Being generally interested in the game development history, I have collected some material regarding the development of
Shadow Warrior. First off, there's the web.archive.org's copy of
3drealms.com from 1996, where you can still find the old
Shadow Warrior page and the weekly development updates with screenshots (BTW, there are also
Blood development update pages there, back from the time before 3D Realms sold the rights to Monolith):
Shadow Warrior - Coming from 3D Realms
The storyline caption reads as follows:
Quote:
|
Story Overview
3 years in the future - A chain of remote Japanese islands.
You are a member of a secret Japanese mercenary team, trained in the use of several exotic weapons and in the stealth arts of the ninja. Your body has been augmented with state of the art nano-tech biomedical enhancements. Your senses, strength, agility, and stamina are greatly boosted. You are a lethal weapon.
The mage Kirin, your ancient ancestor of 1000 years, has risen from the dead on a remote island, given life once again by forces not understood today. Kirin now has an army of cult followers spread over many small islands to do his bidding. Some were once human... some never were.
If they are not stopped, evil will spread across the planet. It is your task to stop the Kirin and his army.
When hi-tech meets magic-tech... gibs fly!
|
As you can see, the storyline was supposed to be quite different, and so were some of the enemies, the main character's appearance, and weapons, which included a wrist blade and a crossbow, while the riot gun's sprite seems to have been used for a Gatling type machine gun.
The weekly update pages have only little new information, since they were made during the late stages of development and mostly concern polishing things up. However, there are very interesting pre-release screenshots there.
Shadow Warrior Development Update - Mar '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - Apr '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - May '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - June '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - July '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - August '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - September '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - October '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - November '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - December '96
There are also official pre-release screenshots of
Shadow Warrior, some in high resolution:
Hocus Pocus Preview Slideshow (has two
very early
Shadow Warrior screenshots)
Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior Preview Slideshow
Shadow Warrior Preview Slideshow
Screenshots from the Duke Nukem 3D v1.3D CD
Screenshots from the Duke Nukem 3D v1.5W CD
A modern compilation of screenshots taken from various sources
Another interesting piece of the puzzle is the late beta version (v0.90) that was leaked from 3D Realms when a guy from tech support wanted to play the new game with his friend
Some interesting unused sprites can be found in the files, showing cut content like scrapped enemies (which can still be seen on some screenshots) among other things. There are also two MIDI tracks by Lee Jackson that were not included in the official shareware release (both can be also found in the
SWP source port package). The game only allows to play the shareware episode (some level titles, as well as the layout, are different from the final release), but maps of the retail episode are found among the game files as well (some of them are obviously incomplete). The player's weapon order is a bit different (the Riot Gun and Uzis have their slots swapped, and the katana shares slot #2 with shurikens); the Duke's mighty foot (only in brown pants) can sometimes be seen when using the fist attack, and it seems that once two Uzis are acquired, using only one separately is no longer possible. A notable difference is that sometimes Lo Wang says "Come get some!" when certain weapons like fists or katana are selected, in an obvious reference to
Duke Nukem 3D. Why this was removed from the final release is unknown.
Hendricks266 has set up a
site where you can take a look at the various resources and media found in the
Shadow Warrior beta.