Shadowrun (SNES)

 I think it's pretty obvious I'm a huge nerd, I wouldn't be talking about old video games on the internet if I wasn't. But as nerdy as I am, tabletop games have always been a blind spot for me. 

I've talked a little bit about this before, but the Satanic Panic was still very much alive in the 90's. It may have been on its last legs, but it was still there. Violent video games gave the collective outrage mob a second wind, with games like Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and, especially, Doom serving as fresh new targets to sink their claws into. Other more traditional game formats weren't safe either, as Magic: The Gathering also became a punching bag, though I have to admit that was a little more understandable when you try to walk in those folks shoes. Not even Pokemon was safe, especially when the TCG came out and the usual suspects started claiming it was intentionally designed as a gateway drug to get into Magic. We aren't talking about the folks that had honest (though massively overblown) concerns about violence in video games. It may seem weird to think about, but a lot of parents really thought that these games were specifically designed by a cabal of devil worshipers to make their kids turn to the dark arts. And my parents...weren't among them. Both my mother and father were pretty good at seeing through this kind of thinking, for various reasons I won't go into here. They were strict in some areas, but not really in others, and I was pretty much allowed to consume whatever media it was I wanted. Mortal Kombat? Sure, no problem. Doom? Not only were my parents okay with me playing it, they would play it with me. The foul language in Duke Nukem was more of a concern, but I was still allowed to play it. This was true of other media formats as well, I never had that parental resistance to listening to heavy metal that a lot of fans of the genre grew up with. So it always struck me, and continues to strike me, as a little odd how verboten pen and paper games were in my house. 

Playing Doom may have been a family affair, but playing Dungeons & Dragons was absolutely forbidden. In all my years living at home, there was only ever one video game my parents ever outwardly expressed concerns of my involvement with: a PC dungeon crawler called Menzoberranzan that I received through some means I don't remember. Their concern with it wasn't about violence or gore, nor lewdness or language. All the concern came from the big D&D label on the box. D&D did not have a great reputation and my parents wanted to ensure I had nothing to do with it. It was probably for the best, mostly because it probably saved me from some already bad bullying becoming even worse. But it did kind of close off my interest in and experience with other similar tabletop games. As such, the first I had ever heard of Shadowrun was as a video game and not a pen and paper RPG. I didn't realize until much later that the universe was so extensive, I just knew the SNES game looked cool and I wanted to play it. It's one of those games that always kind of slipped through my hands. But all these years later, I've finally been able to play it to completion. Before we get started discussing the game in earnest, I want to make it clear that I will be talking specifically about the SNES version this week. More often than not, games released for multiple consoles in those days were straight ports (like the game we looked at last time) or at least relatively similar. But the SNES and Genesis versions of Shadowrun are completely different, having almost nothing to do with each other outside a name and a universe. I am currently trying to get my hands on the Sega version, but for now we will be sticking strictly with the Big N.

Released in 1993, the SNES version was the first video game adaptation of Shadowrun to arrive on the scene. Developed by Beam Software and Published by Data East, the project had something of a messy development cycle. Beam first acquired the Shadowrun license in 1989 and the project was stopped when its lead designer abruptly left and once it was restarted, the team was forced to complete the game in a scant six months. New lead designer Pauli Kidd, who had worked on Beam's NES adventure title Nightshade and would go on to write a slew of sci-fi novels, described the atmosphere at Beam as 'a cesspit of bad karma and evil vibes.' Yeah, not a good look. Shadowrun was released to critical acclaim, and many publications credit it with bringing elements of film noir to the RPG genre. However, it also sold relatively poorly. Time appears to have been kind to the game, as many retrospective lists and articles tout Shadowrun as an underappreciated title or hidden gem or whatever you want to call it. While I don't know if I would put it amongst my all-time favorite games, Shadowrun was definitely a unique experience and a title that was decidedly ahead of its time, for better and worse. If nothing else, it introduced me to a very interesting universe I absolutely want to explore further. 

