                     SHADOW OF THE BEAST II

Typed in by SKID ROW. Edited by PARASITE. The complete docs this time!


If you thought Shadow of the Beast was mind blowing wait 'till you get a
load of Beast II!  Conflict with the Beast Mage's subordinates was tough
enough when you had the powers of the beast to help you.  Now you have
to face them in an unfamiliar hostile environment as a puny humanoid.
The compeling need to find and save your baby sister from the evils of
the Beast Lord spurs you on against seemingly insurmountable odds.  Have
Lord you the strength and cunning to survive?

THE GAME
You were once the pawn of Maletoth, the Beast Lord, your humanoid body
changed and your will sapped by years of subjection to the dark arts
of his evil mages.  Then one fateful day you looked upon the face of
your father as he was dragged forward for execution, seeing his image
opened your clouded mind to the truth about your past.  As the
sacrificial blade tore into his body and he screamed his last breath
you vowed to take revenge on your masters for his slaughter and for
what they'd done to you.

Using your beast-like powers you scoured the land in search of the
Beast Lord and vengeance.  Fighting your way through a seemingly endless
barrage of adversaries you struggled valiantly towards a confrontation
with Zelek, the Beast Mage.  A terrific battle ensued from which you
eventually emerged the victor.

Your prize was the return of your humanoid body in which you now stand
proud and free, elated to be rid of the evil dominance of the Beast
Lord ... but your elation doesn't last long!

Dire news reaches you of the capture of your sister by the Beast Mage.
She's been taken to Kara-Moon, a far-off hostile place where she is to
be subjected to years of forced cultivation until eventually taking
your place as warrior messenger to the Beast Lord.  This must not
happen.

Following a journey fraught with peril, you eventually reach Kara-Moon
and, armed only with a mace, prepare for battle.  But ironically, without
the benefit of the beast powers you fought so hard to shed, will you be
strong enough to succeed?

THE SHADOW DEEPENDS
The blanket of pitch black that drapes over the land blending shapes
into a mass of indefinable darkness is only intruded upon by the
occasional shaft of brilliant lightning.

In the brief but manic dancing of the diamond-white tongues of energy,
one shape stands out from the rest: A tower; so tall its pinnacle
seems to look down on the very source of the storm.  The single window
near its top is almost as black as the surroundings, but closer study
reveals a faint glow from within...

Darkness is Zelek's ally, the only place in which he finds solace, yet
the increasingly frequent bolts of dazzling lightning do nothing more
than fleetingly interrupt his lonely musings.  As he sits, deep in
thought, his chair seems less comfortable with the burden he now has to
bear:

His recent clash with the warrior messenger was, at the time, more an
annoyance than painful.  If the messenger hadn't had incredible luck
on his side Zelek feels sure he would have emerged victorious from
the conflict.  Unfortunately, his master, Maletoth the Beast Lord,
takes a very different view.  He's disappointed in him and has let it
be known that should Zelek be unable to put right the wrongs of his
defeat there are many other mages waiting to take the place of
honour at his side.

Knowing to what extent Maletoth dislikes failures - and how he deals
with them - Zelek must quickly make amends for losing his master's
prize warrior messenger or feel his dreadful wrath.

Any humanoid child would suffice to provide the mages of darkness with
another puppet on which to perform their macabre arts to mould it into
another warrior messenger.  But Zelek's recent defeat at the hands of
the now-free warrior messenger sticks in his craw and he craves revenge,
he NEEDS revenge.  His lackies are even now searching the land in an
effort to find a suitable candidate but time marches on and Maletoth
is not renowned for his patience.

As he contemplates entering the search himself, one of Zelek's many
underlings crawls into his presence and, grovelling on the floor in
a pathetic attempt at homage, tells him of the birth of a child many
leagues to the north... "On the outskirts of Deadwood Forest there's
a small cottage nestling beneath a ridge of granite, she lies within".

Doubting the suitability of a female for the role of warrior messenger,
Zelek enters a shallow trance of peregrination and sends his thoughts
to the areas described by the whimpering subordinate.

Transporting his mind into the cottage via the narrow chimney he looks
down on the baby from the darkness of his storm-torn tower.  A burst
of knowing suddenly hits him as he examines the child and with a speed
greater than that of the lightning exploding about his lair he reunites
his thoughts and physical self.

Standing, he pushes the servant aside, strides to the window and falls
through to plummet down to the river far below...

Long before he hits the broiling, dark waters Zelek effortlessly
metamorphoses into his beast persona.  Beating huge leathery wings
against the howling wind, he quickly gains height to be amidst the
thunder and lightning that spurs him north.

