Into the Shadows
Preview by Alfred Giovetti, 10/01/96
Price:
Release Date: November, 1996
Developer: Triton and Scavenger
Designer:
Producer:
Art:
Music:
Producer: GT Interactive
Phone:
Website: http://www.mcb.net/parsec/scavenger_page.html, http://www.gtinteractive.com

When we walked into the North Hall at E3, the most radical booth was that of Scavenger. The booth resembled a large arachnid robot skeleton with a dozen legs on each side, each leg supported a computer kiosk manned by maniacal game designers and game players. While Scavenger introduced almost a dozen games at the show, one of the most remarkable looking was the Into the Shadows where the characters and backgrounds appeared appropriately grimy, while retaining clarity and realism.

In the center of this arachnoidal skeleton was a long rope bridge to a foreboding metal door, which appeared as cut from a solid block of primeval stone. We just had to brake out the Betacam SP video camera and get this on tape. So we stopped and filmed interviews with each of the game designers who had not been consumed by the excesses of the most celebrated entertainment show in the world.

The two masterminds behind the game are Magnus Hogdah and Fredrik Huss, formerly of Triton, a Swedish company who produced some games in the early 90’s. Both guys now code games for Scavenger and are working on Into the Shadows. Scavenger is working on Amok (Lemon), Aqua, Angel, Mud Kicker, Scorcher (Zyrinx), Tarantula, Terminus (Fetus), and some other games, we believe. (After they read this perhaps they will help us update this list.)

The games development groups all have pet names, and one of the designers actually had a special "do" that had a Lemon and the words Lemon cut into the hair on the back of his head. Perhaps we can get a picture of this in gif format for this area for you to see. Into the Shadows is actually a fighting game and not an RPG (role playing game) or Doom game as one might suspect from the pictures.

The plot of scavenger is that an evil Wizard (isn’t it always an evil wizard?) has performed some heinous crime. In this case, the wizard kidnaps a baby. Kill the wizard, free the child, and save the world. What a plot.

The game will have a rudimentary inventory of weapons and keys, but little else is known. Three years in development has made this one visually stunning game.

References
Ruari Buchanin, Gaming Central website, http://www.mcb.net/parsec/p_its.html
David Gerding, Scavenging for the New Id-on-the-Block, PC Games, August, 1996, volume 3, number 8, pg 20
K. Brown, Computer Gaming World, number 144, July, 1996, pg. 43
Yarlen, http://www.avault.com/yarlen/its.html
Glenn Broderick, Computer Player, volume 3, number 5, October, 1996, pg. 57.
Copyright, 1996, Alfred Giovetti