The original September 1994 floppy disk release of System Shock had no support for spoken dialogue. The enhanced CD-ROM was released in December 1994, which featured full speech for logs and e-mails, multiple display resolutions, and more detailed graphics. The CD-ROM version is often considered to be superior to the floppy version.[4] After completing work on the sound and music for the floppy version, LoPiccolo recorded all of the spoken dialogue for the CD release, using company employees and his friends' voices,[27][28] which he mixed with ambient sounds to create "audio vignettes".[27] Doug Church later said, "We tried to keep them from shipping the floppy version and instead just ship the CD version, but Origin would have none of it".[24] System Shock producer Warren Spector later expressed regret concerning the floppy version, stating, "I wish I could go back and make the decision not to ship the floppy version months before the full-speech CD version. The additional audio added so much it might as well have been a different game. The CD version seemed so much more, well, modern. And the perception of Shock was cemented in the press and in people's minds by the floppy version (the silent movie version!). I really think that cost us sales..."[36]

Graphics support for VGA and SVGA (320 x 200 is the standard resolution, but 'Fullscreen' mode is included which allows the game to run in 640 x 480.

Modern source port of System Shock offering features such as hardware acceleration, improved widescreen, in-game control rebinding, and more.
On 6 September 2018, a major update of the Enhanced Edition ported it to the Kex Engine, offering additional features such as higher resolutions, mouselook, rebindable keys and use of the high resolution assets from the Mac version[2]