In the prologue to one of my stories, I tried to compare man and beast. Separated from each other, they are completely different and alien entities, but together they are a solid ring of ouroboros that feed each other through complex emotional connections. Put them together in a cage and soon you will not find any differences between them in terms of behavior. From such a strange connection a wild monster was born – a werewolf (I even remember a variation on the theme in Les Daniels’ story "The Werewolf", where the wolf turned into a man). To put it in simple terms, there is a vile gray wolf sleeping inside each of us, devouring other people’s grandmothers. The main character of the 1988 Sega game “Altered Beast” somehow managed to tame his inner beast and decided to use it for good, to save the daughter of a Greek deity (probably, then they were not yet scared by a bald guy named Kratos). An ordinary person cannot do anything to oppose an evil sorcerer with an army of monsters, but a person in the guise of a werewolf is quite capable of putting the villain in his place and, incidentally, saving the world from destruction. I actually really love these kinds of themes in video games and especially the ability to transform and change in order to achieve a goal. And it’s much cooler when all this happens against the backdrop of Ancient Greece and hordes of zombies and demons, like in some trash movie from the 80s. But is it right to consider this game a classic, given its obscenely complex gameplay?? Is it true that the game has a cool design for everything?? This is what I find out when I fight a werewolf from the arcade era.
ME VS ALTERED BEAST
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I love this cover on the Sega Genesis. Hellish wasteland, strange orange background and monsters for every taste and color. And if you weren’t in the center of Chelmedved (not a pig), it would be difficult to indicate who the main character is here. Synopsis: The Greek God Zeus revived the fallen warriors and ordered them to go through the entire Underworld so that they would rescue his beloved daughter Athena from the clutches of the evil wizard Lord Neff (It would probably be more logical to take the patron of the Underworld Hades as a basis, and not a certain wizard). And we, together with a friend who can join the rescue of Zeus’ daughter in the co-op, were given the difficult task of going through all of Hades and showing what we are really capable of (and proving that it was not in vain that we were brought back to life). Do we have enough strength and time?? That’s another question. Gameplay: The creator of Golden Ax and Alien Storm, Makoto Uchida, had a hand in the game, so, logically, everything related to the gameplay should be done simply excellent, because the person who had a hand in creating such examples of the beat em up genre could not at the beginning of his journey just go and screw it up. And yet we cannot close our eyes to obvious problems in mechanics. Before us is a fairly standard one-plane beat em up. The player is given the ability to move mainly left and right and, for the sake of extra points and bonuses, sometimes up and down. You can kick and punch, as well as jump. And, of course, there is the ability to turn into a beast. To do this, you need to kill a white wolf and get his soul to move into one of the three stages of conversion. Having collected all the souls, you can meet the last enemy on the level, presented in the form of a super strong boss and also the main villain of the entire game, who kidnapped Athena.
This is a manual for an arcade machine.
Japanese version cover on Famicon/Nes. Looks like a game from the series of games about Godzilla and his friends.
Another cover for the Sega https://mindepositcasino.co.uk/minimum-deposit-1-pound-casino/ Master System, but this time not European, but American. They were all designed in this strange style with a notebook background in the squares of school years and an obscure design. But it still looks creepy and therefore cool.
And this is the European cover for the ZX Spectrum computer. Not bad art, gentlemen Activision.
And this scene from a horror movie is actually the cover of the American version of the game on the Commodore 64.
And the cherry on the cake is the original Japanese cover on the Sega Genesis along with the back.
There are five forms of the beast for each of the five levels and they differ not only in appearance, but also in gameplay. I also found it interesting that the level can be completed at the initial stage by collecting all the souls before they evaporate or the white wolves run away. Considering that the main villain appears again in front of the main character almost every ten meters and stands for some time waiting for him to take the form of a beast. But he will go away if you are still in human form. What an honest villain, don’t you think?? Still, he won’t wait forever and in the end you may be lucky enough to fight him without your bestial abilities, which is tantamount to death. In fact, the beast form is a mandatory upgrade and without it you cannot get to the next level. But the player doesn’t mind, because by the second level it becomes clear how much the person loses to him in comparison. Enemies are crawling out of every crevice. Someone from the air, from behind, or sometimes they just jump out of nowhere onto your neck and start sucking lives like vampires, while you flounder helplessly on the ground like a fish. There are many enemies and each requires its own tactics. And given the fact that they appear on the screen every five seconds, not allowing you to take a calm breath, you will die and often. And if on an arcade machine this whole thing doesn’t sound so scary, given the fact that you have a lot of coins in stock for a sequel, then other versions of the game imitate the well-known Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (which was released the same year). The era of hardcore games has begun and here either you turn into a beast or the game. Console ports have life limits, so when you play you really feel like you’re boiling in a cauldron in Hades.
The Sega Genesis version is the closest to the original. The graphics are sensitive, deteriorated, the music also lost quality somewhere, and besides, the strange ending was cut out, which, in my opinion, is a big omission, but overall this is an exact copy of the original. The game even turns out to be easier in some places, which is undoubtedly a plus, given the cheating difficulty of the arcade version. And as a bonus – a cheat code that allows you to play as any animal form at any level.
And this is the version of the game on the Sega Master System. It looks fine for the console itself, but it’s impossible to play. Slow and clumsy, and also damn inconvenient. I’m not talking about the fact that a whole level is missing and the jump button has been moved to the up key.
The Commodore 64 version, like all computer versions of the game, looks terrible, although at first it does not inspire fear. Cool menu with a completely new design and the main theme sounds good, but everything else just doesn’t stand up to criticism. Although from a musical point of view it’s still good. But this is not an album of a musical group, you need to play it, not listen.
Just look at these tiny sprites. Do I have to play with a magnifying glass to understand who I’m hitting?? The color palette isn’t any better either. This version plays slightly better and smoother than the Master System, but it’s still terrible compared to the Genesis and the arcade original. But this version also has its positive sides and features that put it above others. For example, there are new forms of animals (three in total: shark, phoenix and lion), bosses and ending. For the sake of such features, you can endure the gameplay.
ZX Spectrum is a playable but damn ugly version of the original. I don’t recommend it.
The Atari ST version of the game looks very good, but a little dark. In addition, the character performs many attacks with a delay or even ignores pressing the keys. And the scale with lives and points takes up almost half the screen. The music, however, was transferred well. This is definitely not the worst port of the game.
On PC Engine, the game’s backdrops were redrawn and now they are multi-dimensional and in motion almost all the time. I’ll be honest, it looks a lot worse than the original, but it’s not entirely bad. The controls are even worse than on the Atari ST, especially the jump.
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