''Shamus'' is a flip-screen

shooter Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missiles can ...

with light action-adventure game elements written by Cathryn Mataga (credited as William Mataga) and published by

Synapse Software Synapse Software Corporation (marketed as SynSoft in the UK) was an American video game development and publishing company founded in 1981 by Ihor Wolosenko and Ken Grant. It initially focused on the Atari 8-bit family, then later developed for th ...

. The original Atari 8-bit family version is 16K in size and was released on disk and tape in 1982. The game was ported to the Apple II,

VIC-20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...

, Commodore 64,

TRS-80 Color Computer The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Com ...

TI-99/4A The TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A are home computers released by Texas Instruments in 1979 and 1981, respectively. Based on the Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor originally used in minicomputers, the TI-99/4 was the first 16-bit home computer. ...

, and IBM PC. Several of these were published by

Atarisoft Atarisoft was a brand name used by Atari, Inc. in 1983 and 1984 to market video games the company published for home systems made by competitors. Each platform had a specific color attributed by Atarisoft for its game packages. For example, video ...

. It was later sold on cartridge by

Atari Corporation Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communica ...

following the launch of the

Atari XEGS The Atari XE Video Game System (Atari XEGS) is an industrial redesign of the Atari 65XE home computer and the final model in the Atari 8-bit family. It was released by Atari Corporation in 1987 and marketed as a home video game console alongsid ...

in 1987. " Funeral March of a Marionette", the theme song from '' Alfred Hitchcock Presents'', plays on the title screen. According to Ihor Wolosenko, co-founder of Synapse, ''Shamus'' made the company famous by giving it a reputation for quality. It was followed by a sequel, '' Shamus: Case II'', with the same characters but different gameplay. In 1999, Mataga released a remake for the Game Boy Color, and later, both ''Shamus'' and ''Shamus: Case II'' for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

Gameplay

Inspired by the arcade game '' Berzerk'', the objective of the game is to navigate the eponymous

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may ...

ic detective through a 4-skill level, 128-room maze of electrified walls. The ultimate goal at the end of this journey is "The Shadow's Lair". ''Shamus'' differs from ''Berzerk'' in having a persistent world instead of rooms that are randomly generated each time they are entered. There are also items to collect: bottles containing extra lives, mystery question marks, and keys which open exits. Opposing the player are a number of robotic adversaries, including spiral drones, robo droids and snap jumpers. Shamus is armed with "Ion SHIVs", SHIV being an acronym for Short High Intensity Vaporizer, and is able to hurl up to two at a time at his enemies. Like many other games in this genre, touching an electrified wall results in instantaneous death. Upon the completion of each level, the gameplay speeds up, increasing the chances of running into a wall. The main gameplay involves clearing the room of all enemies, picking up special items on the way and then leaving through an exit. Upon returning to the room, the enemies are regenerated and returned to their original positions. In exactly the same way as ''Berzerk'', the player will be attacked if they spend too much time in one room. In this case, the Shadow himself emerges from off-screen and hops directly at Shamus, unhindered by the walls. If shot, the Shadow briefly freezes in place. The combination of locks and keys requires the player to complete each of its four levels in a particular order. To complete the game in its entirety would take several hours, which combined with the lack of a pause function (except on the IBM version), the necessity of remembering the location of dozens of rooms and keys, and the frenetic gameplay, meant that this was extremely difficult to accomplish. Each maze layout is named after a famous fictional detective or secret agent.

Ports

The VIC-20 port is 8K and contains only 32 levels, unlike the 128 in every other version.

Reception

'' Softline'' in 1983 stated that "''Shamus'' is the best cross between arcade and adventure games currently on the Atari market ... To know it is to love it, play it constantly, and not get enough of it". That year ''Softlines readers named the game seventh on the magazine's Top Thirty list of Atari 8-bit programs by popularity, and in 1984 they named ''Shamus'' in tenth place for 1983. '' Electronic Fun'' gave the Atari version a 3 out of 5 review, calling the graphics "superb" and saying "this doesn't look like it could ever get boring." ''ROM Magazine'' gave the Atari version a 9.4 out of 10 rating, and ''Creative Computing'' suggested "Make sure you have no pressing appointments before becoming involved in a round of ''Shamus''. Once you get going, you won't want to stop for a while." ''

Ahoy! ''Ahoy!'' was a computer magazine published between January 1984 and January 1989 in the US, focusing on all Commodore color computers, but especially the Commodore 64 and Amiga. History The first issue of ''Ahoy!'' was published in January 198 ...

'' wrote in 1984 that ''Shamus'' for the Commodore 64 "is a thoroughly enjoyable game with all the action and suspense that both novices and sophisticated gamers will demand". In 1982, '' Computer Gaming World'' reviewed the Atari original, praising the animation and the "vastly superior graphics" over ''Berzerk'', but complaining of the inability to pause the action and of a bug in the speed control. ''Shamus'' was considered "the most addictive" of the four games reviewed. Matthew J. Costello reviewed ''Shamus'' in ''

Space Gamer Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...

'' No. 68. Costello commented that "''Shamus'' is not easy, but the folks at Synapse are giving Atari owners their money's worth." The game sold 60,000 copies.

References

{{reflist

External links

Mazes of Shamus (Feature about Atari 8-bit version)
1982 video games 1999 video games Atari 8-bit family games Commodore 64 games VIC-20 games Detective video games Game Boy Color games Synapse Software games TI-99/4A games TRS-80 Color Computer games Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games