These are my live notes as taken while attempting to play through Altered Beast for the first time:

Huh. This is pretty slow.

The main character sprite is pretty ugly. Why is his head so tiny??

I can see this getting really repetitive

Wait, powering up is just removing clothing?

Okay, he's even more jacked but that just accentuates his already-tiny head

WHOA

Okay this werewolf is AWESOME

What's this lightning guy? Why can't I hit him?

What does he mean "Welcome to your doom?"

WHAT IS THAT

SERIOUSLY WHAT IS THAT

Okay, I get it now, the lame human tinyhead man is a contrast to the awesome werewolf character, it makes you want to transform and you appreciate the werewolf more when you change into him, got it.

Gotta kick a bunch of purple goo so I can be the werewolf again

WHAT

A DRAGON

HOW MANY FORMS ARE IN THIS GAME

These foreground rocks are hiding a LOT of holes

Can I even jump across these??

Okay it's a good thing I'm on NSO with rewind, I would have absolutely blown all my lives trying to figure out how to jump high

These stinging mantis bug guys are horrifying

Okay aaaaaaaand BEAR

BOUNCING BEAR

Is this a snake statue? Is it alive? What am I fighting here?

No seriously, I can't figure out how to damage this thing

Ooooh the bouncing hurts the top of the statue

Okay this next stage seems simple enough

Ooh Tiger! Tiger is good

Skeleton Lava Croc Fetus?

Okay I hate this thing

I hate Skeleton Lava Croc Fetus so much

UGH THAT TOOK SO LONG

You know what, I have barely any life left. Go ahead and kill me, weird Satyrs. I'm out.

This game's level of Jank Difficulty is absolutely miserable, I'm gonna go watch a speedrun now to see how anyone can actually finish this mess.

Altered Beast (or Juuouki) is one of those iconic games for the Mega Drive for the better or worst. It was the pack in game for the Genesis here before Sonic made his debut so most owners of the console early on played this game. Nowadays it seems to be disliked a lot but personally of the 4 games in 1988. This is my favorite one.

This is one of those early kind of beat em ups before stuff like Final Fight hit the scene. It's a bit archaic but it's got a nice feel to it when you get things right. Getting the ability to power up feels satisfying and the many animal forms are cool even if their special powers can be quite overpowered.

This is however a very short game and I mean like you can beat it in less than 20 minutes short. The bosses are also really easy outside of the 4th one. So yeah it's not amazing or anything or heck I wouldn't even say it's good but with a friend or even by myself like me because I'm a loser, you can have some fun. It's a shame they never tried making a true sequel to it.

One of the worst games of all time, made even worse by the fact that it can be surprisingly well-regarded as a classic in some circles, and the opposite of your favorite game, in that it rewards repeat playthroughs with more and more awful things you never noticed before. I played it once again this year and this time I noticed that when you get a power up, the animation where the beefcake hero stands still so he can bust his pecs out of his shirt doesn’t freeze the screen and makes him open for an attack

You know, I thought ET on Atari and perhaps Scorn, even knowing it's an acquired taste would be the only times this year I got absolutely bewildered over a game's negative perception, but this might take the cake.

Like legit I can't even think of anything super negative about it outside of Stage 4 being annoying, it's over so quickly and you're pretty much a powerhouse from start to end that any actual problems dissipate with ease.

This might actually be the most 5/10 thing ever made.

[Sega Mega Drive Classics PS4]

I liked some of the pixel art - mostly the horror-esque enemy designs and the portraits of the beasts you turn into. The animation was a bit janky and so was the gameplay to be honest. Movement was very sluggish and the game wasn’t fun enough for me to want to ‘git gud’, so I used the rewind feature to see it through to the end. Then I watched an arcade long play on YouTube and it was soooo much faster! Another SEGA classic that’s borderline unplayable. I gave Shinobi two stars so this has got to be one star because nearly everything here is worse.

Un poco mas lento que su versión de Arcade pero igual de bueno. Era un regalo cuando un juego de estas características se podía jugar en casa. Un beat em up clásico con una característica muy interesante, te puedes convertir en diferentes criaturas con distintas habilidades en cada nivel, brindando una enorme variedad al juego, ya que cambia las mecánicas y, a veces, incluso el género, pudiendo ser hasta un shooter de naves cuando eres un dragón. Lo único que no me gusta (a mi, de forma personal) es que el juego sea tipo "carrera", es decir, el nivel te empuja a avanzar constantemente como un arcade de naves. Sin embargo es un juego interesante y divertido que pondrá a prueba tus reflejos. El sistema de guardado en consolas de últimas generaciones lo convierten en un juego asequible de completar.

