Shamus
Description official descriptions
Infiltrate the lair of the elusive Shadow, shoot and sneak your way through his army of robotic minions, and hunt him down before he does the same to you. Starring in the titular role of Shamus, you will have to find your way through over 120 rooms in this cross between Berzerk's "robots in a maze" action and Adventure's exploration of a predefined game world.
The elusive villain's henchmen will express their disapproval of your plans in rather strong terms, namely with showers of bullets. What's more, once they're dead they don't necessarily stay that way: each time a room is re-entered, a random selection of them will respawn. The Shadow has also arranged for electrified walls throughout his compound, so bumping into them will prove quite lethal.
The labyrinth of chambers is divided into four levels, with multiple locked doors that'll have you wandering around in search of the right keys. If you tarry too long in the same room, a bulletproof Shadow (taking a page from Evil Otto's book) will drop by to discourage loitering.
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (Atari 8-bit version)
| Shamus by | |
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 65% (based on 6 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 23 ratings with 1 reviews)
A combination of Berzerk and Adventure.
The Good
Shamus is an exact combination of Adventure (the Atari 2600 game where you roam from room to room looking for items and avoiding the dragon) and Berzerk (the arcade maze game where you shoot robots and avoid Evil Otto). If you like those two games, you'll like Shamus.
A diverse array of special items can also be picked up for points or extra men.
The Bad
If you don't like Adventure and/or Berzerk, then you won't like Shamus. It's fun for ten or twenty minutes, but gets frustrating at times, boring at others.
The Bottom Line
Like Adventure? Like Berzerk? Then you'll love Shamus.
PC Booter · by Trixter (8952) · 1999
Discussion
| Subject | By | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Way Back When, This was Something! | John Dougherty | Sep 2, 2008 |
Trivia
When the game was originally sold directly by Synapse Software for the Coco, it was available on cassette or disk. After Radio Shack took over the distribution and licensed, it became disk only.
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Related Sites +
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The Mazes of Shamus
level maps for the Atari version (on the Vintage Computing and Gaming website) -
The Mazes of Shamus - IBM PC version
level maps for the IBM PC version (on the 8088mph blog)
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Trixter.
PC-6001 added by Trypticon. Commodore 64 added by Quapil. TI-99/4A added by Corn Popper. Atari 8-bit added by Kabushi. Game Boy Color added by Dan K. Apple II added by Terok Nor. VIC-20 added by LepricahnsGold. TRS-80 CoCo added by L. Curtis Boyle.
Additional contributors: vileyn0id_8088, L. Curtis Boyle.
Game added March 5, 1999. Last modified December 22, 2023.