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Shadowfire

aka: Shadow Squad
Moby ID: 29368
Commodore 64 Specs

Description official description

General Zoff is holding Ambassador Kryxix captive in his spaceship. Plans for a new type of spaceship are hidden in a micro-disc embedded in the Ambassador's spine. If Zoff had the plans, the empire would be in great danger, and it is only a matter of time until his inquisitors will discover them. The Emperor has assembled the so-called "enigma team", a group of six reckless mercenaries, to take care of the situation.

Players take control of all six mercenaries and have one hour and forty minutes to rescue Ambassador Kryxix and capture General Zoff. All six characters have different abilities. Syylk is an insectoid and a strong fighter, Zark Montor, the team leader, is an expert in unarmed combat and the only translator of the group, Servina Maris is the only character who can pick locks, Torik is an avian with thorough knowledge of explosives, Maul is a slow combat droid and Manto is a weak droid, but the only team member that can operate the transporter that is vital for the mission's success.

Controls are completely icon based and the screen is divided into six sections. The upper screen section is called the mission command screen and displays which character is active, the active character's location and the status of all characters: whether they are moving, engaged in combat, weak or dying or performing certain action such as picking locks. The lower half of the screen changes depending on the situation and shows additional information and all selectable actions.

From the main game screen (enigma team screen) players can choose one of the six characters and access four sub-screens:

Character status screen: Shows a character's speed, strength, stamina (health) and carried weight.

Object screen: Shows all objects present at a location as well as all objects carried by the selected character. It can be used to drop or pick up items, equip weapons and items or use special items.

Movement screen: Here, the active character can be moved by clicking on arrows that show possible directions for a character to move.

Battle screen: During battles, characters can scan the location to count and identify their enemies, move, attack with their equipped weapon, defend or retreat.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Commodore 64 version)

4 People

Design
Programming
Music by
Cover Design
Character Design, Concept Art
Manual Story

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 19 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.5 out of 5 (based on 7 ratings with 1 reviews)

Iconic 80s game.

The Good
I bought this game based on the ZZap!64 review (issue 1, 1985) The first thing that struck me, was Fred Gray's wonderful upbeat title tune (still one of my favourite SID tunes to this day), having let this loop acouple of times, it was on to control selection and away we go! Rapid bleeping was quickly replaced by the in game tune. Once i'd quickly figured out load out for each character, i beamed Manto and Maul down to Zoff V. It took about 5 minutes to figure everything out, with regards deploying team members into new areas, beaming Sevrina back and forth from our ship to Zoff V. Then, the game takes on a strategic element, rolling Maul into battle locations, beaming Syllk in and Manto out worked in most situations, especially when Sevrina would get attacked upon opening a locked door. Watching health meters and strength/weight meters decline, could become quite tense. The Icon system, although daunting initially, became easy to use and ultimately effective. The graphics were quite striking, especially the character portraits, Syllk looking particularly formidable. The map was pretty large, taking most of the 100 minutes to fully explore.

The Bad
Ok, the bad. If you selected analog joystick, it was pretty much restart the whole computer and reload. in the manual you were told there were 3 ways of winning, there is only 1. Torik is pretty much useless as a character, his strength is so weak, he cannot really be sent ahead as scout, he tends to get killed fairly easily. Zark is only really needed to get Kryxix, oh, and the in game music grates, really quickly.

The Bottom Line
I still love this game, to this very day. It was innovative, the title music was truly stunning and the backstory was pretty good too. I still have the game box from 1985. Beyond released 2 really good games in 1985, this and the truly amazing Lords of Midnight, both rate in my ten favourite games of all time.

Commodore 64 · by Mark Hadlow · 2023

Discussion

Subject By Date
New version of Shadowfire available for iOS Magnus Andersen Oct 9, 2018

Trivia

Development

The icon system was inspired by Apple Lisa computers which Denton Design's accounting department used.

Phantom

According to the manual, the villain has an invisible pet, a phantom, which may randomly attack the team. However, this was no feature; it was a bug in the C64 version. Denton Designs found and fixed the bug shortly before release, but the manual was already printed.

Awards

  • Zzap!
    • January 1990 (Issue 57) – 'The Best Games of the 80's Decade' (Stuart Wynne)

Analytics

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 29368
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Mobygamesisreanimated.

Additional contributors: Martin Smith, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added July 23, 2007. Last modified January 23, 2024.