Hoi chummer, so you want to run the shadows eh? Well, if you're schoolbound, march right on down to the office and drop your classes now. If you're a wage slave, get yourself fired and get that unemployment claim filed fast. If you've got a spouse, get that divorce right away and don't forget to ship the kids off to an orphanage. Trust me on this one, once you start SHADOWRUN you won't want to take the time to deal with such petty distractions. Your whole life will narrow down to how to rescue Ilne Two Fists, where you can get help for Stark, when you can frag the next bad guy, and where are those blasted dragons at anyway?
What is Shadowrun you ask? Well, first of all, it is a genuine marketing phenomena. There is Shadowrun the role-playing game system, with enough rulebooks and supplements for the most fanatical of Dungeons and Dragons types. There is Shadowrun the board game. There is Shadowrun the novels. Can Shadowrun the Movie and Shadowrun the TV series be far behind. And, of course, there is Shadowrun the video game, on both SNES and Sega. It's the Sega cart we'll be concentrating on here.
All right already, what exactly is Shadowrun, you want to know? Well chummer, Shadowrun is a vision of the future. It is a vision of a time when all our high tech fantasies and nightmares have come true. A time when the resurgence of magic has brought back elves, trolls and dragons. A time when megacorps battle to control the flow of money, power, and information. When shamans do battle with street samurai whose human flesh has been augmented with the latest in lethal cyberware. It is a time when outlaws, called shadowrunners, hire themselves out for money, for honor, for revenge, to battle the megacorps and each other. It is the age of the Matrix, the world wide computer net, and the age of Magic. And you, decker, get to run right through the middle of it.
Shadowrun the Sega cart starts with a murder. Your brother was hired to do a run into the Salish-Shidhe wilderness outside of Seattle. Set up by an unknown someone, for unknown reasons, his team was ambushed and slaughtered. Caught on video, the slaughter is replayed endlessly on the world wide news nets. You spend almost your last penny getting to Seattle, swearing to avenge your brother. Broke, alone, not knowing anyone or anything, you hit town and start the hunt for his killer.
Ah, but life is never simple. For Seattle is a city where you either frag or get fragged. Just to stay alive, let alone follow the trail, you need street smarts, contacts, and the latest in lethal firepower. To pay the bills and get the skills and equipment you need you have to hire yourself out on the open market. Some suit, afraid to walk the streets alone, may hire you as a bodyguard. Someone who wants the data locked up in someone elseÕs computer may hire you to run the Matrix where cybercombat can be fatal to the unskilled or the unlucky. From the slums of Seattle to the corporate high rises, from the data streams of the computer nets to the outlying wilderness , you battle to stay alive and to track the clues that will bring you face to face with your brotherÕs murderer. Let's hope you're not a xenophobe chummer, 'cause you're gonna be dealing with elves, cyborgs, orcs, and of course, the dragons. Good luck and good hunting!
The Sega cart is a complex and consuming game that serious rpg fans will love. There are several caveats however. First, this is a role-playing game, not an arcade or action/adventure style cart. While there is plenty of high tech combat, the emphasis is not on fast reflex shoot-outs. Instead, your focus will be on building up your character's skills and abilities and on acquiring the equipment and hardware/software you will need to follow up the clues you are given. There is a wide variety of skills, abilities, combat gear and computer equipment you will need. This leads to the second caveat. Much, much patience is required! To amass the necessary skills and equipment takes enormous amounts of time. You will be running the shadows until your brain burns out!
Another caution is that the game is saturated with magic and the occult. If dabbling with such things makes you uncomfortable, you'll want to pass on this one.
Overall, the game play is excellent for an rpg. The button action is intuitive and easy to pick up. The rpg mechanics are handled smoothly, from conversations to combat. The sound effects are good. Wait until you set off a corporate alarm! The graphics are decent, if not killer. Like many rpgs however, there is not a lot of replayability in this cart. Once youÕve gone through the game a few times your game play will be reduced to endless efforts to build up karma points and nuyen. That gets old fast when thereÕs no suspense left. Personally I would rent this one rather than buy it. If you do rent, plan on renting it for at least a week though.
A lot of folks have asked about the SNES vs. the Sega cart. They are two very different games with entirely different storylines. In the SNES cart, you wake up in a morgue with amnesia and have to figure out who put you there and why. Their graphics have a much sharper cyberpunk/Bladerunner edge than Segas. SNES has a more involved storyline. Sega has better game mechanics. For example, the handling of conversations on SNES are a time- consuming pain. Sega handles them much more naturally. Cybercombat in the Matrix is far superior on Sega to that of the SNES version. However I do like them both and would gladly recommend both. The SNES cart is probably easier for someone new to rpgs.
Well chummer, whadda ya think? Ready to strap on some serious firepower and run the shadows? What's that, you want some advice? Well, slot some nuyen onto the ol' credstick and I'll tell you some things that just might keep you alive. The real money and experience points are to be found in the Matrix. Run your first game, at least, as a decker and lean toward building up your computer skills and maxing out your cyberdeck as quickly as possible. Grab all the data you can get every time you go into the 'nets and sell it. (Don't neglect your other skills and abilities though, you're gonna need them all to survive). Save your game constantly. 'Cause even when you think you're the baddest thing to walk the streets of Seattle, a strike team can jump on you out of nowhere and geek you big time. Contacts are expensive and you won't need them all, but you never know which ones will come in handy when, so belly up and pay the price.
Runners argue endlessly about which armament is best. Personally, I like a shotgun for those times when you have to bust up an orc gang or take on corp security. Those shotguns eat up your ammo fast though, so I also like to sling a pistol, for those times when brutal firepower is not essential to your survival. There is a little beauty that the mercs favor which has a good ammo rate and does a nice job on damage. Look for that baby in better gun shops everywhere.
Finally, there is an old street proverb that says never deal with a dragon and never trust an elf. While that's generally a good rule of thumb to run by, this time it ain't necessarily so. Enuff said. So ka, chummer. See you in the shadows!
This review Copyright (C) 1994 by Streamer for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.