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Shadow Warrior

aka: Lo Wang is Shadow Warrior, Ninja Master, SW, Shadow Warrior 3D, Shadow Warrior Classic
Moby ID: 387
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Lo Wang has been working as a Shadow Warrior (a bodyguard and mercenary of sorts) for the powerful Zilla Corporation for years. But when he discovered the evil Zilla's plan to summon monsters from other dimensions and conquer the world, he left in disgust. Realizing that Lo Wang might jeopardize his plans, Zilla sends his assassins after him.

Shadow Warrior is a first-person shooter similar in style and gameplay to Duke Nukem 3D. The game set in a generic "Asialand", which looks like China and Japan conflated together. It features deliberately immature and politically incorrect humor, as well as a protagonist who delivers regular one-liners, commenting upon the situation at hand. Much of the humor is derived from over-the-top, stereotypical portrayals of Asian culture (e.g. scantily clad young women drawn in Japanese anime style).

The player has to complete several levels, fighting enemies and occasionally solving puzzles on the way. Though the game primarily focuses on exploration and combat, puzzle-solving plays a larger role than in most other contemporary shooters. There are also a few sequences that allow the player to drive vehicles, some of which have mounted weapons. Like Duke Nukem 3D, the game's environments are interactive, allowing the player to manipulate or destroy scenery and many objects, often revealing secret areas. On a technical side, the game introduces climbable ladders, true room-over-room situations, and voxels (instead of sprites) for weapons and inventory items.

Enemies include evil ninjas with various weapons, "coolies" which carry a crate of dynamite and blow themselves up when near the player character, female assassins with crossbows, and many more. To combat them, Lo Wang can use a variety of weapons and items. Weapons include: Lo Wang's fists, a katana, shuriken, a riot gun, an Uzi (two of which can be equipped and used at a time), a rocket launcher firing heat-seeking or nuclear missile, a grenade launcher, sticky bombs, a railgun, and even some enemy body parts. Many of these weapons have a secondary firing mode. Lo Wang can also find and use gadgets such as caltrops to leave in the enemies' way, or gas bombs to choke foes who happen to be near it.

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Credits (DOS version)

29 People (19 developers, 10 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 69% (based on 34 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 95 ratings with 5 reviews)

Good game, but the boat had already sailed

The Good
With the surprise success of their classic FPS game Duke Nukem 3D, Apogee/3D Realms decided to do what most game developers do when they hit it big: do the same thing all over again. And thus we have Shadow Warrior; a Duke Nukem clone set in the far east.

The plot makes it immediately obvious we're dealing with a samurai movie spoof. You're Lo Wang, an ass-kicking "Shadow Warrior" who rents himself out as a bodyguard to the highest bidder. But you're not entirely happy with your latest employer's agenda (hint: world domination) and you resign from his service. But you're so powerful he can't possibly let you be employed by someone who might fight against him, so he tries to kill you using an army of ronin and mutant ninjas. This is a springboard for ~20 levels of fighting, escaping traps, and uttering cheesy one-liners.

If you're expecting this to be a "stealth ninja" game involving sneaking around, evading security, and bringing silent death to your foes, stay at home. Like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior is a 200 pound sledgehammer of wall-to-wall action. Using an upgraded version of the Build engine (it supports translucency, fog, and 3D models) Shadow Warrior is a straight-up, run and gun shooter set in a wacky and outlandish environment you don't often see in video games.

First, the good stuff. Shadow Warrior is very refined and polished and in terms of production quality is probably the best of the Build engine games. Level design is outstanding, with lots of secrets, side-routes, etc that serve functions both in single-player and multiplayer mode. The puzzles are a lot smarter and harder, and instead of simply flipping switches you'll have to do stuff like use a joystick to manipulate a toy car on the other side of the level (which you can see from a camera feed) so it pushes a key underneath a door for you to pick up. There's some really clever stuff here that pushes the limits of what the Build engine can do.

The weapons are great. In the ninja tradition you have a katana (which literally cuts enemies in half) shurikens (they stick in the walls and you can re-use them) and more high-powered fare like twin uzis, riot guns, missile launchers, etc and at the upper end of the chart you have really crazy stuff like a disembodied heart that summons a zombified clone of yourself. Like in Blood, most of your weapons have alternate firing modes allowing for a lot of versatility.

During the game's release hype much was made of the fact that the game lets you control vehicles. You can drive cars and forklifts, and even control a tank at one point. The areas where you can do this are limited and it's more of a gimmick than anything, but it's still an amazingly cool gimmick.

