Shadowgate/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: The NES port is far more well known than the game it was ported from at this point.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Sure, it's a challenge to find the pieces of the weapon to defeat the Big Bad, but once you get it, and enter the final room, it's just a matter of using the weapon in the right place, just that one action.
  • Awesome Music: A musical score was made for the NES port of the game, because having NES games without music just isn't done. Fortunately, this music is awesome. It will get into your head, especially the death tune.
  • First Installment Wins: Although none of the MacVenture games follow the previous one, Shadowgate was the first to debut and still the most fondly remembered.
  • Funny Moments: See Narm below. "Death lurks below, waiting to catch you."
  • Narm: The Japanese language version changes all the death scenes from second to first-person narration. Sounds pretty visceral and scary on paper, but as this example shows, the results are much, much funnier than you'd think:

English: With a loud roar, the wolf pounces on you, taking your life!! The wolfs [sic] powerful jaws rip your throat out!!
Japanese: Agghh!! The woman transformed instantly into a wild, ferocious wolf. It’s angry!! It’s attacking!! Ahhh!! I’m done for!! Arrghh!! The wolf’s fangs glint in the light, and at that instant, I became the werewolf’s latest meal.

  • Polished Port: The NES port was much improved in many areas over the PC original, adding more color its CGA-tastic graphics, along with better dialogue, and ditching many of the more frustrating aspects of the original. The subsequent Game Boy Color port polished things even further, mostly by improving the artwork and fixing a couple of glitches from the NES version.
  • Uncanny Valley: 64 really suffers from the Nintendo 64's lack of polygon-pushing abilities. Every human just looks... odd.
  • Unwinnable by Insanity:
    • It's possible to use your sword, spear, and axe on yourself. Doing so will instantly kill you.
    • Using your torch on yourself will kill you, but it takes three tries. You actually have to be trying, since the game warns you the first two times of the damage you've done to yourself.
    • You can use your torches on an underground lake, which will instantly put them out. When your torches go out, you die.
  • Woolseyism: Most of the additional language versions included on the GBC release were word-for-word translations of the original English version. The German version on the other hand was an entirely new translation, that added some additional humor to the game.