If you thought Shadow of the Beast was mind blowing wait 'till you get a load of Beast II! Conflict with the Beast Mage's subordinates was tough enough when you had the powers of the beast to help you. Now you have to face them in an unfamiliar hostile environment as a puny humanoid. The compeling need to find and save your baby sister from the evils of the Beast Lord spurs you on against seemingly insurmountable odds. Have Lord you the strength and cunning to survive?THE GAME
You were once the pawn of Maletoth, the Beast Lord, your humanoid body changed and your will sapped by years of subjection to the dark arts of his evil mages. Then one fateful day you looked upon the face of your father as he was dragged forward for execution, seeing his image opened your clouded mind to the truth about your past. As the sacrificial blade tore into his body and he screamed his last breath you vowed to take revenge on your masters for his slaughter and for what they'd done to you. Using your beast-like powers you scoured the land in search of the Beast Lord and vengeance. Fighting your way through a seemingly endless barrage of adversaries you struggled valiantly towards a confrontation with Zelek, the Beast Mage. A terrific battle ensued from which you eventually emerged the victor. Your prize was the return of your humanoid body in which you now stand proud and free, elated to be rid of the evil dominance of the Beast Lord ... but your elation doesn't last long! Dire news reaches you of the capture of your sister by the Beast Mage. She's been taken to Kara-Moon, a far-off hostile place where she is to be subjected to years of forced cultivation until eventually taking your place as warrior messenger to the Beast Lord. This must not happen. Following a journey fraught with peril, you eventually reach Kara-Moon and, armed only with a mace, prepare for battle. But ironically, without the benefit of the beast powers you fought so hard to shed, will you be strong enough to succeed?
THE SHADOW DEEPENDSThe blanket of pitch black that drapes over the land blending shapes into a mass of indefinable darkness is only intruded upon by the occasional shaft of brilliant lightning. In the brief but manic dancing of the diamond-white tongues of energy, one shape stands out from the rest: A tower; so tall its pinnacle seems to look down on the very source of the storm. The single window near its top is almost as black as the surroundings, but closer study reveals a faint glow from within... Darkness is Zelek's ally, the only place in which he finds solace, yet the increasingly frequent bolts of dazzling lightning do nothing more than fleetingly interrupt his lonely musings. As he sits, deep in thought, his chair seems less comfortable with the burden he now has to bear: His recent clash with the warrior messenger was, at the time, more an annoyance than painful. If the messenger hadn't had incredible luck on his side Zelek feels sure he would have emerged victorious from the conflict. Unfortunately, his master, Maletoth the Beast Lord, takes a very different view. He's disappointed in him and has let it be known that should Zelek be unable to put right the wrongs of his defeat there are many other mages waiting to take the place of honour at his side. Knowing to what extent Maletoth dislikes failures - and how he deals with them - Zelek must quickly make amends for losing his master's prize warrior messenger or feel his dreadful wrath. Any humanoid child would suffice to provide the mages of darkness with another puppet on which to perform their macabre arts to mould it into another warrior messenger. But Zelek's recent defeat at the hands of the now-free warrior messenger sticks in his craw and he craves revenge, he NEEDS revenge. His lackies are even now searching the land in an effort to find a suitable candidate but time marches on and Maletoth is not renowned for his patience. As he contemplates entering the search himself, one of Zelek's many underlings crawls into his presence and, grovelling on the floor in a pathetic attempt at homage, tells him of the birth of a child many leagues to the north... "On the outskirts of Deadwood Forest there's a small cottage nestling beneath a ridge of granite, she lies within". Doubting the suitability of a female for the role of warrior messenger, Zelek enters a shallow trance of peregrination and sends his thoughts to the areas described by the whimpering subordinate. Transporting his mind into the cottage via the narrow chimney he looks down on the baby from the darkness of his storm-torn tower.
YOUR OBJECTIVE To save your sister you must fight your way across danger-fraught Kara-Moon to reach the Beast Mage and once again defeat him in battle. You will confront many creatures on your journey, some of whom may have information for you while others merely crave your death. Physical contact with enemies depletes your energy. Collectable weapons are scattered throughout Kara-Moon as are other useful objects and gold. Gold can be used to purchase weapons or food to restore lost energy. It may also gain you access to otherwise unattainable places. Some of the puzzles and obstacles you encounter may require help from other characters - voluntary or otherwise - to overcome.
CONTROLLING THE WARRIOR
You may use joystick or arrow keys to control the warrior, but we recommend joystick.
JUMP/ASCEND
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MOVE LEFT--- ---MOVE RIGHT
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CROUCH/DESCEND
FIRE, SHIFT OR ENTER: Use highlighted weapon/object
Keys: F1-F4: Highlight weapon/object carried.
O: Offer highlighted object.
A: Ask nearest character about object or character.
ESCAPE: Abandon text input.
S: Display score/gold collected.
HELP: Pause (DELETE to restart).
F-10: Quit game.
Pressing the space bar during the intro displays an option screen from which you may select to dispense with the game-over sequence (after you've admired it at least once of course!)
REFLECTIONS OF A SHADOWPROUD MOMENTS
We at Psygnosis are very pleased that SHADOW OF THE BEAST (BEAST I) was the proud winner of 6 international awards, including Best Graphics, Best Sound, Best Overall Presentation and Best Entertainment Program of 1989. REFLECTIONS, the programmers, while being far too modest to be seen smiling in public, are rumoured to be pleased also. Unfortunately, with all the work they've had to put in creating BEAST II they haven't had much opportunity for self-congratulation. They did however find time to provide a little insight into the making of BEAST II.
BEAST I's method of scrolling, while looking very impressive, imposed technical limitations on what we could do with the monsters within the game. We needed a completely different approach if we were to extend and enhance in the way we wanted.
As was its prequal, BEAST II was created on an Amiga 2000 using hardware scrolling, dualplay field, hardware sprites and the blitter. To get a game to run smoothly at 50 frames per second hardware scrolling has to be used since the blitter is not fast enough to move the whole screen in parallax. However, the problem with hardware scrolling is it eats large amounts of memory which in turn means increased disk access and loading time. Unfortunately, with the amount of graphics and music in our games, and only half-meg machines as standard, long disk loads are inevitable. So to reduce 'waiting time' to a minimum we've included Patience Options in BEAST II to mimimise the problem.
Scrolling in BEAST II is very different to that of I in that it parallaxes in virtually every direction around the player. The other main area in which we've improved gameplay is the style and performance of monsters: they act and react to your actions; some are intelligent, some not, while others are there to help you. Characters in BEAST II suit their locations and they all have a job to do. This feature, we feel, greatly increases depth of play.
EQUIPMENT NECESSARY FOR PRODUCING STATE-OF-THE-ART GAMES.
The BEAST II program was developed on a 25 megaherts PC running PDS 2.
Graphics were created on an Amiga 2000 running a 25 megaherts 68030 processor board.
A range of coffees helped keep us at the keyboard.
Out next project, on which we've been working alongside Beast 2, is AWESOME, a shoot-'em-up that should really space you out. And after that? Beast 3 the FINAL encounter??
FACT BOX
Total Memory Used: 3.5 megabytes
Graphics Data: 2 Megabytes
Music & Sound Rate: 20 kilohertz
Screen Update: 50 time a second
Project Duration: 12 months
Cheat: When the game first begins; go to the right, when you see the first warrior press the "A" key. You will be asked what you want? Type in "TEN PINTS". Response you will see: "This is for you Roger, CheatMode activated."