“Into The Shadows” was a fighting game (not RPG as a lot of people believe) in development by Triton, an ex demo group from Sweden, active on the PC demo scene in the early-to-mid 1990s. Triton were previously known for the popular demo “Crystal Dream 2”, as well as the FastTracker / FastTracker II music editing applications. The game was to be published by Scavenger, who were also made up of many ex demo team developers.
The non-interactive demo shown in the video clip, was released in 1995, and the engine was considered superior to the Quake engine – showing realtime shadows, and aimed at running well on lower spec hardware (486 processor, compared to Quake requiring a Pentium to run at a playable speed).
Unfortunately, the game was cancelled around late 1997 / early 1998, when Scavenger went bankrupt.
In 1998, some members of Triton formed Starbreeze Studios, who merged with O3 Games in 2000. They later went on to create games such as “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay” and “The Darkness”.
Thanks to Robert Seddon and derboo for the scans! Thanks to Paul for the description!
Images:
[Source: Segafreak – www.segadatabase.net]
Video:
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
Would you like to add more info, screens or videos to this page? Add a comment below!
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Fantastic entry :-)
Well, we still have to write a proper description ;P
The game was supposed to be PC only.
Probably, but there were some rumors about a Saturn version too, if i remember correctly that first scan was from a Saturn Magazine! Anyway, i’ll add it to the PC section too :)
I still have this demo on one cover CD from 1995. I am now unable to run this even under dosbox.
EDGE magazine, July ’96 has it down as PC/PS/Saturn.
Game was said to feature realtime torch flicker, detailed backgrounds impressive character models (Orcs, Wizards, Elves and an impressive Skeleton warrior, comprised of a complex network of bones, despite using less than 350 polygons).
Game was described as coming across as a full 3D version of Double Dragon, just in the fantasy setting.
The inverted crosses (symbol of Satanism) might have caused a few headaches for the publisher mind….
Scavenger got into trouble with it’s publisher, GTI, who’d invested a claimed £2 Million into Scavenger of development and marketing cash, in order for them to end up delivering games 6 months late and the canning what GTI had hoped would be a Quake-beater, in form of Into The Shadows, which was Scavengers most anticipated game.
Ross, your statement is in error…
1. Scavenger was not late on any game delivered or to be delivered to GT.
2. GT owed and was forced to pay Scavenger over $3 million dollars by the Supreme Court State of New York. Scavenger won on a summary judgement which means that GT owed the money and that they had no excuse for not paying it. There wasnt even a trial. GT just tried to get away without payment.
This was a massive amount of money for a game developer in 1996 and forced Scavenger out of business.
It was a nasty move by GT.
At the time Electronic Arts entire marketcap (the business value of all of EA) was $500m and Activision was worth just $200m. That millions not billions.
3. GT did not pay Scavenger because its own business was failing. GT went out of business shortly thereafter.
4. GT was sued by over 7 companies for non-payment of money owed. They pulled the same shit on everyone. Id Software also had payment and trust issues with GT.
More confirmation of it being planned for Saturn/PS1 as well:
Edge issue Jan’96 said PC CD-Rom, but then 1 screenshot had caption of it being transfered to Saturn+PS1.
Given the investment GTI put in, it’d make (commercial) sense for it to go multi-platform, to recoup the investment/turn a profit.
Posting info up, as i steadily clear through old magazines.
Ok, it seems game was originally planned as PC-ONLY, as it started off being nothing more than a set of graphical technologies for the PC and only when the programming tools were ready to build content, did the team decide what to do with the technology.The advanced Physics engine (Triton) the game employed had been worked on for 2 years, before being used in the game and it also used Scavengers real-time lighting routine, Real Light.
Game was’nt just about fighting, but had a ‘significant’ exploration aspect-player was required to explore castle, find objects, discover secrets etc.
Next Generation: https://web.archive.org/web/19961224005833/http://www.next-generation.com/news/051096q.html
Appreciate Scavenger team member posting to clear up what press were reporting about Scavenger delivering games late and the whole GTI fiasco.
It would be helpful if you could give luca your name privately so the site can check this is from a credible source.