Landing on a high ridge he resumes his more humanoid form to look down
on the cottage, confirming his thoughts on the child and feeling very
good about the pain he's going to inflict on a certain ex warrior
messenger.

An angry bolt of lightning hails another transformation to his beast
form and wings spread wide, he glides down to the roof of the cottage,
screaming against the thunder.

Pausing for but a brief moment in glorious feelings of retribution,
he smashes a clenched talon through the fragile roof, reaches past the
terrified mother into the crib and grabs the baby.  The mother can only
scream in terror and beg for him not to take her child, she may as well
plead mercy from the raging storm.

Holding the baby roughly in his talons, Zelek launches himself into the
night.  Reverse tasting very sweet on his flickering tongue...

YOUR OBJECTIVE
To save your sister you must fight your way across danger-fraught
Kara-Moon to reach the Beast Mage and once again defeat him in battle.

You will confront many creatures on your journey, some of whom may have
information for you while others merely crave your death.  Physical
contact with enemies depletes your energy.

Collectable weapons are scattered throughout Kara-Moon as are other
useful objects and gold.

Gold can be used to purchase weapons or food to restore lost energy.
It may also gain you access to otherwise unattainable places.

Some of the puzzles and obstacles you encounter may require help from
other characters - voluntary or otherwise - to overcome.

CONTROLLING THE WARRIOR
You may use joystick or arrow keys to control the warrior, but we
recommend joystick.

                            JUMP/ASCEND
                                 |
                                 |
                     MOVE LEFT--- ---MOVE RIGHT
                                 |
                                 |
                           CROUCH/DESCEND

FIRE, SHIFT OR ENTER: Use highlighted weapon/object

Keys: F1-F4: Highlight weapon/object carried.

O: Offer highlighted object.
A: Ask nearest character about object or character.
ESCAPE: Abandon text input.
S: Display score/gold collected.
HELP: Pause (DELETE to restart).
F-10: Quit game.

Pressing the space bar during the intro displays an option screen from
which you may select to dispense with the game-over sequence (after
you've admired it at least once of course!)

REFLECTIONS OF A SHADOW

PROUD MOMENTS
We at Psygnosis are very pleased that SHADOW OF THE BEAST (BEAST I)
was the proud winner of 6 international awards, including Best
Graphics, Best Sound, Best Overall Presentation and Best Entertainment
Program of 1989.  REFLECTIONS, the programmers, while being far too
modest to be seen smiling in public, are rumoured to be pleased also.
Unfortunately, with all the work they've had to put in creating BEAST II
they haven't had much opportunity for self-congratulation.  They did
however find time to provide a little insight into the making of BEAST II.

BEAST I's method of scrolling, while looking very impressive, imposed
technical limitations on what we could do with the monsters within the
game.  We needed a completely different approach if we were to extend
and enhance in the way we wanted.

As was its prequal, BEAST II was created on an Amiga 2000 using
hardware scrolling, dualplay field, hardware sprites and the blitter.
To get a game to run smoothly at 50 frames per second hardware scrolling
has to be used since the blitter is not fast enough to move the whole
screen in parallax.  However, the problem with hardware scrolling
is it eats large amounts of memory which in turn means increased disk
access and loading time.  Unfortunately, with the amount of graphics
and music in our games, and only half-meg machines as standard, long
disk loads are inevitable.  So to reduce 'waiting time' to a minimum
we've included Patience Options in BEAST II to mimimise the problem.

Scrolling in BEAST II is very different to that of I in that it
parallaxes in virtually every direction around the player.

The other main area in which we've improved gameplay is the style and
performance of monsters: they act and react to your actions; some are
intelligent, some not, while others are there to help you.  Characters
in BEAST II suit their locations and they all have a job to do.  This
feature, we feel, greatly increases depth of play.

EQUIPMENT NECESSARY FOR PRODUCING STATE-OF-THE-ART GAMES.
The BEAST II program was developed on a 25 megaherts PC running PDS 2.

Graphics were created on an Amiga 2000 running a 25 megaherts 68030
processor board.

A range of coffees helped keep us at the keyboard.

Out next project, on which we've been working alongside Beast 2, is
AWESOME, a shoot-'em-up that should really space you out.  And after
that?  Beast 3 the FINAL encounter??

FACT BOX
Total Memory Used: 3.5 megabytes

Graphics Data: 2 Megabytes

Music & Sound Rate: 20 kilohertz

Screen Update: 50 time a second

Project Duration: 12 months

Cheat:  When the game first begins; go to the right, when you see the
first warrior press the "A" key.  You will be asked what you want?  Type
in "TEN PINTS".  Response you will see: "This is for you Roger, Cheat
Mode activated."
