Small-Time Superhero Coming Through! Let's Play: Nightshade

There are many different tiers of Super Hero. There are the big-name heroes who everyone and their grandmother knows, like Superman or Spider-Man. There are lesser known, fan-favorite characters, like Deadpool or Booster Gold. There are the no-names, who people need to look up on Wikipedia, like The Devil-Dinosaur, or The Atomic Skull.

Then there’s Nightshade.

All right, technically, he isn’t an actual, PUBLISHED hero, he was only created for the sake of this game, but the metaphor holds up. Nightshade: Episode One: The Claws of Sutekh was released by Beam Software in the early 90’s, after the SNES captured everyone’s hearts and minds. It was also made by Ultra, but we won’t hold that against it. Also, despite the fact that it’s called Episode One, there were cruelly no follow-ups. You would THINK that a game wherein the main objective is to become a full-fledged Superhero would be a full-on action game, and you would be completely wrong. Nightshade is one part mediocre beat ‘em up and two parts Point & Click, a Click ‘em up if you will. Like Actraiser, however, two mediocre tastes taste totally, totally awesome together.




Let’s Play With Justice and NOT GET BURNED!





There’s the intro, for the Tl/Dr peoples, Metro City’s only Superhero, Vortex, was eventually overwhelmed by the sheer amount of villains leaving the city completely defenseless, and not coincidentally leaving the town ripe for the picking by new local crime-lord who united all the villains, Sutekh. Nightshade picks up his trench coat and domino mask and sets out to SAVE THE TOWN!

Episode One: Powerless, in the Face of DANGER!



And he fails spectacularly. This is where the game begins, actually, with ‘shade beaten up, tied to a chair and forced to listen to Sutekh’s gloating while being left for dead. The game definitely knows its target audience, since I’m interested already!

Sutekh leaves, leaving our soon-to-be-disposed of hero alone, with a bomb behind him. Luckily, Sutekh didn’t bother to tie up Nightshades legs, and he was able to inch away from the bomb pretty easily. The explosion still dealt some damage, even from across the room.



‘Shade uses the conveniently placed, superfluous candle to burn through the bonds, freeing him from the chair. All right, now this half-dead Masked Avenger is ready to wail on some evil-doers!



Even his idle animation is so awesome. <3



Either Nightshade went out to free an entire city from corruption with nothing more then a couple of dollars in cash in his coat, or Sutekh took everything Shade had, except for the money when he left him in his deathtrap. Either way, The Man of the Hour starts his mission with nothing more then bus fair.


Shade moves ahead, since there’s nothing left for him in the first room. The second room contains One (1) Lever, a conspicuously out of place painting, and a conspicuously out of place suit of armor. Obvious exits are West, North, South and East.

Leaving the room and going back causes the painting to change, Scooby-Doo like.





Holy crap, I love everything about this game and I’ve only played it for five minutes.



Let it not be said that Sutekh isn’t a traditionalist. I’m going to go off on a limb here and think I shouldn’t pull that lever. As should be obvious from what has been seen so far, this game really doesn’t take itself very seriously.



The Armor contains our first Inventory Item that you don’t start the game with: A Key. Everything that looks important having been searched/rifled through, Shade heads South. The Southern Room contains a Desk a statue, and another Remarkably Unremarkable Painting.

The Desk Contains a Screwdriver and Flashlight. That Inventory Screen is filling up nicely so far!




The Statue contains a small keyhole. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what to do here. The Key turns and a small Egyptian Coin is dropped out. Let’s chock that up to Adventure-Game Logic and move on with out lives.

Moving East of that central room reveals one of societies greatest inventions, the humble crowbar. An engraved Crowbar no less. How romantic. Shade picks it up and stuffs it into his impossibly deep Trench coat.



Back up to the North we spy what appears to be a Keystone Copper.



What do you think this N stands for, FRANCE?



