""RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE""

ALTERED BEAST for the Sega Genesis

Known as Jyuoki in Japan, Altered Beast was one the first three Sega Megadrive / Genesis game cartridges and was introduced with the system in Japan in 1988 and later in America. The other two were Super Thunderblade and Space Harrier 2. It was a translation of the Arcade game of the same name in which you controlled a character through side scrolling levels, destroying zombies and stange creatures based on mythology. Your character could power-up to become a muscleman and eventually a half-man/half-beast. The beast your character turned into was different for each level. The bosses of the game were very detailed and well animated and the overall look and feel of the arcade game was retained. This was a good game, albeit too easy and too short. The best thing about this game was that it was two player simultaneous and it suffered from no slow down.

Graphics & Sound- 8: The graphics were a good translation of the arcade for the most part, but I was dissapointed with some missing animations. For instance: in the arcade when you beat a zombie, they explode into organs and body parts and burst off of the screen in vivid detail. But in the Genesis version they just burst into little burning bags. Many enemy sprites also lost considerable detail and animation from the arcade (such as the unicorn kick boxers, two-headed wolves, and the flying demons). The back grounds were essentially the same as the arcade, as was the main sprite, but the color pallete was somewhat washed out.

Gameplay- 8: The control is good. It is actually a little more responsive and accurate than the arcade version.

Funfactor- 7: The game was a lot of fun, though it was rather over shadowed by later releases such as the Revenge of Shinobi and Golden Axe. The biggest problem with this game was that it was too short and too easy. There was also a way to cheat that was not hidden very well and many players stumbled on to it by accident (completely ruining the challenge). Sega should have added more levels to the game as they did with Golden Axe. The element that saves this game from receiving a 6 is the two player simultaneous mode, which was a blast at the time. The levels and play mechanics were also original (not a lot of games where you could turn into were-dragons at the time).

Challenge / Replay value- 4: This was the worst part of the game. You could beat it the first time you played it on the easy difficulty mode. On the normal or hard modes you could beat it in a few hours also. Once you've seen all of the eye candy its pretty much lost a lot of its appeal.

Overall- 7: Alot of people rag on this game because it wasn't incredible. But it did show off the Genesis' graphic capabilities and lead people to think that the Genesis would be like owning a personal video arcade. The graphics were of a higher quality than many later Genesis games, especially titles released after 1991 (90 percent of which were terrible). The bottom line is that the game was good and not a bad choice for a pack-in title. It was no 'Strider' but it was decent enough.

*There is a rumor (possibly an urban myth) that parents thought the game was implicitly Satanic and petitioned Sega to stop selling with the system. That is pretty funny.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/04