Shadowgate Spinoffs / Unreleased Games

The Worlds of Power books were junior novelizations of popular Nintendo games, including Mega Man 2, Castlevania II, Ninja Gaiden, and a number of others. Unlike most of them, which tried their bests to translate an 8-bit video game into an actual book, Before Shadowgate, as the title implies, actually acts a prequel to the NES game.

This may not have been the best idea. The original game had very little backstory, which in turn makes this book feel extremely disconnected. It focuses on a young boy named Jairen, as he teams up with a “fenling” (elf) named Fezlyn Quickfoot and a brutal fighter named Hawk to travel across the land to Castle Shadowgate, encountering trolls and other baddies along the way. It really just feels like any old young adult fantasy novel which happens to feature some of the names in the game, like the good wizard Lakmir and the evil Warlock King. It’s all rather childish, which makes sense given the audience, but without the kitsch that made all of the other titles amusing, this one just comes across as really boring.

What is somewhat interesting is that Before Shadowgate’s storyline was eventually canonized to some extent. The hero’s name, Jairen, later slightly changed to Lord Jair for Shadowgate 64. The name of the land where the games take place, Kal Torlin, was first introduced here, and later also reused in Shadowgate 64. Infinite Ventures even put the whole story up on their website, when they were still around.

While the Worlds of Power books all featured the same covers as the games they were based off of, they had the nasty tendency of airbrushing out anything remotely offensive, like getting rid of the guns in the artwork of Mega Man 2, Bionic Commando and Metal Gear. With Before Shadowgate, they fixed the gargoyle’s tail to look more rounded, and got rid of the horns, perhaps to make the image look less like a devil.

Cancelled Games – Shadowgate Rising

Infinite Ventures clearly had great plans for the Shadowgate license. After publishing Shadowgate 64 and Shadowgate Classic, they began work on two other games: Shadowgate Rising and Lands of Shadowgate. Shadowgate Rising was to be a sequel to Shadowgate 64, starring a red-haired heroine named Raven. From the web page:

“Infinite Ventures is proud to present stories from the world of Shadowgate. Our first offering follows the adventures of Raven – a young woman with remarkable powers in a world that has forgotten the ancient magics of yesterday. Set in the far future, the story of Raven begins in a time when the Dreamers have risen to prominence. These Dreamers oppose anything having to do with magic and will stop at nothing to eradicate the last vestige of the druids and the legacy of Castle Shadowgate.”

Their official website went so far as to produce a twenty page comic based on Raven, but other than a handful of screenshots, little is known about the actual game. By the looks of it, it was most likely going to play just like Shadowgate 64, which is strange given the generally negative reaction to that game. Shadowgate Rising was said to have been cancelled due to the impending release of the GameCube. Infinite Ventures had plans to release the game on the PC, but that also fell through.

 

Cancelled Games – Lands of Shadowgate

During this same period, Infinite Ventures was actively promoting the ports of its games to mobile platforms. One of their mobile titles was a completely new game called Lands of Shadowgate, which appeared to be some kind of strategy game. From the web page:

“The Lands of Shadowgate are in turmoil. Kingdom rises against kingdom. Princes fight with pretenders to the throne. Alliances are forged and quickly broken as leaders of men vie for dominance over one another. Lands of Shadowgate is a turn-based strategy game where players create units, deploy troops, and attempt to conquer the castles of other players. In order to do this, players need the use of special buildings. These structures allow counselors to create and train different types of troops. Careful consideration concerning strategies needs to be taken before choosing counselors and creating the buildings they use. Additional building projects allow players to upgrade the defenses of their castles. It utilizes Infinite Venture’s unique proprietary Play-by-Sync technology allowing PDA and Smartphone owners, including Pocket PC and PalmOS 5, to compete against each other.”

Series Navigation

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