The Little Fat Man quickly attacks and Nightshade finds himself battling for his life against a ridiculously agile, portly, dwarf. The tiny man jumps all over the chamber, tossing a seemingly infinite supply of deadly, deadly hats. He’s like a British Oddjob!

After severely pummeling the adorably animated, blue-clad individual, Nightshade is free to look around the room. You may also notice that the Popularity Bar is ever-so-slightly fuller now. The Popularity Bar is a measure of how popular Nightshade is with the law-abiding citizens of Metro City. You accumulate it by helping distressed citizens or beating the stuffing’s out of various criminals. Its use is secret, for now, but rest assured one of the main objectives of the game is to be as popular a hero as possible.




This Photo DOES have something interesting behind it. A secret entrance that leads out of Sutekh’s Hideout! Great Quivering Enigma’s indeed!

What happens next? Stay TUNED!

I've never heard of this game, but so far I'm pretty impressed.

What is this devilry? I am intrigued.

Yay, go Nightshade!
seems like almost no one has ever played this game. We had a review of it up on RetrowareTV about 3 months ago. Derek seemed to really like it.


Nightshade Video Here

I like this game but it would be better if it was just puzzles and no action.

Totally.

And it's one of the few adventure games where the puzzles make logical sense!

Well, except for one puzzle which I will incessantly point out the stupidity of later.

On seeing the ads for this in Gamepro/EGM, i was super-impressed with the title font and bottom status screen. But, like most of the obscure stuff i drooled over as an 8-10 year old, i never got to play it! Emulator-time!

He told the good men what he believed was right, moaned about the game design and his plight and at last told everyone what he'd done with delight.

Next time I will try to use more words for: Play this gem!

Note that the developers who did this game went on the do the SNES Shadowrun game.

How does the combat work? Poorly, I assume?

Episode 2: A Mid-Sewers Night SCREAM!



A quick look around shows that Sutekh clearly doesn’t have a lot of money invested in the upkeep of his hideout. It’s also a really, really obvious hint regarding what to do next.



…Or not so much, since it’s actually less a hint and more of a trap door. Oh that wacky Nightshade. My health is pretty low, so I’mma just load up a new game again rather then risk dying. Incidentally, you can avoid the severe damage caused by the bomb by hiding BEHIND the wall, rather then just walking away from it. Wish I thought of that before.



Shade pulls the lever on the far right side of the room on his way past, but can’t advance, since there is no exit over there. There are some rusty screws, however. And, logically, I wouldn’t have a Screwdriver if I wasn’t going to use it.



HE IS ERROR!



It seems that Shade’s unscrewing of those… screws caused a chandelier to drop in an unrelated part of the hideout. Ah, Adventure-Game Logic, how I missed you.

There’s a cryptic note written in the lamp-wreckage that is most likely a hint for future use. We may well have to trek off and pummel a river spirit! Or… maybe there’s some valuable item at the bottom of a river. I’m genuinely unsure of which, but I’m saying it’s probably the latter.

Speaking of rivers, it seems that one of the various switches I ended up flipping caused the water in the first room to dry up. I also took that candle, just for good measure.

Nightshade, ladies and gentlemen. He’s here all week.

Night pulls the crowbar out of the miniature pocket-dimension that is his coat, and pries open the grate. Next stop: The Sewers!


Well… not particularly often you see a skeleton in a storm drain. Then again, not many storm drains pass through a supervillains hideout.
Alt Text: Nightshade’s got a Boner! LOL.


Don’t feel too bad, Shade. Most adventure heroes can’t, except Guybrush, probably.



There we go, by flicking both the Self Destruct Switch (which actually controls the waterflow on the first screen) and the more mysterious second switch, from the hidden room, the rest of the sewers becomes available. Yay?


I walk down the stairs and get off at the top? I don’t know how that works. I do see a conspicuous brick though. Let’s push it!

Pushing said brick reveals a teeny-tiny tunnel. And that Teeny-Tiny-Tunnel leads to a rather more expansive secret chamber in the sewer walls. I seriously doubt that that could be built without alerting some sort of civil engineer.

