“Rise from your grave!” The first thing Altered Beast did was talk. Sega’s 1988 coin-op opened with Zeus raising a dead warrior and sending him to rescue his daughter, and the hero then punched his way through graveyards and caverns, growing more muscular with every glowing ball he collected until, in a flash, he turned into a beast. Commodore User called it a change “‘American Werewolf in London’ style”. The game itself was simple, and reviewers said so from the start. What made Altered Beast famous was where it ended up: in the box with Sega’s 16-bit console in America and Britain, where it was the first game a great many Mega Drive owners played.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Sega. Makoto Uchida, who went on to make Golden Axe, is credited with the arcade game.
- Arcade: 1988, on Sega’s System 16 hardware, for one or two players at once.
- Structure: five levels, each ending with a boss who strips away the hero’s powers when beaten.
- Mega Drive: among the console’s first games in Japan; later packed with the console in America and Britain.
- Home versions: Sega’s own for the Master System; Activision’s for the home computers, 1989.
Spirit balls
The arcade game reached British arcades in the autumn of 1988. CRASH described the set-up in October: “Rise from your grave, and rescue my daughter,” says the ethereal figure, “and what else can you (and a friend) do but oblige?” Two players fight side by side through “five levels of very creepy locations”, ruins, caves and swamps among them, against snakes, headless skeletons, “large blue blobs” and winged creatures.
Killing certain creatures releases a spirit ball. Each one makes the hero bigger and stronger, and enough of them trigger the transformation, which CRASH thought “probably one of the highlights of the game”, into a beast whose punch “would fell a skyscraper”. The beasts named in the reviews and advertising were a wolf, a dragon, a bear and a tiger; Activision’s advertisements promised that the bear could “knock out your enemies with one bad breath”. At the end of each level an old man appears and, “with an evil cackle and a puff of smoke”, becomes a monster that throws heads at the player. Beat it, and its dying curse takes the powers away, “so you enter the next stage as puny as you were when you first bunged in your 10p’s”.
Mean Machines’ tips for the Mega Drive version named the later guardians: a plant creature that fires eyes called Octeyes, a “Mouldy Snail” that is really “a dragon in a snail’s shell”, a fat crocodile that spits small dragons, and a Hell Boar. The villain behind them is Neff, the god of the underworld, spelt “Nelf” in Activision’s British advertising and reviews.
Reviewers saw the limits straight away. Commodore User liked the “very pretty graphics” but warned that “once you’ve mastered the knack of getting through one level, you’re not likely to be confounded by the rest to any great extent”. CRASH called it “a fairly run of the mill ‘rescue the fair maiden’ type of game” that was still worth playing “just to see the character-transformation scene”.
Sega’s 16-bit showpiece
Altered Beast ran on Sega’s System 16 arcade board, and that mattered for what came next. The Mega Drive was built on a similar design, and Electronic Gaming Monthly told American readers in January 1989 that the new Japanese console used “a system that is similar to that used in the coin-op versions of Shinobi and Altered Beast”. The Mega Drive’s first Japanese games included Altered Beast, Space Harrier II and Super Thunder Blade. The Games Machine, trying an import that spring, singled out the speech: the words “rise from your grave” startle the player at the start.
When Sega launched the console in America as the Genesis in 1989, Altered Beast went in the box. Mail-order advertisements in 1990 sold the “Sega Genesis Game Console & Altered Beast” for $189, and a Toys “R” Us advertisement that year promised buyers “the amazing Altered Beast game FREE!” Britain got the same deal in 1990: Sega’s own advertisements offered the Mega Drive at £189.99 with a “free game — Altered Beast”, and the first issue of Mean Machines printed tips for “this free Megadrive game”. Edge later summed up the effect: because it was bundled, “although it wasn’t very good it was sampled by millions of gamers”.
The bundle did not last. Tom Kalinske, who became Sega of America’s chief executive in 1990, recalled what he told Sega’s president Hayao Nakayama after his first month: “You have to get rid of Altered Beast, the title that’s bundled with Genesis. It sounds like devil worship.” He also wanted the price cut to $149. Sonic the Hedgehog took its place (see the console wars).
At home
Sega’s Master System version arrived first. Computer and Video Games reviewed it in May 1989 and found only four levels; Julian Rignall had loved the arcade game but thought this “plays rather slowly”, concluding that “there just isn’t enough game for your money”.