Can I get ripped and turn into a frickin' monster just by kicking wolves in the head? POWER UP!

Look, the motions are a bit wonky and everything feels kind of slow in this game. The graphics are fine most of the time and you got it for free with your early-version Genesis, so tons of people have definitely played this (or the arcade version). The transformation cutscenes are great, the digitized voices are somehow both funny and pretty good. I remember it being pretty tough to beat, but I've never been much of an action game expert.

You're definitely going to have to use your best late-80's imagination to fill in the awesomeness of this game, but it does a fair job of entertaining and is definitely worth a shot.

WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM!

Review from thedonproject.com

So I was browsing away on here and came across Detchibe's list called "Against the Grain", it was about games they had differing opinions on from the norm. Kindly ignoring the Castlevania: The Adventure entry, I took notice in the appearance of Altered Beast. Instantly I was reminded of the overbearing negativity some seem to have for this title, it was as if Altered Beast had stolen Christmas and punched their mothers square in the jaw. I would hear suggestions that this should sit on the bench of shame and rub elbows with the likes of Bubsy 3D and Superman 64, which is completely insane to me. As always it's not great to hear someone take a massive dump on one of the many games of your childhood, but it kinda hurts a ton more when it's a common opinion and not some random shitter or a Netflix-browsing troll with a wordpress doing their best Armond White impersonation.

Don't get the wrong idea, I don't think Altered Beast could last even ten seconds against Bare Knuckle III or that it would even get close to a Top 50 for my personal favorite Genesis games list, but the idea that it's "one of the worst ever" just confounds me beyond all words. Curious as always, I decided to boot up my crappy loose copy of Altered Beast that somehow still functions and gave it a spin on the ol' 16-BIT machine. It was time to rescue Zeus' daughter once again.

I played it, rose fwom my gwave, punched out some zambambos, powered up, beat it and mildly enjoyed myself.

So what's the problem here? What am I missing?

Did you boot up the game on an emulator for a minute, get your ass kicked and proclaim the game sucked and ragequit? Did the sight of the man turning into a wolf trigger your crappy anti-furry kneejerk reaction? Did you forget to press B while fighting the eyeball monster? Were you filtered by the adorable little dragon riding the fireball orb? Was your ass thoroughly handed to you by the mean rhino man at the end of the game? It's one thing if it simply isn't your cup of coffee, but to proclaim it one of the worst ever is a tad much.

Just absolutely strange to me. It's not the highest praise, but this is easily one of the better pre-Final Fight beat'em ups and I will hear nothing else. I suggest playing Heavy Nova for five seconds, you'll be singing Altered Beast's praises and begging for forgiveness in no time. Now I'm gonna go ahead and implement something that the kids quite enjoy, which will be my verdict for those who apply their worst rating to a memorable game that is a big part of the Genesis's history:

clears throat

Skill issue.

This game used to always piss me off as a kid because I could never beat the first level. Since then, I have always been a devout Altered Beast hater despite never getting through the first level. Today however, I have finally finished Altered Beast and I can say with full confidence that this game is dog shit. I will give it some credit though since Altered Beast does do some cool things. The whole progression system where you slowly power up and turn into a beast is really cool. There's also this part where you turn into a dragon and there's this pseudo bullet hell boss fight. That was really good. Other than that, most of this game blows. It's stupidly hard, and sometimes the game pulls these bullshit tactics that just make the game feel like it's broken. At the end of the day, I don't think I hate Altered Beast as much as I used to, but I still would never consider this game a classic.

RISE FROM YOUR GRABE. its altered beast. theres not a whole lot to it, but I don't think that it's particularly bad, especially for its time. But then again, I'm sure even when it came out it was a C-tier game... I don't even think it's because of the actual gameplay loop itself, I think that a lot of enemy placements and level design just feel kinda... cheap? and that makes the game as a whole feel kinda unpolished. Since its a both a launch title and a bundled game for the system, it means it gets rereleased constantly, so if you really wanna try it, you sure can. But in this day and age, why play this when the same console can play alien soldier?

im completely satisfied
my other life i will not miss
an altered beast until i die
and i will not give up on this
NEVER!!!