It's a shame they didn't make any effort to increase the detail of the character models. They make the GTA remasters look like a Bluepoint job. 

[robdood]

1 hour ago, Thwomp said:

 

Yeah, Acclaim Teeside I read. 

 

I've always wanted to try this game. I think I remember seeing footage of the PS1 version and it was hard to make out anything, just brown on brown. I'll definitely buy the remaster though.

[Colonel Panic]

Googling them, they did the N64 port of Forsaken. Love that game too and it runs great on the console!

[yashiro]

Yeah, it was made in Stockton at the business park over the river behind the high street.

 

Or more precisely, here

 

[BossSaru]

10 hours ago, Keyboard Koala said:

The game was indeed made in Teeside.

 

Acclaim needed game designers who understood what a demonic hellscape looked like.

[pulsemyne]

By the way these remasters are actually very tricky things for the developer to do. Watch the DF video on it and you realise just how much work has to go into them.

[yashiro]

38 minutes ago, BossSaru said:

Acclaim needed game designers who understood what a demonic hellscape looked like.

 

Back in those days the artists made everything. We mapped out the levels on graph paper but the artists just built everything as one asset in 3DS Max. They mostly came from Newcastle though, so they had experience of living in Satan's armpit.

[CarloOos]

13 hours ago, yashiro said:

Yeah, it was made in Stockton at the business park over the river behind the high street.

 

Or more precisely, here

 

Ha, yeah I know exactly where that is. Pretty funny looking back at how popular Shadowman was at school, literally nobody knew it was a local product. 

[Popo]

12 hours ago, pulsemyne said:

By the way these remasters are actually very tricky things for the developer to do. Watch the DF video on it and you realise just how much work has to go into them.

 

The Noclip documentary on Demon's Souls is very instructive in this regard - I had no idea the game was built in their own engine (i.e. the one the SotC remake is built in).

 

Obviously all the creative direction and decisions are based on the original game, but discounting that, it's effectively like making a game from scratch. The word 'remaster' doesn't quite do justice to it.