Shadow Warrior is much more user-friendly than most other FPS games of the time. When underwater you have a colored bar showing you how much air you have left (why did no-one think of this before?) and the bosses display a health bar as well.

Other than that the game is basically the same as Duke Nukem 3D, although the oriental theme provides a new spin on this old horse. Just about every "gun-fu" action movie and martial arts cliche is spoofed here, and the game remains just as humor-driven as its predecessor was. As a character, Lo Wang isn't half the man Duke Nukem was, although he has some funny one-liners.

As can be expected from 3DRealms the game was well supported even though it didn't sell well. They released a 3Dfx patch, and even made the game's source public domain. And on the 3DR website you can download a canceled mission pack for the game free of charge.

The Bad
The word "obsolete" best describes Shadow Warrior, and this has nothing to do with the fact that it's a 2.5D game released at the height of the 3D revolution. It aspires to be nothing but a Duke Nukem 3D clone, and frankly the experience isn't as fun the second time around. Graphically, Shadow Warrior is extremely dated, with pixely sprites and cheesy explosion/fire effects that look like they belong in a Doom-era game. And the game shipped without TCP/IP support, essentially robbing the game of the strong selling point of its multiplayer.In 3DR's defence they took the time to dress everything up shiny and new, and all the original thinking had already been done in Duke Nukem 3D.

More specific problems include incredibly lame and cheesy boss fights (including a giant sumo wrestler whose farts damage you...wow, it must have taken them ages to think that one up) and various contrivances such as non-resettable puzzles (basically, if you screw up you often have to reload).

The Bottom Line
The last of the "big three" Build engine games (the other two being Duke Nukem 3D and Blood), Shadow Warrior was pretty much the last 2.5D game worth buying. It's a formula game but it's worth getting for historical significance. Arguably it was also 3DR's last major FPS game until Prey in 2006, assuming the phrase "when it's done" still means something to people here.

DOS · by Maw (832) · 2007

Who wanted some wang? (The japanese Duke Nukem)

The Good
The build engine in SW has been updated and there are a lot more of possibilities to interact with everything surrounding you (you can drive vehicles like tanks "!", use remote controls and lots of funny stuff to do) there is also an interesting option were you can toggle 2D objects to 3D objects, not very good looking but it's a detail. There are also lots of humor, you will hear through all the game lots of quotes by Lo-Wang in a pure Duke-ish style (You no mess with Lo Wang!)

The Bad
If you just only want action some of the puzzles in the game might frustrate and bore you, there are not only key-finding puzzles, so some more a bit more complicated... Sometimes i found myself entering a room and getting killed at the instant by a bunch of monsters, the monsters are real though sometimes.

The Bottom Line
An interesting game that has not received very good reviews, maybe because it's more of the same? or because those reviewers haven't played it enough to discover the little jewels this game hides? Anyway it's real funny and challenging. Cowabunga!

DOS · by Depth Lord (932) · 2004

Do not play this game.

The Good
First, let me say what was good about this game. The graphics were pretty good, better than Duke Nukem 3D's but on a par with Blood. The jokes in in Shadow Warrior were funny, and having the ability to drive various vehicles was also a good innovation, but could not make up for the game's defects.

The Bad
Where do I start? The weapon selection in this game was absolutely horrid. The twin Uzi's were and heat-seeking missle launcher were good weapons, but the rest were bland and unoriginal. Shadow Warrior's item selection was confusing at best; I could never figure out which did what, so I rarely used them. In that area alone the games is inferior to Duke Nukem 3D. The enemies were not very interesting, unlike other games, and were difficult to defeat at times, due to the fact they could damage you quickly. Also another aspect of the game I did not like was the fact that there was to much platform jumping. At several points in the game, this irritated me so much I almost quit.

The Bottom Line
I would have to be paid to play this game. I would recommend staying away from it.

DOS · by Mr. Hapton (13) · 2004

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Intro & Cutscenes? Unicorn Lynx (181677) May 9, 2010

Trivia

Censored

In Great Britain this game was partially censored: they took out the ninja star weapon (shuriken) and reduced the gore levels.

Cut content

In the Master's Dojo, there is a picture of four Hentai girls (naked anime women) but only three of them can be found throughout the level. The graphics of the missing girl are still in the data files where she can be seen plunging a sword into her belly (presumably at the feet of her dead master).

Development history

Shadow Warrior was in development way before Duke Nukem 3D hit the store shelves, but as evidenced by pre-Duke ads it originally was a much more "serious" game. Duke's success as a politically-incorrect, off-the-wall shooter prompted a re-focusing of the game's content. So Lo Wang was created (originally the main character was an avenging angel kind of character), the story and levels were rewritten, and the weapons were modified (originally you had one Uzi, and threw only one shuriken, plus your arsenal included a crossbow, a lightning-throwing gauntlet, and an assortment of spells.