Incidentally, I love his “wriggle into a small tunnel” animation.


Someone’s a Get Smart fan.

Using the two candles turns off the propane feeding the enormous flame, letting Nightshade pass.


See? The game’s educational too! Let’s see if we can leave an offering of an Egyptian Coin to good ol’ Nepotekh here.

I… I don’t know what happened but… I have a Scarab now? Is… is it alive?
Incidentally, the games writing doesn’t get any less groan-worthy.


Finally, Nightshade leaves the Sewers, and Sutekh’s Hideout. It’s nice to be free, and here’s an old man who is sure to provide some insightful commentary!


I suppose that’s pretty mild, considering how a strange man in a trench coat just popped out of a crypt after walking through the sewers, and ran up the first old man he saw.

This old man provides helpful exposition, however. He goes on to say that Vortex left him instructions to help you defeat Sutekh, but he won’t bother giving you the time of day until you A) Become a Decent, Respectable Superhero and B) Beat the crap out of one of the 4 other crime-lords who work for Sutekh; Lord Muck, Ninja Mistress, Goliath and the King Rat, collectively known as the Cloying Grasp of Evil.

Seriously.

This is the greatest obscure game ever.

Not too poorly, but still pretty poorly, yes. It's handled on a flat 2d plane and you have a very small variety of attacks. Most of the enemies are either preposterously fast compared to Shade, or only have a small window of time where they can be damaged at all.

If you get behind the wall I think you don't get hurt at all.

Edit: Whoops! Didn't read far enough.

Episode 3: The Road to Fame is paved with CRISIS!

To recap; Nightshade has 3 pressing issues to deal with:

1. He must save Metro City from the ruthless crime-lord Sutekh
2. He must also save Metro City from Sutekh’s 4 lieutenants, the Cloying Grasp of Evil
3. He needs to become a famous super hero.

Naturally, it’s the third of these problems that ways the heaviest on Shade’s mind. He heads south of the Old Man, to try to dig up some dirt on the Cloying Grasp of Evil, or perhaps ingratiate himself to the community. Hopefully the latter.

This is actually one of the more interesting segments of the game. You’ve pretty much got run of the city and you can freely wander around helping distressed citizens and beating criminals to a bloody pulp, both of which earning the ever so important Popularity and finding plot-important items. It’s kind of like a sand-box adventure game!



It seems that Al’s Grocery Store is directly across the street from the graveyard. That’s probably not the best location, all things considered. Nightshade enters the grocery store, expecting to see some local ruffians, or a distressed damsel or some such.



She… she doesn’t look much like an Al. She’s also not very talkative, since that’s all she says. Also, it doesn’t seem to be the most well stocked grocery store I’d ever seen.



Luckily, it seems to have Shade’s favorite snack food though. That’s nice. And you can buy all the food you want without using up your small wad of bills. That’s perplexing. And all that food goes into an inventory item lumped together as “Food”.



Upon leaving the curiously empty Als Grocery (which apparently does not employ anyone named Al), Shade notices another curious Brick with a letter carved into it.



And he discovers some Force Gloves behind the brick. I don’t know what Force Gloves do, but they sound cool!

Shade heads East of the Old Man, since there was nothing else of interest in the Grocery Store. This road is rather more occupied as well. We have a Hotdog Vendor and a tough-guy! Let’s chat them up!



These sure are some Hot Nuts! They look tasty!



What the hell is wrong with this mans head? Anyway, it seems we can’t get into this… err… club(?) unless I’m a member. Phht, let’s give him a listen to the ol’ chin-music!



Well… I guess that won’t work. I also don’t know if Ug is the bouncers name, or if that’s another poor attempt at humor.



South of the Club(?) is the Newspaper Agency

Aww, don’t be down Nightshade, we still love you… when you’re not attempting to make a joke. Looks like the News Agency won’t help until Nightshade is a big-time hero. It may be a while.



