Altered Beast can be defined by a single word, depressing. It's a barebones beat 'em-up game where you jump, punch, and kick your way to five colorless levels that ramp up in difficulty (sometimes) with drab music playing in the background. The transformations are kinda cool and OP and a few of the bosses can be taken down in seconds if done correctly.

The main issue I have with this game is the difficulty. It's an arcade game that was ported to the Genesis, I get that, but it can be all over the place depending on how you play. Your health bar can be drained quickly if you're not careful and this can lead to draining all of your lives in seconds.

Altered Beast might've been impressive at the time, but I don't consider this to be a Genesis classic.

Game #68 of my challenge

Altered Beast is an entry in my list that I never heard of until I played it. It's a side-scroller Beat them up that have some nice Idea in it, but is a tough game to beat.

First of all, The plot is about the ruler of the underworld in Ancient Greece, Neff, kidnapping Athena. Zeus is pissed and resurrects you, a deceased Roman Centurions. Zeus chooses you as his champion and grants you power to get back Athena in the underworld. At least the story is kind of original and is just there to give you a purpose to beat the story. In-game, the story is not much there. I will at least give them the effort of implementing some ''audible'' dialog said by the main enemy (even though it's barely comprehensible).

The graphic is a nice change since it's not the pixelated games that I played a bunch recently. The sprites are clean, They really put an efforts in the visuals for this game. The enemies looks good, your character is clean and the background are well implemented. It's a nice change of pace. The music however, is really average. There is no remarkable tracks and the SFX are just OK.

The controls are kind of funky, You have a punch button, a kick button and a jump button. However, if you want to have an easier time to attack enemies arriving from the top, you need to press down and then use the kick button. Your character will put himself on his back and will kick straight up. It's really awkward to press down to attack enemies from above. The game feels slow when using the controls, but is understandable because of the visuals of the game.

The gameplay is a simple beat them up, with enemies spawning a little bit everywhere, but the twist is that is an auto-scroller. You need to move to the speed of the stage. Also during the level, you need to beat all 3 blue wolves and collect the orb before reaching Neff. Collecting an orb will buff your character and on the 3rd one, you will transform into a specific beast of this level. If you do not collect the 3rd one before reaching Neff, the level will loop and you will redo the whole level again. In one loop, you can only see 3 blue wolves. So if you miss one, it's too bad for you and you need to redo the loop. At least the levels are kind of short.

When transforming into a beast, you will gain special attacks with that transformation. There are 4 different beast that you can incarnate. This creates a really nice variety to the gameplay. Each level has a boss at the end and you will need to beat it with your transformation. Some of them are easy, but others are really hard to not get hit by anything. Once you beat all 5 levels, the game is over.

One thing that I hate about this game, is that you have no way of healing yourself or getting extra lives. Even when you complete a level, they do not heal you to the next one. So you pretty much need to play perfectly to be able to beat all 5 levels. If you lose all your lives, you need to start all over again, which can be really annoying.

Despite the difficulty of the game, the game had some really nice ideas and had some fun moment sometimes. This game doesn't stay his welcome since there's only 5 levels. You should try it if you search for an old, short and sweet game.

Can you imagine that Altered Beast was a pack-in title when the Genesis first launched? Like, this was the prime example of what the Genesis could do... did it work? Were people impressed? 'Cause jeez, this is definitely one of those "you had to be there" releases.

It lives and dies by its presentation, but offers little else of value. I mean, there are multiple types of beast transformations, but they all serve the same purpose, it's a purely cosmetic change. You autoscroll your way to the right, punch some enemies to death, 15 minutes pass, and... it's done. Congratulations, you just played through a tech demo. Perhaps impressive at the time. But we all know that come a couple years later, Altered Beast was just barely scratching the surface of what the Genesis could do.

The "wise fwom youw gwave" line is very funny though, so the game gets half an additional star just for that.

When you think of the Sega Genesis, you may mostly think of Sonic the Hedgehog as the face of the system, but for a while, that wasn't the case. From 1988 to 1991, there were a slew of other games that were released on the system to represent the Genesis lineup, such as Golden Axe, Space Harrier II, and The Revenge of Shinobi. Sure, all of these games were good on their own (at least, I assume with most of them), but they wouldn't reach the same level of popularity that Sonic would bring to the system years later. One example of these games would be with the original pack-in game that came with the Sega Genesis, Altered Beast.

So, as the first thing people originally got with their Genesis back in the day, did it provide a good first impression of what the system could do? Well, yes... but not much else. The game itself is ok, and it has a pretty cool concept, with cool environments, creature designs, and ideas, but aside from that, everything else kind of holds it back from being a true classic in my eyes.

The story is very simple, while having, again, those elements that make it cool, the graphics are pretty good, the music isn't really all that special, the control is a little awkward, given your size and the rate at which you and the screen moves, but you can get used to it, and the gameplay does sound cool in concept, but upon execution, you can find better elsewhere.

The game is a 2D side-scrolling beat-'em-up, where you move from left to right in short autoscrolling levels, defeating enemies and bosses while gaining powerups along the way. That is pretty much the extent of the game's content, but what keeps you playing is what these powerups do. After gathering four of the same powerup in levels, you will transform into a new creature form (or an Altered Beast, you could say), such as a wolf man, a dragon, a bear, and a tiger man, where you are much more powerful, and you have a new set of abilities to use on enemies.

Now, I will admit, the game can be fun at points, and the concepts it utilizes are pretty cool and unique for the time. It does feel really satisfying to gain your beast form and then start to tear through the enemies in the stage. Not to mention, the fact that they give you a new beast form for each level keeps things interesting and fun, with you wanting to see what comes next and what moves you can pull off later.

With all that being said, there are a good handful of problems that keep the game from being too good for me. The stages are really short (and I mean REALLY short), which makes the game really short, the way the stage moves is strange, and not something I could really get used to, especially with how enemies spawn in and attack you, you can take damage very easily, there are no continues when you get a game over, which makes sense considering how short it is, and how it was an arcade game, but it is still a letdown, and the bosses either range from being way too hard or way too easy, especially whenever you are in your beast form.

I feel like the main issue that holds this game back really is just a lack of a consistent difficulty flow. It fluctuates from being too easy and too hard constantly, with the enemies that spawn, where they spawn, how fast they move, and how quickly the bosses can be taken out at points. Sure, this isn't too much of a big deal, but it does put things into perspective once you reach the end of the game.

Overall, while it has a lot of cool concepts and designs that makes it certainly memorable, the game itself isn't really one that I would want to revisit anytime soon, and if the core gameplay was more fine tuned and a little longer, then I would probably be singing quite a different tune.

Game #136