The Mighty Morphin' Manimal
Altered Beast Review
Genre: Beat-‘em-up
Number of Players: 2
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Release Date: November 27, 1988 (JP), August 14, 1989 (US), November 30, 1990 (EU)
Platform: Sega Genesis
Also Available On: Arcade, MS-DOS, Famicom, Sega Master System, Atari ST, Amiga, PC Engine, PC Engine Super CD-ROM System, Commodore 64, Game Boy Advance
Altered Beast was just nothing more than a game title in the peripheral of my mind’s eye as a kid. At the tender age of six, I had not yet become aware of the Sega brand until the summer of 1991, when I saw a commercial for Sonic the Hedgehog. At some point several years later, Big Brother and I somehow got on the topic of console launch titles, and I told him I thought the Sega Genesis started with Sonic. When he told me the first Genesis game was actually Altered Beast, I thought he was so wise for knowing that.
Yeah, I was still grappling with the idea of things existing well before it came into my purview. If you think that sounds strange, you should have been there when I found out that the X-Men had been around since the 60s. Just mind-blowing.
In 1986, Sega released the Master System (SMS)—their 8-bit gaming console to go toe-to-toe with the NES. Sadly for Sega, the battle was over before it began, and their console didn't hold up very well against the Nintendo craze in the US market. It didn’t help that many of their impressive arcade games were vastly inferior experiences on the SMS.
So in 1989, Sega released the 16-bit Genesis system with the assurance that you could now enjoy the arcade experience at home. To showcase the system’s ability to do so, Altered Beast was included as the pack-in game. While not quite an arcade-perfect port, it was close enough to the real thing.
The story takes place in Ancient Greece. You are a nameless warrior recently resurrected by Zeus, the God of Thunder extraordinaire. He orders you to rise from your grave and rescue his daughter Athena from the clutches of Neff—a villainous shape-shifting fellow destined to be played by Mark Strong in a film adaptation someday. To ensure your success, Zeus imbues the hero with the ability to morph into several powerful beasts. And with that, you’re off to save Athena.
Altered Beast is best described as a horizontal brawler. In other brawlers like Double Dragon or Final Fight, characters can move in eight directions on the ground. In Altered Beast, you only move left or right as the screen slowly scrolls forward, with vertical movement limited to occasionally jumping to higher platforms to avoid hazards or to get the drop on enemies. The game also features two-player co-op.
In your human form, you have a simple move set of punching, kicking, and doing either while crouched or jumping. Your foes include three-headed wolves (honestly, I only count two heads), snake-dragon thingies, giant walking wasps, and a host of otherworldly creatures. One in particular—the Chicken Stinger—later shows up in Golden Axe as the first beast you can ride.
Defeating a special type of enemy, the blue wolf, releases a power orb, increasing your strength each time you collect one. Upon collecting the third orb, you transform into a powerful beast. Each level features a different beast form for the hero to transform into, including a werewolf, dragon, tiger, and a couple of other werebeasts.
When you reach the end of a level, you'll see Neff attempting to keep you at bay with his Sith-like electric bolts. You can only fight him in your beast form; otherwise, Neff will run off, and the level loops to the beginning. But once you are prepared to battle him, he’ll turn into a few ferocious creatures of his own. Each time you defeat him, he opens a portal to the next location and takes your powers away, laughing while he does it. Just a real sicko, that guy.
The controls are simple; the A, B, and C buttons punch, kick (or use the special attack when in beast form), and jump, respectively. Punches are most effective against taller walking enemies. Smaller foes are better suited for defeat with a kick or two.
Reaching higher platforms requires you to press the up direction + the button C, which the game doesn’t telegraph to you at all. Your character moves quite slowly in human form. Once you go beast mode, he moves noticeably faster and has a much easier time killing things.
Overall, Altered Beast closely emulates the gameplay elements of the arcade version, perhaps to a fault. In particular, the game carried over the selective lack of invincibility frames (a brief moment of invincibility when taking damage from an enemy). I say “selective” because you do get i-frames when your character resets after losing a life.
Granted, the implementation of i-frames was still in its infancy in the late 80s. But this game especially suffers because enemies tend to hover around your character when knocked down, which easily results in him getting juggled between enemies and losing large chunks of health in the process.
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Also peculiar is that, while the beast form increases your strength, your durability doesn’t improve at all. It just seems pointless to be able to hit harder, but still be as weak as you are in human form. The game is extremely brief with only five short stages, yet getting to the end feels harder than it should be. It suffers from the age-old problem of cheap hits from enemies commonly practiced in arcade game design at the time.
Anytime a console port claims to bring the arcade experience home, the thing that gets scrutinized even more than the gameplay elements are the graphics. Altered Beast has a fairly convincing visual presentation. The backgrounds are detailed with gravestones and trees in the distance, structures with statues and engravings, and you'll also notice that every level has a scrolling foreground too, preserving the arcade feel of the game in general.
Where the game particularly succeeds is in the audio department. The sound effects are crisp and easy to understand. The music is quite nice too. Admittedly, some of the tunes sound a little dated, but it sounds pretty darn good considering this was 1989 and Sega's first Genesis game. The brooding music of the title screen nicely sets the mood for the odyssey ahead.
As a home conversion, Altered Beast succeeded at its one job—to mimic the arcade version well enough to position the Genesis as the “cool” console. The one you go to when you want to experience your favorite arcade games in the comfort of your own home. And considering that Sega was quite the dominant force on the arcade scene at the time, it was likely that your favorite game would end up on that 16-bit system at some point.
If nothing more, Altered Beast was the proof-of-concept that made Sega a household name. These days, the game is easily accessible on most modern gaming platforms through either the Sega Genesis Classics collection or the Genesis titles on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack service.
However, the beat-’em-up genre has seen many improvements over the years since Altered Beast’s peak in popularity. Therefore, your mileage may vary in terms of how much enjoyment you get from playing the game. Even so, it works as a decent entry point for those curious about the early offerings of the Sega Genesis.
Great article, thanks for sharing. I'm about ten years older and the Altered Beast cabinet was at my local gas station. I remember taking $10 in quarters and almost beating it one Saturday. It was brutally hard. It was one of the major selling points for the Genesis, like you said. I am sure that it impacted my desire to have one on launch day. I was happy with the quality of the port at the time. I was a SEGA fanboy after that. I did have all of the major systems, but I had the most games on the Sega side for sure.