Shadowrun, Sega Style!

Having spent much of my childhood in Washington State, I obviously have a fondness for Seattle and its outlying regions.  Some of it might be through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses of trips to see the Mariners fail to get to the World Series, visiting the Pacific Science Center, and regular trips every year to see The Nutcracker performed by the ballet.  But there's so many other things to the city to fascinate someone like me, whether it's the looming figure of Mt. Rainier overshadowing the city, the distant reminder of the threat of Mt. St. Helens, or the history of the underground city, the whole area seems designed to capture the imagination of children.

So when I heard that there was a futuristic fantasy world that took place primarily in Seattle but allowed for elves, dwarves, trolls as well as both fancy future technology and magic spells, it seemed like someone had taken everything I loved growing up and threw it in a pot to see what insane concoction emerged.

What came out, of course, was Shadowrun.

Now, this isn't going to be a discussion of the tabletop RPG, that'll be a longer essay for another time, but instead I'm going to discuss one of my absolute favorite games for the Sega Genesis that goes by the same name.

The same name as Shadowrun, I mean, not the same name as the Sega G- you know what, let's just move on.

Here's how much I love this game: I have no idea what the plot was, and I never beat it.  Strange praise, to be sure, but the reason for this is that I got so caught up in the side quests and subplots that weeks of playing would go by and by the time I decided I should get back on track I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do.  Frequently I would quit in frustration, start over, and start to level up just to get sucked into the side quests again, and the cycle would repeat itself.

But here's the thing, despite the fact that the subplots repeated themselves on a rather ridiculous level ("go to this map we slightly altered and shoot some people" or "hack into the system and steal us some data" or just "hack into any system and steal any data and sell it") I never got sick of playing through them.  And who would, when one of the major points of the game (hacking computer systems) involved such advanced graphics as this:

Okay, so it's not exactly Ico or the later Final Fantasy games in terms of graphics, but to be honest, if and when we get computer systems that we can hook our brains into and attack automated file system security protocols, that's really what I expect cyberspace to look like to us, like a twisted version of Tron meets The Lawnmower Man.

The game is, essentially, an RPG where you can increase the abilities of your weapons and stats and skills, with the slight exception of being able to customize what you want your character to be, something that didn't really become mainstream in video games for several years afterward.  You want to cast magic?  Go ahead, pick up a few points in that.  You wanted to be the greatest decker (read: hacker) who ever lived?  Sure, sink all your points in that, just be ready to invest a lot of money in bulletproof vests and the ability to run away from combat.

Oh, but that's not all, you can also hire on allies to help you out on missions, be it magical support, a giant troll wielding a huge gun, or someone who can wade into melee combat with a sword, there's a character you can pay to fill in the gaps in your own skills, which is greatly true to the original source material.  After all, without a good time watching your back, you don't survive long in the Seattle of the future.

That isn't to say there won't be problems, though.  Suppose you really need someone to fire a gun and protect you while you hack into a computer system.  If they drop and you simply run off and leave them, once the medics put them back together and you talk to them again, you can bet they'll hold a grudge against you and ask for higher payment next time...unless you shell out the money to make them your "bestest friend," of course, but that doesn't come cheap.

Later video games would attempt to capture the same "it's you against the world, unless the world's paying cash" mindset, but few would hold onto this genre as well as the Genesis and the SNES versions, though I prefer the Genesis one overall.  The world felt more alive, as you'd frequently find yourself being harassed by gangs, having to get involved in active crimes near you, or simply taking on side missions to earn enough money to get by.

The world felt extremely alive in a way that even today many games still get wrong.  Sure, you can kill the members of that gang chasing you, but that just means that more gang members show up the next time to fill your body with bullets.  Perhaps you'd instead rather find their headquarters and buy some safety from attacks...but that doesn't guarantee a few wayward gang members won't try to cash in on your body.

Some random guy offers you grenades at a low price?  Be careful, it might be the deal of a lifetime, or it could be an undercover cop ready to take you in and make you pay some hefty fines.  When you come upon a mugging or a hit in progress, you could try stepping in to save the target or you could stick your hands in your pockets and walk away whistling innocently.  You might get rewarded for one action, or you could wind up stirring up a bee nest and getting stuck in a shootout between cops and gang members, neither of whom is on your side.

The only real problem I have with the game, again, is the fact that it's so open world that it's easy to lose track of where you're supposed to be going next.  When you're assigned a location, they might tell you it's "in the Redmond Barrens" but you have no idea where in there it is, leading you to have to do massive exploration.  It wasn't uncommon for me to be hunting through a line of warehouses for the one that had a specific contact I was looking for just to wind up walking into what must have been a lucrative drug deal for all the guns that turned towards me as I opened the door or into the hideout of some ghouls (not a gang name, actual ghouls) who simply tore me to pieces.

I'll probably never know how the game ends unless I watch someone play it online, because any time I go back to it, I get sucked back in to that world and I find myself thinking "okay, I just need a bit more money for that fancy pistol, so let's just hack into a few more company accounts" or "okay, I really don't like this corporation, so for my own personal satisfaction let's go talk to the guy hiring people to attack and steal stuff from them" for a few days before I go "wait...I was supposed to be talking to someone about my brother's death, wasn't I?  ...eh, well."