Sega had sold the home computer rights in 1988 to Mediagenic, as Activision was then called, as one of five coin-ops along with Galaxy Force, Hot Rod, Sonic Boom and Ace Attacker. Activision’s versions appeared in 1989, and the reviews were poor. The Spectrum version, credited to Activision and its Software Studio team and priced at £9.99 on cassette, impressed CRASH with its loading screen and animated introduction, but the screen scrolled “character by character, which makes it very jerky”. One reviewer gave it 74%, the other 61%: “Altered Beast isn’t dire, but Activision could have done better.” Amiga Format was harsher about the £24.99 Amiga version, whose sprites were “blocky and very jerky” when they moved. Andy Smith gave it 33% and called it “a below-average game that fans of the original will be sadly disappointed with”. Versions also came out for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and PC, and CRASH’s reviewer had played it on NEC’s PC Engine as well.
Later
Sega returned to the name in 2005 with a three-dimensional Altered Beast for the PlayStation 2, in which a modern soldier changes shape with the help of genetic implants. It came out in Japan and Australia; Electronic Gaming Monthly reported that Sega had quietly dropped its American release. Australia’s Hyper was unimpressed: the original “was not a great game but it did keep your attention”, and the remake was “a cliché wrapped in stereotype, wrapped in a formula”. In 2019 the original was one of the 40 games built into the Mega Drive Mini.
Sources
- Commodore User, September 1988: arcade review (Sega, 2 x 10p; the transformation; the “very pretty graphics”; the levels).
- CRASH issue 57, October 1988, p. 8: Mediagenic’s deal for five Sega coin-ops; p. 77: arcade review (“Rise from your grave, and rescue my daughter”, five levels, spirit balls, the bear, dragon and wolf, the boss’s curse, 10p).
- Commodore Computing International vol. 7 no. 3, November 1988: Mediagenic’s five-title licensing deal with Sega.
- Edge issue 176, June 2007: Makoto Uchida’s works, Altered Beast (arcade) and Golden Axe (arcade).
- Retro Gamer issue 27, 2006: Sega’s System 16 hardware “that powered arcade versions of Shinobi and Altered Beast”; Tom Kalinske on removing Altered Beast from the Genesis bundle.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 1, January 1989: the Mega Drive and its first games.
- The Games Machine issue 17, April 1989: Mega Drive import report (Altered Beast, Super Thunder Blade and Space Harrier II; the opening speech).
- Computer and Video Games issue 91, May 1989: Master System review (Julian Rignall).
- Your Sinclair issue 47, November 1989: Activision advertisement (Zeus, Athena, “Nelf”, the beasts).
- Antic’s Amiga Plus vol. 2 no. 3, August 1990: Amiga review (“the demon god Neff”).
- CRASH issue 71, December 1989, p. 63: Spectrum review (Activision/Software Studio, £9.99 cassette; 74% and 61%).
- Amiga Format issue 5, December 1989, p. 63: Amiga review (Activision, £24.99; Andy Smith; 33%).
- Zzap!64 issue 56, December 1989: Commodore 64 version listing. Computer and Video Games issue 96, November 1989: Amstrad CPC version. ST Format issue 4, November 1989: Atari ST review. Computer Gaming World issue 99, October 1992: PC version in a mail-order list.
- START vol. 4 no. 8, March 1990: mail-order advertisement, “Sega Genesis Game Console & Altered Beast $189”.
- Sega Visions vol. 1 no. 1, June 1990: Toys “R” Us advertisement (“Altered Beast game FREE!”).
- Mean Machines issue 1, October 1990: Sega advertisement (“includes free game — Altered Beast”) and tips (the five guardians). Issue 3, December 1990: £189.99 with Altered Beast.
- Wireframe issue 12, April 2019, p. 15: the Mega Drive Mini’s 40 built-in games, Altered Beast among them.
- Edge issue 129, November 2003: the bundled game “sampled by millions of gamers”; Sega’s new PlayStation 2 version.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 190, April 2005: the PlayStation 2 Altered Beast released in Japan, its American release dropped.
- Hyper issue 139, May 2005, p. 68: review of the PlayStation 2 Altered Beast.