It is time to review a video game classic. Altered Beast is one of the most well known games of all time, whether due to a love of the game or the ever famous “Rise from your grave” line, there are very few gamers who don’t know of this game. This reputation is well earned, as this game is a great example of older games that have aged well. I still love playing this game and I was extremely excited when it was released on the Wii Virtual Console. Altered Beast has a very threadbare story as was typical of non-RPG games back in the early days of gaming. The basic story of it is that Athena, goddess of Wisdom and daughter of Zeus, has been kidnapped. You are an ancient warrior, or warriors in two-player mode, who is brought back from the dead to rescue Athena. You will have to traverse a variety of areas to hunt down her kidnapper and free her. This game controls incredibly easily and the controls themselves are very responsive. It doesn’t take much to get into the swing of controlling this game and you will find yourself mastering the game very quickly. You have only three buttons to learn: a jump button, a punch button and a kick button. The real trick is learning how to use each attack to its best advantage as a crouching kick is different from a crouching punch and all attacks have their optimal uses. The big variety in Altered Beast comes from the shape changing that your character will undergo. As you travel through the levels, you will come across two headed, blue wolf creatures. By killing these they will drop a floating orb that when picked up it changes your character. The first change makes your character stronger, his muscles bulging. Pick up a second and he becomes a giant muscled brute. But when you get the third, he transforms into an animal-man with magical powers. For example, in the first stage you will become a werewolf that can shoot powerful bolts of energy from his hand or make a dash forward where damages anything in his path. These replace your ability to punch or kick, but it isn’t a loss as the new abilities are more very powerful. When traveling through each level, you will encounter the sorcerer who has kidnapped Athena up to three times. The first two times you encounter him, he will run away unless you have assumed your animal-man form. This gives you more chances to change into your far more powerful form. However, if you haven’t changed by the time you encounter the boss the third time you will have to fight him in your human form. This is not fun and can make the boss fights nearly impossible, especially in single player. Graphically the game still looks very good, holding up to the test of time well. All of the enemies look good, even if their attack animations are a bit stiff. Your character is animated just as well, with all of his variety of forms being well animated. Even better, the mini-cutscenes that will play when your guys shape-change into their animal forms look very good even to this day. The audio is very threadbare, with the same few background themes playing in each section and the characters grunts when they get hit will play over and over. This gets repetitive but this is how most older games are. All in all, Altered Beast is a great game even to this very day. While it does suffer from some minor problems, many of these are endemic amongst older games so they are easily excused. If you can get over how incredibly short this game is you will find a fun little game that you can play for years and it never gets old. Grab a friend and play this classic, you wont be disappointed.
Pros: Simple to learn game, a variety of forms to learn how to control and the two-player mode is fun.
Cons: Some of the bosses are incredibly annoying to fight and the game is incredibly short, taking maybe a half hour.
Score: 7
Recommendation: I would suggest not picking it up on the Wii, but preferably pick it up as part of a collection of games for one of the systems. It’s worth the price then.
Who wouldn't like to be able to turn into a monster and battle huge bosses. One of the greatest parts of this game was the multi-player. You get to play the hole game with a friend and share the experience. In every leve... Read Full Review
Altered Beast was originally an arcade game which was ported over to several home consoles including the Sega Master System, Famicom, ZX Spectrum and obviously the Sega Genesis. By far the best home console version was f... Read Full Review