The plot here is adapted from the first Shadowrun novel (there are books too, apparently) 'Never Deal with a Dragon' by Robert Charrette. It puts you in the shoes of Jake Armitage, a courier in a dystopian 2050 version of Seattle. It's a strange time in history, as huge mega-corporations control the city and technological advances encroach more and more on everyday life. While cybernetics and other similar tech continues to advance, the old ways are also seeing something of a revolution. Magic has returned to the world and a variety of species like orcs, trolls and dragons live and work amongst its human denizens. It's a strange and often violent time, something the game makes clear off the jump. Our story begins with Jake being gunned down in the street by two assassins, who leave him for dead. Shortest game ever? Not quite. A mysterious vulpine shapeshifter casts a healing spell on him just before the police come to pick him up. Believing him to be dead, they bring Jake to the city morgue, where the game begins in earnest. Jake wakes up hours later with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He has no discernable leads and the morgue technicians flee from him in horror, unsure of what to do about what they believe to be a zombie. It's up to you, with almost no information, to figure out who you are, how you got there and why someone wanted you dead so bad. 

The user interface makes it immediately apparent that Shadowrun isn't going to play like your standard RPG. For one, the actual game doesn't take up the whole screen, it almost looks like you are playing on a Super Gameboy. You move about the semi-open world with the d-pad and interact with a variety of people and objects. Pressing the B button will bring up a hand cursor, which will lock Jake in place but allow the player to scroll over anything on screen. If an object is interactable, you can press the button again to examine said object for information or talk to an NPC. The Y button will take you directly to your useable items menu and selecting an item will also bring up the hand cursor. Attacking enemies is done in a similar manner, the A button brings up crosshairs, which you scroll over the enemy before pressing A again to shoot. Later on in the game you will acquire magic, which is activated with the X button. If that sounds a bit messy, well, it kind of is. The controls definitely take some time to get used to and I found myself getting crossed up on what buttons to push fairly frequently. At least it's responsive and the cursors scroll relatively fast. But still, you are using a D-pad on a console controller for something that feels like it was designed for a mouse. I have no idea if this game was compatible with the SNES mouse, but it definitely feels like it should have been. I won't call the controls bad, as I said they work quite well, they are just confusing. There is so much to do here I understand why the controls are set up the way they are, but on a SNES controller I think they could have made things a little bit more streamlined. I did eventually get used to it, but it definitely took a long time. 

While the controls may be a bit odd, the actual moment to moment gameplay is solid. You move about the world with little direction and it's up to you to find your way. You can do this by finding items and talking to as many people as possible, most of whom will tell you some level of useful information. It may not be an exact solution to your problem, but at the very least it gives you some hint as to where to go next. Every once in a while, you will discover a "keyword" during conversation, which will be highlighted and bolded. These words will be added to a list, allowing you to ask NPCs about them specifically. These are usually what start you in the right direction and most will make a path forward pretty clear, though some did feel like red herring type of answers. It kind of plays like an adventure game, like one of those LucasArts titles you might find on PC in the late 80's and early 90's. You talk to someone and find an item, that item unlocks a new area or line of conversation and you eventually work your way to the end. I've always liked this style; it puts more emphasis on detective work and critical thinking than just blasting your way through something. Shadowrun is definitely more combat focused and features more RPG elements than those games, but it's still kind of the same idea. It's also a little bit more open than those titles, which often were just point A to point B affairs. There aren't any sidequests per se, but you don't have to do everything exactly in order to progress through the game and there are definitely some items and upgrades that are missable. You have four different fairly large areas to explore, along with a handful of dungeons. Jake is mostly on his own, but he can hire other Shadowrunners to back him up in battle. If I'm being honest, I really didn't do this that much, they as it gets expensive and it's hard to come by money in this game, but it's nice that it's there. 

Of course, this is an RPG, so stat management is very important. You have to manage both Jake's attributes (body, magic, strength and charisma) and skills (firearms, computer, negotiation and leadership) and later his magic abilities. You will earn karma for defeating enemies, which you can use to upgrade these factors, one karma point for each level of the skill. These points can be spent whenever Jake sleeps, so finding rest spots is very important. Some skills are definitely more important than others, body and magic are critical as these increase your HP and MP respectively. I don't really like how some of the skills are so useless early on but become incredibly important later. The computer skill is completely worthless for the first two thirds of the game, but it's basically impossible to close out the game without it. In doing some research for this article, I looked into the Shadowrun tabletop game and I thought that one of the coolest aspects it offered was the "essence" stat, which was tied to your use of magic vs. technology. The dichotomy between the two is a major theme in Shadowrun and it would have been nice to see this incorporated into the video game as well. Overall, I can't complain about it too much. Building up your stats requires a lot of karma, but, for better or worse, there are always opportunities to earn more.

