Running Wild with Altered Beast

Altered Beast was an awesomely weird game from Sega which featured side-scrolling beat ‘em up action and some platform game-play. It was first released into the arcades in 1988 and put players in control of a shape shifting centurion hero raised from the dead and charged with rescuing Athena. You had to fight armies of nasty creatures across five large levels to face down the evil magician and complete the game.

The background was obviously pinched from Greek mythology and the intro featured Zeus explaining that he resurrected you in order to rescue his daughter. She had been kidnapped by a demon god called Neff and you had to fight his minions who were mostly zombies. In each level you could collect orbs to power up your character and build that muscle mass. You had to kill Cerberus-like two headed wolves to get the orbs. Three orbs gave you enough juice to shape-shift into an animal. The animals you could morph into were different on each level starting with the werewolf, then a weredragon, a werebear, a weretiger and finally a super powerful golden werewolf. They all had their own unique abilities.

At the end of each level you’d catch a glimpse of Athena and if you managed to defeat Neff at the end then she’d transform from a bird into her usual self and Zeus would thank you. It wasn’t easy to complete though and apart from the ubiquitous zombies there were various enemies to defeat including headless skeletons, snakes, insect warriors, wolves and flying demons. You also faced evil unicorns at one stage; I shudder to think what it takes to turn a unicorn to the dark side. There were also boss characters at the end of each stage with different tactics required to defeat them. You’d score varied points for different creatures with a big bonus for completely clearing a stage.

It was an interesting looking game although the Japanese developers obviously mixed up their Roman and Greek mythology with some creative new additions. The environments ranged from the opening graveyard through swamps, caves, a city and finally some ruins. The characters were all nicely realised and imaginative and rendered in full colour glory with some nice 2D animation work.

The game was released in a stand up cabinet and featured an eight way joystick and three buttons, one for punch, one for kick and one for jump. Apart from the fact you could transform into cool creatures another reason I liked this game was the fact you could play it co-operatively with a friend.

Altered Beast was a memorable title and the combination of an interesting backdrop, great visuals and fairly challenging game-play made it quite popular. By 1988 standards it was a success but the arcades were well into decline by then. It did get ported to the MegaDrive, amongst many others, but the arcade version was far superior. THQ tried to revive the license in 2002 with a Game Boy Advance release but the game-play is dated by modern standards.