Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara

About Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara

Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara (1996) is Capcom's sequel to Tower of Doom, a deep arcade beat 'em up with six classes, equipment, Vancian magic, hidden items and multiple endings, and one of Capcom's last 2D side-scrollers.

Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara in Depth

To the cleric, dwarf, elf and fighter it adds a thief and a magic-user, and two sprite sets for each class let two players choose the same one, giving effectively 12 characters. Four buttons handle attack, jump, a select ring for items and use, with extra rings for spellcasters, and Street Fighter-style special moves include dashing and rising attacks for combos and juggles and a Megacrush that hits nearby enemies at the cost of the player's own health. Magic follows D&D's Vancian system, with a set number of each spell ready to cast, replenished by scrolls, and casting briefly pauses the game. Characters equip helmets, shields, boots, gauntlets and rings, magical items break after a few hits, and bosses drop rare items such as the Skin of the Displacer Beast that can be traded for magical equipment. Between stages, shops sell arrows, oil, daggers and potions.

Each class plays differently: the cleric heals and turns undead and cannot use bladed weapons, the dwarf has the most hit points and bashes open chests for extra treasure, the elf combines sword and spells, the fighter can dual-wield, the fragile magic-user teleports to dodge attacks, and the acrobatic thief picks locks, pickpockets and backstabs. After Deimos, the heroes cross the Broken Lands of Glantri to face his mistress Synn, who turns out to be a centuries-old red dragon trying to awaken a creature called The Fiend.

Making Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara

Capcom released Shadow over Mystara in arcades in 1996, with a guide and art book published by Shinseisha in the Gamest Mook series. Game Machine listed it as Japan's sixth most popular arcade game in its 1 April 1996 issue. Next Generation said it refined Tower of Doom, with animation at the level of X-Men: Children of the Atom, more characters, more branches and endings and abilities such as dual-wielding, though it gave only three stars, while VideoGames called it "Capcom's latest masterpiece". Its gear, secrets, forking paths and endings gave it high replay value and a cult following. It reached the Saturn in Japan's two-disc Dungeons & Dragons Collection in 1999, which used the 4MB RAM cartridge but limited play to two; Retro Gamer called it the system's best scrolling fighter despite long loading. Retro Gamer ranked it 16th among retro arcade games, GameSpy called it "one of the most purely entertaining titles ever released", and it was re-released in Chronicles of Mystara in 2013.