Development
The work to develop an adaptation of Shadowrun for the SNES by the Australian developer Beam Software began when Adam Lanceman, part of the company's management team, acquired the license for FASA's 1989 tabletop RPG. The project was initially headed by Gregg Barnett until he abruptly left Beam midway through the game's development to start Perfect Entertainment in the United Kingdom. The game's production was halted by Beam, but eventually resumed before its set deadline.
Having been hired by Beam's parent company Melbourne House, fantasy and sci-fi writer Paul Kidd quickly took Barnett's place as lead designer. According to Kidd, the given timeframe for finishing Shadowrun for publisher Data East was very short, forcing the team to complete production in a tumultuous five and a half to six months. An avid role-player, Kidd was already familiar with the Shadowrun license, but had to utilize the storyline that his predecessor had already gotten approved. Aspects of Beam's earlier action-adventure game Nightshade, of which Kidd was the writer, director and lead designer, were used as a basis for Shadowrun; specific film noir components such as "dark cityscapes, dialogue-heavy exchanges, and touches of humor" were adapted directly from the former to the latter. To coincide with the last of these qualities, Kidd and programmer Jeff Kamenek altered the original "serious" tone of Shadowrun by replacing portions of the script and artwork with more comedic elements. According to Kidd, "we made improvements and changes, but the basic concepts were pretty much the same ."
The ROM image of the first version of Shadowrun contains a much more crude script, with more sexual suggestive and violent phrases. For example, one line is changed from "morgue guys" to "chop shop guys." The game's distributor favored the less serious version for retail release, sparking indignation and conflict among Kidd and other members of Beam's staff. Kidd recalled: "Beam Software was a madhouse, a cesspit of bad karma and evil vibes. The war was reaching shooting level; old school creators who just wanted to make good games were being crushed down by a wave of managerial bull. It was no longer a 'creative partnership' in any way; it was 'us' and 'them'. People were feeling creatively and emotionally divorced from their projects." Shadowrun was ultimately completed by its deadline. Kidd credits this to the staffers abstaining from company meetings and workshops, and continually keeping management away from the designers.
Shadowrun was released in North America and Japan by Data East. In PAL regions, it was self-published by Beam Software as Laser Beam Entertainment. The 1994 Japanese version has a significantly longer introduction sequence than the English version of the game and also has a vertically uncompressed Shadowrun logo on the title screen. Other than that, it uses the same script as the North American and PAL editions, just with Japanese subtitles.
Read more about this topic: Shadowrun (Super Nintendo Entertainment System Video Game)
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