That’s not directed at you personally, it’s just we have seen people who claimed to of worked on Lomax on PlayStation making absurd claims about 8 meg retail PlayStation machines and other individuals fabricating claims about Croc III (Argonaut).
Could help clear up a few other claims/rumours regarding the game?
1.Reason game was canned was due to a disagreement over money on the deal to publish the game..Triton feeling they wouldn’t be making enough from it.
2.The release date for Into the Shadows, and for most of Scavengers
1996 games had been put back to September
(from May/June)… because Daniel Small, MD of Scavenger saying this is not to do
with the development lagging behind, but
because the distributors don’t think the games would sell very well in
the Summer period..what we in the UK call the silly season..
3.Game was according to Daniel Small more like FX Fighter/Tekken, than Quake/Doom, due to the camera moving independently,so the player would see their character..
4.There was a PLAYABLE version at E3 but controls needed a lot of work.
I’ve read so many conflicting stories from numerous sources, it’d be nice to get clarity.
Apologies if this appears before my earlier comment.
There were claims that an unnamed coder from team Triton at had said they were experiencing difficulties going from making demos to actual games…this was rebuked by Game Central who said of the original 2 man Triton team..only 1 remained the others in the group were all new people and everything was fine.
That lead to this:
‘I’ve been thinking about Into The Shadows myself a little tonight. Their engine is superb but I think they definitely
still have some control problems. They showed a version at LAST YEAR’s
E3 which also looked great but the controls weren’t fully hooked-up so
it was tough to judge.
BUT — if they can fix these control problems then they’re going to
have a great game because it looks greats and the character animations
are excellent – not quite as fluid as they looked in a demo but
someone playing the game and trying not to get killed would probably
not be able to put the moves together as slickly as they were scripted
in the demo.
Right now it controls a lot like Alone in the Dark which I didn’t
like. They need to make it easier for you to fight someone without
having alway worry about your changing rotation. Perhaps some sort of
auto rotation in such a way that when you’re in a fight the system
helps you align with the person you’re fighting so that you’re
fighting the opponent instead of the controls.
They need to give the human player some, but not all, of the
automation that the computer controlled characters have. If they solve
this problem then they’re going to have a huge hit. It will probably
be a big hit anyway because it looks so good but to get really far
they need to iron out the control problems.
Mark Rein,
Epic MegaGames.
Gaming Central again rebuked this claiming they’d visited Scavenger some time after E3 and the camera auto tracking worked fine, your character faced enemies for combat and the controls were being worked on..
They suggested the game was progressing well and not that far off completion…
Story gets more curious the deeper i dig
And more yet:
Magnus Högdahl left Scavenger to set up a new company, Frozen Moose Entertainment and said whilst they retained the rights to into the Shadows and it was unlikely the fame would ever be finished, but not to worry, Frozen Moose were working on something even better than Into The Shadows.
Next thing he annouced that he’d started his own new project, Starbreeze Studios.
All Triton productions
demo-scene material had been moved to the Starbreeze site.
Into The Shadows was now very dead.
Still nothing from “Scavenger Team Member” then?.
A note to posters claiming to be from the commercial development industry:
At the very least please give your real name to Luca so claims can be verified.
Anecdotal evidence is never 100% reliable, espically from a single source and sadly many from Games Industry have lied about why certain games never appeared.
Thank you
John Carmack of i. D being quizzed on the game:
Alex St. John: I understand that when you guys saw the Into the Shadows
demo, you were pretty traumatized.
John Carmack: I looked at that and said, ’’Their characters look better
than ours.” But even though it was an impressive demo, it’s a perfect ex-
ample of the difference between a technology demo and a shipping prod-
uct. And shipping a product is just horrid. People don’t realize it. You get
so many people that are from an EEU background and don’t know what
they’re talking about. And they think just because, ”Wow I
I saw the playable version at E3, I believe in 1996. I watched it being played on a PC using a keyboard and mouse, at the Scavenger booth. It appeared to be running smoothly with no issues. Quite impressive for the time. I regret not going back later to play it myself.