The Shadow Showdown Mystery

[SlashofaSword]

I had this memory in the back of my head of one of the levels from a Fairly Oddparents game I played when I was little. I couldn't remeber the title but I had a pretty good image of what the cover looked like in my head, so I searched 'Fairly Oddparents game' and soon found it was 'Shadow Showdown'.

When I was searching for the cover I saw a version of it for the Playstation and Gamecube. I thought it was cool that it was getting console releases and not just PC, but when I went to find videos of the game to watch, all I could find were PS2 playthroughs. I noticed pretty quickly that the game was different seeing as the game I was watching was 3D and the one I played was 2D and much different. The thing is, on the back of the cover for the PC disc (I went and bought a used copy to replay the game) you can see 3D models looking similar to the playstation.

So my question is, why are there two games with the same name and cover art, but one is a 3D, decently sized playstation game and the other is a poorly put together, unstable 2D flash game?

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Wait, were both games identical, though? I can find gameplay of the 3D one you mentioned. This is it, right? Then a quick YouTube search for the PC version gave me this. Are these the two games in question? If so, I think they're completely different games released under the same name. The gameplay looks very different between the two, at least. The Wikipedia page says that the PC version and the console version were developed by two different studios. Is the PC version of the game that you bought also 3D, like the console ones, or is it the 2D one that you remember?

 

[SlashofaSword]

Wait, were both games identical, though? I can find gameplay of the 3D one you mentioned. This is it, right? Then a quick YouTube search for the PC version gave me this. Are these the two games in question? If so, I think they're completely different games released under the same name. The gameplay looks very different between the two, at least. The Wikipedia page says that the PC version and the console version were developed by two different studios. Is the PC version of the game that you bought also 3D, like the console ones, or is it the 2D one that you remember?

Yes sorry. Those are the games, and the one I remeber is the one I recently bought (the PC version in 2D). The two different developers is quite interesting, I don’t really know what the point was. A point I forgot to bring up though, was that on the back cover of the PC disc is screenshots from the PS2 version of the game, which confuses me even more.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Yes sorry. Those are the games, and the one I remeber is the one I recently bought (the PC version in 2D). The two different developers is quite interesting, I don’t really know what the point was. A point I forgot to bring up though, was that on the back cover of the PC disc is screenshots from the PS2 version of the game, which confuses me even more.

Now that's just weeeeeird and I'm dying to know the answer, too! Nothing else I can find on the web. Maybe we could try our luck contacting someone for an answer?

 

[Deleted User]

Heh, I remember playing both games, the shitty 2D PC game and the 3D PS2 version. Hope I'm not necrobumping here, it's been a few days since the last reply.

That being said, I honestly don't know why they opted to make the PC version so watered down compared to the PS2/GCN version. I remember Nickelodeon also doing this with the Spongebob Squarepants Movie game; the PS2/GCN version was a 3D platformer somewhat in the vein of Super Mario 64 (as well as the first video game I ever played), while the PC Version was a completely different point-and-click adventure-style game.

Maybe they did this in regards to their audience; they probably assumed a lot of kids wouldn't be willing to upgrade the video card on their parents' PC or have the intelligence to configure a sound card (which is probably wrong, you'd be surprised what kids are willing to do, but whatever). They probably wanted the games to run on as many computers as possible, so they toned down the PC Versions of these games to the point where your potato could run them.

Just my two cents.