East of the Club is Metro City Park. Here we see a bird, endlessly circling the screen, and a disgusting, pulsating brown worm on a bench.



Ahh… ha?

Well, the way I see it, I have two choices here. Either I can give this guy some money to get some food (theoretically), or I could beat the living daylights out of him, just to feel like a big-man.

I went for the money option, since Shade apparently didn’t want to pound the bajeezus out of a homeless man sleeping on a bench. As luck would have it, the unseen masses were pleased to see Shade give some of his seemingly endless supply of dollar bills to Crazy-McBench here, and rewarded him by giving him some Popularity


South of the Bench-Dweller is another bouncer, using the exact same sprite and dialogue, but in front of a green building. He won’t let us in, we can’t fight him, and he’s immune to the effects of bribery. So we’ll let him be. We return to the Old Man and head west this time.



Well, here we have a mutant rat. Neatto. This could be a clue to the whereabouts of The King Rat! Let’s Talk to/fight this mousy bastard!



Well, that leaves out diplomacy. Here comes to knuckle-dusting!



Though the Mutant Rat has a much lower life-bar then the Blue Guy, he’s much more resistant to punches, much more powerful and you can’t duck under their projectile attacks. Incidentally, said projectile is a small brown ball launched from the nose.

There is no way that is anything hygienic.



North of the Rat Man area is another graveyard, this one full of animated statues. I’m near dead from my Rat Combat, so I think I’ll let them go, and head somewhere else.

To Be Continued!

Mutated Rats, Walking statues, bizarro!

Not to mention some hideous sprite work... those goons are atrocious!

The Road to Fame is Paved with CRISIS: Part 2

[img] No picture taken, apparently [/img]
West of Rat-man is a bunch of cats, obviously herded here out of fear of the giant Rat-Men around. The normal Predator/Prey relationship has gone all topsy-turvy! Sutekh is toying with forces beyond even his ken! I was sure I took a shot of this room, but Photobucket seems to disagree. I’ll be back though. I’ll be back.



North of Old Man (which I didn’t realize was an option until I wandered there by accident) is a tavern and another curiously urban seagull.



Sounds like a reputable establishment.



But we will never find out for sure. Incidentally, trying to give the Seagull food does absolutely nothing. This runs contrary to any kind of seagull behavior, as anyone who has ever seen a seagull can tell you.



Heading East from the Linear Accelerator, is a pretty unassuming alleyway. However, beneath the unreadable hieroglyphics, however, is another marked Brick. Obviously there’s something important there.



Handy! Lets see to fixing those grievous, rat-inflicted wounds. Ha-ha, no. We can’t use the First Aid Kit on Nightshade for some reason. This must be an important item for some puzzle in the future.

[Future Edit!: You CAN Use The First Aid Kit on yourself, and that is the only purpose. It's just the games weird mechanics at play.]

One of the southern exits leads right into a kitchen. A kitchen which we cannot enter yet, perhaps later.



Next room has a greyhound chasing yet another cat. Well, I got a bone from that skeleton, way back when. Lets save us a kitteh!



The dog is rather more smitten with the bone then with the cat, and it runs off, but not before Shade’s popularity increases, even though nobody saw him save the kitty. His random act of kindness for the day accomplished, Shade enters the Open building behind him.



I guess it’s a book store. Nightshade needs to work on his people skills, though, and this greeting works exactly as well as you assume it does. This is to say, not well at all. Let’s see what happens when we bribe the humble book proprietor with the infinite wealth of the 4-dimensional wallet.

Well, that was marginally more helpful. I guess.



Looking around the Bookstore reveals that it has the Egyptian Book of the Dead. That sounds like a pretty interesting book.




Nightshade seems to agree, and walks out of the store one book on dead Egyptians richer.


East of the Bookstore we see an old lady with yet another cat. Metro City really needs to enforce a Spay or Neuter policy with its cats.