![]() ![]() ![]() Lo Wang is played by a white man, John William Galt (no, not that John Galt). I began the game holding a katana so I ran up to the nearest demon and chopped it in half. ![]() That’s the entire story, really, and the game unceremoniously begins with Wang inside his dojo as the demons break in. So Master Zilla sends the demons after Lo Wang. That is, until he learns that Zilla plans to summon demons to conquer Japan, and quits in protest. This time it’s Lo Wang, a titular shadow warrior who works as an enforcer for the Japanese corporation Zilla Enterprises. Like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior has a talkative protagonist who cracks jokes and has one-liners ready for most situations. That done, I fired up the game, and quickly discovered that its infamy for racism is well deserved. What a difference a simple description and Q&A make! Installation was simple, and then I simply pointed the BuildGDX launcher to the folder where Shadow Warrior Classic was installed, and everything worked perfectly. So I turned to BuildGDX instead, which is much more user friendly. When I played Duke Nukem 3D I used EDuke32, and the same team make a source port for Shadow Warrior called VoidSW, but I was flummoxed by the early 2000s website style with no explanation of what the source port is or how to install it. So I turned to fans for source ports instead. But it costs money, unlike Shadow Warrior Classic, and I’m not sure I like the shinier look. One of these is actually official: Shadow Warrior Classic Redux not only runs natively on modern machines via OpenGL, it features remastered graphics too. The free version runs in Dosbox, but there are source ports available that make it more convenient to run on modern hardware. Having played it and the two expansion packs bundled with it, I can confirm that it is very racist.Ī few words on running Shadow Warrior, before I get into the critique. Now, I’ve decided to check it out, so later I can compare it to its more favorably-received remake. The original Shadow Warrior, now re-dubbed Shadow Warrior Classic, was released for free in 2013 to help promote the remake, and I grabbed it but never got around to it. How did this happen? Why remake a game that seemed better forgotten? Good enough that a sequel appeared in 2016, also receiving critical praise, and a third game is planned for this year. I was surprised, then, when a remake, also titled Shadow Warrior, appeared in 2013, and even more surprised when it got good reviews. Duke Nukem 3D had been criticized for its sexism, but Shadow Warrior was also criticized for its racism, and it didn’t seem to do enough to offset its offensive stereotypes. While many more games would appear using the Build Engine that powered Duke Nukem 3D, only one was by Duke developers 3D Realms: 1997’s Shadow Warrior. Duke Nukem 3D is dumb and very sexist - something for which I didn’t criticize it harshly enough, in retrospect - but its imaginative level design and arsenal made it a lot of fun to play. It was crap, by all accounts, but it only made it to release because the original Duke Nukem 3D had been one of the most popular games of its era, before the rise of the linear shooter. I was curious about the game because of the release of its sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, that same year a game that had reached near mythical status due to its seemingly endless development cycle. This post is also an honorary member of the Keeping Score series about games and their soundtracks.īack in the early days of this blog, before I even had screenshots in my posts, I wrote about Duke Nukem 3D. In particular, you may want to read the post about Duke Nukem 3D for some context. ![]() Other History Lessons posts can be found here. ![]()
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