German index

On August 30, 1997, Shadow Warrior was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Graphics engine

Shadow Warrior uses the same Build engine as Duke Nukem 3D, but has some additional enhancements over that version, like transparent water, colored lighting, and reflective floors.

Humor

As an example of the game's subversive humour, the main character's name is Lo Wang. Wang is actually a slang term meaning penis. Consider the possibilities when Lo Wang says to a bunch of geishas "so, you want to wash Wang or you want to watch Wang wash Wang?" Also at one point in the game it is mentioned that Lo Wang has a brother, Hung Lo, continuing the same style of humor.

Novels

There were two novels based on Shadow Warrior. You Only Die Twice by Ryan Hughes, and For Dead Eyes Only by Dean Wesley Smith. Both were published by Pocket Books.

References

In the Seppuku Station level, head to the snack area (enter into the station via the door that has to be opened with the gold key, go down the luggage chute directly across from the door, and head into the conveyor on the left immediately exiting the first chute). Look at the little fliers all over the column in the room, and you'll see one of Lina Inverse of Slayers.

References to other games

In one level, Lo Wang comes across a female character chained to the wall that bears a striking resemblance to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series. He utters, "I guess she raid her last tomb!"* In the Bath House stage (level 12), you're treated to a nice display of explosions just before the level starts. Lo Wang makes a comment when they end about how it looks like something Duke Nukem would do.

Source code

On April 1, 2005, 3D Realms released the full source code, based on the 1.2 version, under a restrictive GPL license. The data files can be used for entertainment and education purposes, but they remain licensed/copyrighted and are not to be redistributed. There is no official support, but the company has opened a new dev forum on their website.

Voxels

Shadow Warrior has a feature that wasn't present in any of the other Build games, it supports voxels. Voxels are kind of like 3D pixels (i.e., cubes), and 3D objects constructed out of voxels don't have the ugly, blocky look that polygons give them. Ken Silverman finished a rudimentary voxel engine just in time for Shadow Warrior, and it was added to the game. You can enable voxels in the options menu, and it makes all game objects 3D at the expense of a lot of memory.

Wanton Destruction add-on

Soon after the release of the game, an add-on pack by the name of Wanton Destruction was announced, but ultimately cancelled. In September 2005, Anthony Campiti, from the Sunstorm company, which was developing the expansion, found the code back and passed it on to 3D Realms. Owners of the original v1.2 registered version can now download it for free. It contains 12 new missions and 4 multiplayer maps. The more in depth story about this can be read here.

Despite their note, it is possible to play the add-on with JonoF's Win32/Linux port without having the original DOS version installed. Either run the setup, and search for a WT.GRP file on your hard drive (it'll be in a temp folder), or use an archive program to extract the file from the setup EXE without running it. Nevertheless, 3D Realms offered a token of good faith by reducing the price of the original game to $10.

Information also contributed by Andy Voss, ClydeFrog, Maw, Satoshi Kunsai, Sciere, Tomer Gabel, Xoleras, and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • Crap Shoot
    A humorous review on PC Gamer
  • IGCD Internet Game Cars Database
    Game page on IGCD, a database that tries to archive vehicles found in video games.
  • JonoF's Shadow Warrior Port
    A port using Shadow Warrior's source code that adds native Windows and Linux port using a Build engine port, OpenGL rendering support and True-colour textures support.
  • RTCM
    The largest Build Game resource website!
  • Shadow Warrior
    official game page at the 3D Realms website from late 1996, preserved by the Wayback Machine
  • Shadow Warrior - Coming from 3D Realms
    game development page at the Apogee/3D Realms website, snapshot preserved by the Wayback Machine
  • Shadow Warrior Central
    Keeping Shadow Warrior Alive Since 1999! A Shadow Warrior resource website.
  • Wang's Dojo
    One of the most comprehensive Shadow Warrior sites available. Has many Total Conversions (TC's), files, patches, demos, screenshots, tricks, cheats, latest info about the "Shadow Warrior Scene" and tons more!

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 387
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

Windows added by lights out party. Macintosh added by Scaryfun. iPhone, iPad added by me3D31337.

Additional contributors: Andy Voss, Kate Jones, Xantheous, Dae, Alaka, Maw, lights out party, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, MrFlibble, Victor Vance, Rob G.

Game added November 5, 1999. Last modified March 15, 2024.