One of Microsoft’s big initiatives for the upcoming year is the launch of the Live Anywhere service, which seeks to bring PC gamers and Xbox 360 gamers together across the Xbox Live service. One of the games that Microsoft is using to push the service is the new version of Shadowrun. The Shadowrun franchise has its console gaming roots in both Genesis and Super Nintendo versions of the game. Some of the iterations in the game’s history have been fairly faithful to the pen-and-paper roots of the role playing game, while others have been decidedly less so.

Unfortunately for fans of the original game, it looks like Microsoft’s effort is going to be the least accurate portrayal of the Shadowrun universe yet. Ryan McPherson at eToychest reviews the game’s historical console releases, and briefs gamers on why the Microsoft release may be Shadowrun in name only. The game deviates so far from the paper RPG gameplay that the licensee of the tabletop version, FanPro, issued a statement that the computer version “…is not in continuity with the tabletop RPG. It may be more accurately described as a game loosely based on Shadowrun.”

Microsoft hopes that Shadowrun will be one of the titles that will help Live Anywhere succeed, and the fact that the game doesn’t closely follow the Shadowrun universe doesn’t preclude it from being a good game. But one does have to question why they would bother licensing the original intellectual property if they were essentially going to disregard the gameplay and back story of the tabletop version in favor of their own revised continuity.