Shadow Warrior, often known by its initials SW, is a first-person shooter computer game featuring Lo Wang, a master ninja assassin or “Shadow Warrior“, developed by 3D Realms and released on May 13, 1997 by GT Interactive. Shadow Warrior was developed using Ken Silverman’s Build engine and improved on 3D Realms’ previous Build engine game, Duke Nukem 3D. The game’s improvements included introduction of true room-over-room situations, the use of voxels instead of sprites for weapons and usable inventory items, transparent water, climbable ladders, and assorted vehicles to drive (some armed with weapons). Although ultra-violent, the game emphasized tongue-in-cheek humor and contained some sexual themes (although less blatantly than in Duke Nukem 3D).
Two original novels featuring Lo Wang, For Dead Eyes Only and You Only Die Twice, were published in the wake of the game’s release.
On April 1, 2005 3D Realms released the source code for Shadow Warrior under the GPL, which resulted in the first source port a