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The second Beast was released in 1990.
With Shadow Of The Beast 2, Reflections (again Paul and Martyn,
additional programming was done by Martyn Chudly and Phil Betts)
tried to bring the Beast even further. Duration of the project was
12 months (three months more than they needed for Beast 1).
They also implemented a parser (small and simple).
So our hero could talk to other people via keyboard commands.
The interaction with other lifeforms on the planet Karamoon was not
very complex or structured. Mostly the creatures only gave you
brief hints and tips. An example: the first guy you meet when
you go to the left (from the starting point), will only tell you
that his companion was kidnapped. If you "ask" him about a
"lever" or "switch", he will say "upper" or "lower". You really
need this when you come to a point of the game where you
have to pull ONE of two levers, it will be different lever for each new
game. You will get stuck when you do it wrong..

The game was not really as spectacular as the first one.
There are still great graphics to boot but you won´t find some of the
great effects that the first Beast sported.
The amazing intro was done by Jim Bowers.
This time they spent even more creativity in sprites! The parallax scrolling
backgrounds from part 1 didn't leave much room for the Enemies.

The music is again at a very high quality. The ingame music might be
even better than the music from Beast 1. This time, TIM WRIGHT
and LEE WRIGHT made the soundtrack. The game-over tune
also won several awards along with the other music of Beast II.
This short tune consists of impressive guitar samples and a nice melody.
All the samples sound amazingly authentic on the Amiga.

The playability became slightly better compared to Shadow Of The Beast.
It is still insanly hard, but this time, you won't just
jump and shoot and run and kick.. there are some small but hard quests
and puzzles to keep you thinking. The concept of combining an
actiongame with adventure elements actually does work in this game.
(and again there is a cheat for this Beast, so you can concentrate
on solving the puzzles and avoid the slightly better but still insanely har
gameplay).

After all the game continues the Beast tradition in graphical style and
moody atmosphere, created through impressive sound and great
graphics.

CHEATS

AMIGA:
Go to the right from the starting point, until you reach the first "tree pygmie".
"ASK" him about "TEN PINTS" and you get the message
"This is for you, Roger." You just activated invulnerability.

Click here to get the complete solution for SOTB2!

VERSIONS of the game:

8-bit:
If I will find any 8-bit version of the game, I will post it.
I guess there is a C64 version of Beast 2.

16-bit:
Commodore AMIGA (again this version is the best, because of the great
sound and graphics, it was also the platform Beast 2 was programmed
on - see the "Beast 2 specs")
SEGA MegaDrive and SEGA MegaCD (modified graphics)
Our main hero actually looks weird in the MegaDrive version of Beast 2..

32-bit:
AMIGA CD32(CDTV??) (ShadowOfTheBeast TRILOGY CD(?))
UNCONFIRMED

Beast 2 SPECS (from the manual:)

Total Memory Used: 3.5 megabytes (compressed on two disk)
Graphics Data: 2 megabytes
Music and Sound Data: 1 megabyte
Music Sample Rate: 20 kilohertz
Screen Update: 50 time a second
Project Duration: 12 months

Equipment necessary for producing state-of-the-art games:

The Beast 2 program was developed on a 25 megaherts PC running PDS2

Graphics were created on an Amiga 2000 running a 25 megaherts 68030
processor board.

Range of coffees..

The manual also tells us something from an"upcoming" Reflections title
called "Awesome"..

SCREENSHOTS

A screenshot from the Beast 2 title screen (left) and an ingame shot (right).

From the COLLECTION:

This shot shows the gamebox of the re-issue version of Beast 2.

The cover from Shadow Of The Beast2. Reflections (as usually) released
their games in large boxes. The bix-box-design usually came from
great science fiction or fantasy artists. The box for Beast 2 was designed by
Roger Dean. He also did many artworks for the group "Yes".
The left picture shows the back side of the (reissue-)box which has the
size of a MC.

This is the Genesis version of Beast 2. The graphics are different from the AMIGA.

This is the WORST Beast package design I have seen so far. Maybe Reflections did
not even KNOW about that version of Beast 2.. Psygnosis did many coversations
for Shadow Of The Beast, but this one is just plain bad. The second screenshot shows
a scene from the caves. Well - the background is just weird, the hero looks
like robbed from another game - actually you can not even GUESS that this level
takes place inside a CAVE. And the design of the box is even more disgusting.
The only thing left from the Roger Dean cover are some of the grasshopper thingies.
The main picture was replaced by a generic "hero-fights-dragons-and-bats" drawing.
Pictures above are showing the US/Japanese version of Beast 2 for Sega CD.
The Beast logo became an even worse redesign.

This is the review from ASM (Aktueller Software Markt), a german software magazine.
On the left you can see the original cover of the issue, the article is on the right.