Shadow Knights

id Software. Year 1990. Before Commander Keen came along, before Wolfenstein arrived, there was this — a scrolling action B-game with a ninja, something hardly anyone remembers today. Yet it was one of the very first things this studio ever released.

Shadow Knights is a side-scrolling action game set in a Japanese-inspired world. You play as a ninja with a katana, cutting your way through enemy-filled levels toward a final showdown with an evil shogun. The story is exactly as thin as you'd expect — evil has taken over the land, you go defeat it. No surprises, no detours. Classic arcade logic.

The gameplay matches its era and platform. The ninja runs, jumps, and swings his katana. Enemies come from left and right, obstacles slow you down. You'll master the keyboard controls in a minute, but that doesn't mean the game is easy — tough spots arrive, and not always for good reasons. The hitboxes are what they were in 1990: approximate. If you grew up on Amiga or Prince of Persia, you'll feel right at home. If not, you might punch the desk once or twice.

What Shadow Knights interestingly documents is where id Software started out. There's no technological wizardry here, no groundbreaking ideas. It's solid craftsmanship from a small studio working on this in their spare time between commercial contracts. The EGA graphics are functional and colorful, the Sound Blaster music does what it can, but you won't be humming it. The game hasn't aged poorly or well — it's simply exactly where time left it.

Today, you'll play Shadow Knights for one of two reasons: you're curious about id Software's family tree, or you just feel like twenty minutes of straightforward action without tutorials and cutscenes. For the second reason, it's actually the ideal choice. It runs in your browser, works without installation, and demands no commitment. A historical curiosity with usable gameplay — that's precisely what you should expect from 1990.