Altered Beast
Altered Beast is an action platform beat-em-up developed and published by Sega for the arcade in 1988-08-??. It was later ported to about a dozen platforms.
The game is set in ancient Greece. Zeus' daughter Athena has been kidnapped by Neff. Zeus resurrects you, a dead centurion, to fight your way through Neff's henchmen and rescue Athena. In each stage, if you defeat two-headed white wolves, they will leave behind a power orb which will make you stronger. If you collect a third orb, you will transform into a powerful beast like a werewolf or dragon and gain special attacks.
I saw first saw this game in the arcade room of Lakeland Arena in the late 1980s, when I though the game was called "Alter Beast." Although I never played it at the time, I loved to watch other people play the game, and I remember seeing kids get as far as stage 3. I was really impressed by the graphics and the idea of turning into a werewolf seemed so cool. Years later, I found a System 16 emulator online and played the game all the way through. The process took tons of credits, and the last stage was so hard I wasn't even able to get enough orbs to transform before having to fight Neff. This kind of disenfranchised me to the game.
Contents
Status
I do not own the game, and have never beaten it.
Review
- Overall: 4/10
- Best Version: Arcade
Good
- For the time, the game was very impressive. It used top of the line hardware both in audio and video.
- The entire game is very creative. Being able to morph into fireball-throwing werewolves, electricity slinging dragons, and the rest is fantastic. The enemies are all really interesting and beautifully rendered, and the bosses are especially impressive.
- The graphic effect where slain enemies expand toward the screen is really cool.
- The game's music and sound effects are good, and digital speech was still impressive in 1988.
- The ending is pretty cool.
Bad
- The game is painfully hard, and becomes even harder as you progress. It seems like Sega designed the game, not so much to be satisfying, but to drain quarters.
- The game is also really short. When playing as an expert the entire game takes less than 15 minutes.
- As the player's body grows with power orbs, but his head does, which looks ridiculous.
- In the last stage, you again transform into a werewolf, but the game tries to play it off as a new transformation by calling it a "gold wolf." Nice try!
- The foreground bodies in the final stage look great, but the artist ruined the seriousness by adding the The Thinker and The Scream into the mix.
- The "rise from your grave," intro sound sounds a bit... off.
- A rescue the princess story line, how original.
Ugly
- The game's controls are terrible. The player's attacks are sluggish, and jumping is especially bad.
Media
Box Art
- Altered Beast - GEN - Full Art - Japan.jpg
Mega Drive (Japan) - Full art. The complete art shows more of the creepy enemies, and adds a nice blue to the ochre.
Documentation
- Altered Beast - ARC - Manual.pdf
Arcade manual.
- Altered Beast - GEN - Manual.pdf
Genesis manual.
- Altered Beast - SMS - Manual.pdf
Master System manual.
- Altered Beast - C64 - Manual.pdf
Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS manual.
- Altered Beast - CPC - Manual.pdf
Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64 manual.
- Altered Beast - ARC - Instructions - Japan.jpg
Japanese arcade instructions.
- Altered Beast - ARC - Ad.jpg
Arcade advertisement.
Fan Art
Videos
- youtube.com/watch?v=icuWM-SRvW0 - Japanese Mega Drive Commercial with Altered Beast.
- youtube.com/watch?v=DqHpyHR1P0I - Arcade longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=K80hfSdsZiI - Amiga longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=MoCaMHwAInY - Amstrad CPC longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=8UG5hOfttm8 - Atari ST longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=jFiTLTSwAgw - Genesis longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=Tv0_qMA4Cj8 - Master System longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=aCW2u-sGq7M - MS-DOS longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=VU61OqyH2wg - TurboGrafx-16 longplay.
- youtube.com/watch?v=psRJHOx1MDU - ZX Spectrum longplay.
Links
- mobygames.com/game/altered-beast - MobyGames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Beast - Wikipedia.
- spritedatabase.net/game/2590 - Arcade sprites.
- spritedatabase.net/game/99 - Genesis sprites.
- vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Altered_Beast_(ARC) - Arcade music.
- Pages with broken file links
- Games
- Video Games
- Amiga Games
- Amstrad CPC Games
- Arcade Games
- Atari ST Games
- Commodore 64 Games
- DOS Games
- Genesis Games
- MSX Games
- Master System Games
- NES Games
- TurboGrafx-16 Games
- TurboGrafx CD Games
- ZX Spectrum Games
- Action
- Beat-Em-Up
- Fantasy
- Multi-Player
- Multi-Player Co-op
- 2-bit Color Graphics
- Monochrome Graphics