UNRELEASED PROTOTYPE: Super Shadow of the Beast for the SNES - Gameplay Sample / Playthrough

I was a huge fan of the Commodore Amiga version of Shadow of the Beast. But this port of the game is pretty lousy. I'm not surprised it never got released, we really didn't miss out on anything. A censored Shadow of the Beast is about engaging as a PG-13 Robocop movie..... Needless to say, it's a bad idea.

Super Shadow of the Beast would have been the Super Nintendo port of an old Amiga side-scrolling action game which was originally developed in 1989 by Reflections Interactive and published by Psygnosis.

The SNES version was developed by a company called IGS (Information Global Service) and was first reported seen at the summer edition of the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show (CES): in an article on Nintendo Power it was mentioned as a promising upcoming title for the SNES.

The original Shadow of the Beast game and most of its ports to other systems contain many grim, dark looking and bloody details such as bloody spikes, bouncing bloody eyeballs, flying skulls and decapitated enemies. To get approval from Nintendo and thus a license to publish the game on the SNES platform this port of the game had to undergo some serious censoring, mostly graphical adaptions like removal of blood, redesigned levels and removing or redrawing of enemies.

Apparently all the efforts from IGS to change the game weren’t good enough for Nintendo USA and thus Super Shadow of the Beast was not approved.

Other rumors however state that the mature content cannot have been the only reason why Nintendo dropped the game. It’s possible that Super Shadow of the Beast was just not good enough to be released, with its poor graphics and colorful style it became something too much different from the original game and its dark atmosphere.