Altered Beast Playthrough (SEGA GENESIS/MEGA DRIVE)
0Altered Beast is a funny game for me. It was one of my original Sega games that I got in a lot of 15 games and console w/t 2 controllers when I was 8 yrs old at a yard sale for $30 (wicked deal in hindsight) so I have had a lot of years to play this game and get to know its quirks and such. That being said, I remember being rather decent at it but never beating it until I played it with some of my neighbors one day and over the course of the morning and early afternoon they had the game down to a science and had it finished by around 1:30 in the afternoon after lunch....yet it took me a year to even beat the 3rd level...but they can pick it up and beat first day of playing it...it just makes me laugh when I think about it now almost 20 yrs later. Needless to say we spent the remainder of the afternoon with them talking me through it and then I ended up beating it too before I had to go home for dinner. And that was the last time I beat it until I decided to do it for this playthrough. It had been over 10 yrs or so since I had really sat down to play it so it took a bit to get reacquainted with it. But once I did it became fun again and really brought back some good memories of playing this after school when I first started to really play my newly acquired Sega game stack and learning how to play them all. And this one stood as one of my favorites at the time. Yet strangely it was the one that faded away most for me once it was beaten. And when I was relearning it years later I was kinda wondering to myself why that happened. I like the game, the music is good and creepy (cut-scenes were real disturbing too), the bosses are neat looking and transforming into Werewolves, Dragons, Tigers and Bears (OH MY!) was a cool element too. But I think that the game is simply too short and perhaps a little too basic. It was the original pack-in game before Sonic came along and unfortunately the game has shown its age...especially when compared to other well-known games on the console from the time period. While still fun to play from time to time its still a very basic game with a very basic story too (which isn't bad either). And once I memorized where the power-up orbs were and how to hit the bosses the game became very easy...except for the last boss battle with Nef....he pissed me off as a kid and he's still annoying today. Very poor hit detection when fighting him made it a real chore. Overall if want to see what the earliest Sega games were like in some cases this is a good one to try out. Its a solid little platformer and its usually pretty cheap too. So its worth playing and picking up if you find a decently priced copy. This was done on my actual cartridge as well.
Hope You Enjoy!