I'm in bed ill with the big COVID and fancied something a bit low effort and low stakes to keep my mind off all the horrible coughing so I fired up Altered Beast for a run through and I was lightly entertained for around the fifteen minutes it took me to finish the thing, which is about as long as this quite barebones (but strangely, quite important) title can really offer.
A few people really rip into this but I don't really see why they hold such venom for something that I could finish during a particularly stressful trip to the toilet. It's basic to a fault but it doesn't outstay its welcome.
A few people really rip into this but I don't really see why they hold such venom for something that I could finish during a particularly stressful trip to the toilet. It's basic to a fault but it doesn't outstay its welcome.
2 Comments
The thing about it being packaged with the Mega Drive is, in pictures, at the time, it made people think "oh my god the ARCADE AT HOME" in a way that very little had done. It definitely had quite the impact on the MD's early reputation, regardless of the game/the port's quality. It's certainly not a perfect game but I tend to find that a lot of game criticism comes from "angry gamer/super fanatic" YouTube commentary that basically dismisses a lot of stuff that is merely "fine".
Thanks dude. I'm getting there, just necking honey straight from the bottle like an absolute champion.
Thanks dude. I'm getting there, just necking honey straight from the bottle like an absolute champion.
Merkur_Schroeder
2 years ago
I guess one problem with Altered Beast was that it got packaged with the Mega Drive and so everybody had it, no matter what. I can't speak for other ports, but despite basically being a 1:1 port of the arcade version, the Mega Drive cartridge wasn't exactly flawless. Flickering and slowdowns were major part of the game and though I learned to use that as an advantage to finish the game, it really got ugly. That not all owners even will have liked the genre adds to the reputation, I guess. Others, like me, didn't know better at the time. It was a game, we played it, just like we did with the Shadow of the Beast series on the Amiga for instance. Maybe hating Altered Beast is like calling Plan 9 from Outer Space the worst movie of all time. Depends on perspective, but a lot of people also only repeat what others were saying.