[1] According to Synapse co-founder Ihor Wolosenko, Shamus made the company famous by giving it a reputation for quality.

The player moves through four flip-screen levels, each containing 32 rooms, shooting attackers and collecting keys for locked areas while searching for the exit.

Opposing the player are a number of robotic adversaries, including spiral drones, robo droids and snap jumpers.

To complete the game in its entirety would take several hours,[citation needed] which combined with the lack of a pause function (except on the IBM version), the necessity of remembering the location of dozens of rooms and keys, and the frenetic gameplay, meant that this was extremely difficult to accomplish.

[4] Softline in 1983 wrote: "Shamus is the best cross between arcade and adventure games currently on the Atari market ... To know it is to love it, play it constantly, and not get enough of it".

"[8] ROM Magazine gave the Atari version a 9.4 out of 10 rating,[9] and Creative Computing suggested "Make sure you have no pressing appointments before becoming involved in a round of Shamus.

[11] In 1982, Computer Gaming World reviewed the Atari original, praising the animation and the "vastly superior graphics" over Berzerk, but complaining of the inability to pause the action and of a bug in the speed control.

[12] Costello commented that "Shamus is not easy, but the folks at Synapse are giving Atari owners their money's worth.