Shamus: Case II
| Shamus: Case II | |
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| Publisher(s) | Synapse Software |
| Programmer(s) | William Mataga |
| Platform(s) | Atari 8-bit |
| Release | 1983 |
| Genre(s) | action |
| Mode(s) | single player |
Shamus: Case II is a 1983 video game for the Atari 8-bit family written by William Mataga and distributed by Synapse Software. A port to the Commodore 64 by Joe Vierra was released at about the same time.
Although ostensibly a sequel to Shamus, the gameplay is very different, combining aspects of platformers, maze games, and even Breakout.
Case II was as well received as the original, but as it appeared just before the North American video game crash of 1983, it did not inspire a Case III, and Synapse was soon insolvent.
The original Shamus started out as a clone of the arcade game Berzerk that was improved with extra features to make it more interesting. It was based on a top-down view of a series of rooms that the user moved through. The player, playing a robotic detective known as "Shamus", had to traverse the rooms, collecting keys and unlocking doors to progress towards the lair of the criminal mastermind, "The Shadow", defeating various re-spawning robotic adversaries. Case II, in contrast, is a side-view game, in which Shamus chases The Shadow through his new underwater lair.
The game map contains three types of rooms. The first, "pit rooms", are simple maze maps with small open areas connected with ladders, with spiked pits to jump over and small horizontal passages filled with slavering snakes that have to be avoided. The next, "corridors", contain large open areas with a walkway at the bottom that the player has to traverse to get to the next room. Snakes crossing on the floor have to be jumped, and The Shadow appears in the upper area, firing at the player. In both of these types of rooms, pressing the fire button causes Shamus to jump.
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