More!
Take a look at this screenshot taken in the beta version of Shanghai Shipwreck:
It's the Eel enemy! Turns out they did enough work on it that the developers actually put it in levels. However, the Eel does nothing and cannot be killed. He'll just use that one frame forever.
Shanghai Shipwreck in the beta also has something interesting. Normally, the map uses the final ninjas, as seen below.
However, if you dive underwater in the area you spawn in, you'll find this:
A tall Lo Wang! Looks like someone forgot to remove all of the old ninjas in this map. Just more proof that the old and new ninjas are two separate objects for some reason.
Here's an interesting little thing I noticed about the end level switches. If you play the beta normally, you'll find a rough draft of the final's end switch at the end of the first level.
However, when you get to the end of level 2, Zilla Construction, you'll find that the end level swtich is completely different!
Now, if you go into the old levels buried in the beta, you'll find that some of the levels have end switches. Interestingly enough, these end switches use the same one that was used in Zilla Construction! Take a look at Boat.map's end level switch:
Same thing. You can also see this switch used in beta levels from SW's “crypts and palaces” era and the more recent, Duke3D-like levels, such as Unfriendly Skies.
The end of Shanghai Shipwreck somewhat bucks the trend by using the rough version of the final's end of level swtich in Shipwreck's end puzzle.
The thing is that using the correct one does not lead to the end of the level. Perhaps they were already considering the final end of switch design when they were working on Shipwreck, but didn't really start implanting the final end switch until they did a lot of work on Level 1.
Basically, the conclusion of all this seems that the developers kept the same design for the end switch for the vast majority of the game's development. When they swapped it for the final's design, they repurposed the old design as a regular switch, which you can see in some levels in the final game.
There's something really cool in the beta's Unfriendly Skies that wasn't in the final game. The level's architecture is mostly the same as the final's. However, when you get to the end of the level, you'll notice something is a bit..off.
Unfriendly Skies had a completely different ending at one point! Instead of facing off mini-Sumos, you'd be stuck in a large outdoors area with a lot of enemies and have to use the giant APC to take them down. The APC has plenty of cover and two machine guns, making it perfect for taking down large groups of enemies with no problem.
It's a really cool idea, but was probably cut for performance sake. However, this area does have something more significant which will be shown very soon.
In an earlier post, I noted that some of the unused levels in the beta are earlier versions of levels that appeared in the final game. What's strange about it is that the levels have the tall Lo Wangs, meaning they were using the old ninja enemies when these levels were last worked on.
Here's the start of Floating Fortress:
...and the lobby near the end of Unfriendly Skies:
Now here's where things start getting weird. Here's a picture of Floating Fortress' start area that was posted on the Shadow Warrior site on December 1996:
It's clearly the map layout seen in the beta and shown a few pictures up, but if you look on the right, you can see the final ninja on the boxes at the top. That's unusual. That picture was posted in December 1996, but the beta was compiled on April 1997 and still has the old ninjas in Floating Fortress.
Look at this frame extracted from an animated .gif that was on the official Shadow Warrior site at one point.
It matches the old Unfriendly Skies ending shown earlier, but notice that there's a final ninja attacking the player on the right side of the screen. The Unfriendly Skies in the beta has the APC arena, but uses the old ninjas. See below for a very rough recreation of the location shown in the .gif to see the old ninjas:
Isn't it weird that, despite being compiled on April 1997, the beta has levels that used the old ninja enemies, but pre-release screenshots uploaded earlier than when the beta was made use the final ninjas?
Looking at it, the most likely conclusion is that the SW beta is based on an earlier version of Shadow Warrior than was being worked on when the beta was made. Based on what I've seen of game development, it's likely that the developers split the shareware branch as we know it from the main build around the time the new ninja enemies were developed and were slowly replacing the old ninjas in maps. I would've dated it earlier, but some non-shareware maps, such as a beta version of Rising Son, use the new ninja enemies. The shareware branch was updated with things like voxels and new art for the shareware levels, but the old maps and art resources that were in the game when the shareware/retail split happened were not removed until it came time to actually make the final shareware game. As a result, the beta has lots of resources that were long obsolete in the same time period the beta was compiled, such as the old temple and shrine levels, rough versions of some of the final's levels, art for removed enemies like the Skeleton Priest and Eel, and other stuff.
Basically, the beta is significantly more valuable than it looks at first glance because it's basically a 1996-era build with 1997-era shareware resources and coding laid on top of it. I don't think we really need a SW beta from mid to late 1996 because we essentially already have it. The currently-released beta provides an opportunity to see how far along the game was back in mid to late 1996 and how incompatible and different it is with the changes that were made in 1997.
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