Shadow Knights

Did You Know?

• The game's plot involves the land of Naipusan falling under siege by warriors from the North led by the evil shogun Sashika, who some said was possessed by the demon Kuskuro.
• Shadow Knights was re-released in 1993 under the title Budo – The Art of Ninja Combat by the publisher Froggman.
• Kotaku summarized the game as 'id does Shinobi'.

Development

Before founding id Software on February 1st, 1991, John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall worked at Softdisk on the PC game subscription service Gamer's Edge. In October 1990, they completed Slordax: The Unknown Enemy, a vertically scrolling shooter. That month, programmer John Carmack extended his smooth scrolling technique to allow horizontal scrolling. Impressed, the team planned to start their own company and produce a platform game, but kept their day jobs at Softdisk for stable income. By day they worked on Gamer's Edge; evenings and weekends they developed Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons. On November 1st, 1990, they began work on Shadow Knights, the next Gamer's Edge title. They chose a platform game to reduce context switching, as both Commander Keen and Shadow Knights would use the same engine and tools. During development, Softdisk CEO Al Vekovius noticed the smooth scrolling technology and suggested John Carmack file a software patent. Carmack refused and threatened to resign; the biography Masters of Doom attributes this to his strong support for open-source software. Tom Hall designed several levels using the custom Tile Editor (TEd), first created for Dangerous Dave.