That, of course, is going to bring us to the combat, which is interesting but a bit inconsistent. Throughout the world, you will find a variety of enemies, most of which are randomly generated. To fight them, you bring up your targeting reticle, scroll it over the target and press the fire button until they are done. You will know you hit an enemy when you see a damage number pop up, though you never really know how many HP your target actually has. You aren't guaranteed to hit with each shot, though I am pretty sure the firearm skill can increase your accuracy. In a lot of ways, it kind of feels like the older Elder Scrolls games, where combat feels like a game of chance more than anything. A lot of the enemies move and it's difficult to keep the cursor on them when they do. This might not seem problematic and it typically isn't with one enemy, but when you are facing multiple enemies, it can be game breaking. The biggest issue is that enemies can shoot you while you are bringing up and moving your targeting reticle. If you are facing more than one, this usually means you are going to take several hits before you can even start firing your bullets that seem to only hit at random. Enemies don't have perfect accuracy, but they are way more accurate than you and sometimes you will have to retreat before you can even fire. Since most enemies are randomly generated, you never know when they are going to pop up and this usually means they have the drop on you. Enemy snipers will pop out of peepholes, stand on buildings and come up from the grass unexpectedly. I'm not sure how exactly they could have improved the combat, but I don't think it was as good as it could have been.

Towards the end of the game, Jake will obtain an item that will allow him to hack into computers (the game calls this "The Matrix"). This will bring up a sort of minigame, where you have to find a proper route through tiles to reach pylons that contain critical data. This data can be anything from information that moves the story along to interesting notes to money. Stepping on the incorrect tiles will deal damage to Jake and if he dies in the matrix, it's game over. They start out pretty simple but eventually become very long and complex. You can exit at any time, but if you do without completing your task, you have to start all over. Honestly, I'm not a fan of this mode, I think it's too hard to avoid damage and the game doesn't really explain well what exactly you are supposed to do. I also hate that by the end of the game you are spending more time in the matrix than just about anything else. The last few dungeons are pretty much entirely about hacking, which is disappointing. It almost feels like these are designed more to make you have to run out of a dungeon and back to a save point than they are to challenge you. It's also aggravating that there is pretty much no reason to touch the computer skill for the first two thirds of the game and then all of the sudden it becomes critical. I think this might have been my least favorite part of the game, though it wasn't that bad and was more an annoyance than anything else. 

Shadowrun really is greater than the sum of its parts, something I find is common with games that are ahead of their time. The controls are a little confusing, but they also felt like the best the programmers could do at the time. The combat was odd and kind of frustrating, but it kind of fits with both the vibe and flow of the game. The dialogue is excellent and the keyword system is unique and fun, but it eventually gets to the point that you have an unwieldy number of words in your bank. The world truly is wonderfully designed and the aesthetic is unlike anything you would have seen in an SNES RPG at the time, but the ending might be the most underwhelming finale I've ever seen (the second to last dungeon should have been the last). I hear a lot about games that were "ahead of their time" or "revolutionary," and I would say maybe 25 percent of the time those labels actually fit. I find a lot of gaming people often confuse "revolutionary" and "good." Something doesn't have to be a brand new experience to be a good game, and just because something is different doesn't mean it's good. I would say Shadowrun definitely fits into both categories, it's certainly unlike anything you would find on a console at the time. It's a bit of a flawed gameplay experience, but it's still definitely fun. You will send a lot of time running back and forth to healing points, often from far corners of the map, because of randomness of the combat. The dungeon design is okay, but it also very fitting with the more "realistic" vibe. Again, when you do things that are experimental these kinds of discrepancies are going to happen. 

While it wasn't my absolute favorite game, Shadowrun represents a lot of what I like about old school gaming. The willingness to try something different and experiment was certainly on display here. It's not like Data East and Beam were small companies, these were relatively large organizations taking a shot on something that was completely out of left field. Titles like Shadowrun were a bit more common on PCs, but on consoles they were completely unbroken ground in 1993. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it was cool to see something so unique to its contemporaries. It was still a fun playthrough, even today, despite all of its flaws. If nothing else, it's an introduction to a unique and interesting universe that might not have had too much exposure without it. I definitely want to get more invested in the Shadowrun universe going forward, maybe I will go in order and check out the Genesis version next. But the SNES version was a great start. It may not have been a perfect game, but you have to give it credit for trying something new. 

8/10