Shape Shifter

Pros: Decent voice acting and music, colorful still-shot cutscenes. Cons: Everything else. IMO, not worth playing. If you can somehow get past the choppy scrolling, sucky animation, unforgivingly loose, horrendous controls, and unfulfilling objectives/ abilities. Certainly not worth the $17 I paid for it, but I have been known to be wrong. Occasionally.

Very few games for this console were ever exoprted TO Japan but Shape Shifter is not only one of them but an excellent contribution to the Turbo/PC Engine library. The story involves Lycos (which, incidentally, means \"wolf\") a young warrior who sets out to liberate a group of sages called The Ring of Five. Each time he does so, he is granted the ability to take a different shape (Panther, Shark, Golem, etc). On paper, it\'s very similar to an RPG. There is the safe haven town with a smith, healer and other helpful folks. Around the town are all sorts of monsters. The similarities to a tradtional RPG end there though. The game plays like a platformer (like Castlevania II) but the additions of excellent music, acting and a good story make it a perfect mix of both genre. The music is mostly medieval though it gets a little funky at times. Some of it is perfect while other tunes could have been much better. I think the composer just wanted to go for something different in the action levels a

Great game! Beautiful graphics, nice parallax scrolling, great sound. Catchy soundtrack and great animated characters. No videos or intro animations, just plain pictures with a voice over (which happens to come up on certain parts in the game as well). Apart from that a lenghty game with lots of main characters and levels to explore. The final bosses are really tough, but apart from that its not too difficult. If you like a platform/action game with a storyline and roleplaying elements, then I´d definitely recommend this one!