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By Kurt Kalata, Updated 8/10/12
Altered Beast / Jyuuouki (獣王記) - Arcade / Sega Master System / Nintendo Entertainment System / Genesis / PC Engine /
Dreamcast / MSX / Commodore 64 / Amiga / Atari ST / Amstrac CPC / Dreamcast / Playstation 2 / PSP (1988)
Altered Beast - or "Jyuuouki" (Chronicles of the Beast King) in Japan - is something of a Sega classic, owing mostly to being the original pack-in for the Genesis. Ironically it's one of their weaker titles, though given the strength of its visuals, it's easy to see why Sega picked up as a demonstration of its 16-bit console's power. The game was directed by Makoto Uchida, who worked on several other Sega brawler games, including Golden Axe, Dynamite Deka / Die Hard Arcade and Alien Storm.
When you begin Altered Beast, the spirit of the Greek God Zeus resurrects a fallen warrior, and commands him to find through the underworld to rescue his daughter Athena from the evil lord Neff. (Why they chose to make up their own Greek-like god rather than using Hades is unclear.) It's up to you, and potentially a friend in two player simultaneous mode, to bash your way through the landscape, beating up demons, wolves, monsters and all kinds of nasty creatures. The game is basically a beat-em-up, though unlike Double Dragon or Sega's later Golden Axe, the action only takes place on a single plane. The screen autoscrolls slowly as enemies lumber forth, which you can dismantle piece by piece by smashing them with your gigantic fists.
Throughout the game, you'll see white wolves, which drop power orbs when killed. When your guy gets one, he'll bulk up a bit, an omniscient voice will announce "POWER UP" and now your punches and kicks are a bit more powerful. Grab another orb and your muscles will bulge even further, completely tearing your shirt. Get a third, and you're treated to a full screen transformation sequence of your human turning into their beast form. Each of the five levels features a different monster:
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Wolf
The Wolf can throw fireballs and execute a cool flaming jumpkick.
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Dragon
The dragon can fly, shoot lightning bolts from its mouth, and surround itself with
blasts of electricity.
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Bear
The Bear blows petrifying breath and does a crazy spinning jumping roll.
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Tiger
The Tiger also has fireballs, as well as a jump kick, except his attacks vertically instead of horizontally.
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Gold Wolf
In the final level, you get the Gold Wolf, which is exactly the same as the first transformation but a little bit more powerful. A little lame.
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One of the most annoying issues is that it's far too easy to let one of the white wolves slip by, so you lose out on a power-up. Since you can't fight the boss when you're still in human form, the stage carries on and on indefinitely until you can power up properly.
The difficulty is also incredibly high. Enemies approach in droves and attack quickly, and it's far too easy to get surrounded or bombarded by cheap hits. There's almost no invincibility time after getting hit either, which just results in even more damage. Your character is so huge that it's extremely difficult to dodge attacks during boss battles without getting hit. It's designed as something of a credit feeder, so when translated to the home consoles, where you're simply given limited continues, Altered Beast merely becomes obnoxious.
Because of this, Altered Beast hasn't aged quite as well as other Sega properties - it really is all about the visuals. But from a certain mindset, it's still all rather impressive, because the presentation is damn good. Bits of body parts fly out of the screen when you kill bad guys. Kill a gargoyle, and its body falls to the ground, while its wings fly back off into the sky. Kill a cyclops and its flesh literally falls off. It's almost humorously grotesque, especially considered there really isn't any blood or similar effects. The voices - whether it be the opening cry to "rise from your grave" or the nefarious "welcome to your doom" spoken before each boss - are practically iconic. And the monster designs are pretty awesome, especially the early bosses, like the huge demon who rips off his heads and showers his screaming visages down on your player, or the plant-thing which attacks with its myriad of eyes. (Those rideable lizards from Golden Axe, known as Chicken Legs, also appear as bad guys.) Even though Altered Beast is somewhat lacking as a game, it maintains of the joyous excess of 80s arcade games that made them so appealing.
The Genesis port is the closest to the arcade version. Some of the minor graphical effects have been toned down, particularly the scaling effects, so limbs no longer explode towards the screen. In general it's a bit easier, though bosses take slightly more hits to kill, and the music isn't quite as powerful. But otherwise, it looks and plays almost exactly the same. This version is found on the Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1 for the Dreamcast, along with some unfortunately sound degradation, and Sega Genesis Collection for the PS2 and PSP, and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection/Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360, which are perfect emulations.
The Sega Master System version isn't nearly as impressive - it looks okay for the system, but the movement is extremely choppy, and there's tons of flickering, resulting in a game that's practically unplayable. And it's even missing a whole level. Additionally, this and all other console ports suffer because they lack the proper number of buttons, so you need to press Up to jump. Lame.
The PC Engine port has redrawn backgrounds that look significantly worse, and ditches all of the multiplane scrolling. However, the controls (especially the jumping) are even more unresponsive, and the game is even more frustrating as a result. A PC Engine CD version was also released early in the system's life, and is quite the cheap port job. There's a new intro, featuring a narration over music from the arcade game. The pictures are merely stills from the game, combined with some terribly grainy artwork, and it goes on for five whole boring minutes. The actual game is exactly the same as the Hucard version - they didn't even bother to improve the music. It's also incompatible with the System Card 2.0 and 3.0, requiring the old (and otherwise obsolete) 1.0 card to function properly.
The Famicom version was produced by Asmik, as opposed to Sunsoft, who handled most of the Sega-to-Famicom ports. The game looks awful, with tiny sprites and ugly colors, but it's smoother than the Master System version, even though the gameplay is still atrocious. However, Asmik added three whole new levels, with three new beast forms (a tiger, a shark and a phoenix), along with some cool new bosses that actually look pretty decent.
There are also a variety of computer ports. The Amiga and Atari ST versions, ported by Software Studios, looks and sounds the most faithful, although a quarter of the screen is taken up by a status bar, and the graphics are quite dark. It's also rather choppy and the collision detection is somewhat dodgy. The Commodore 64 version, also ported by the same company and rather similar, starts off incredibly cool, with an excellent replication of the title screen and decent rendition of the main theme. But the in-game is terrible, with sparse enemies, regrettably awful collision detection, and no in-game music. The PC version, ported by Unlimited Software Inc, suffers from low color graphics even in VGA mode. The main character moves too quickly compared to the enemies, and the animation is laughable, but in spite of these issues it plays acceptably. The Adlib music conversion is okay, though all of the voices are obviously gone.
All of these computer ports pale compared next to the arcade or Genesis ports, but they're still miles beyond the others. The Amstrad version looks okay, but it's impossibly slow, incredibly choppy, and basically unplayable, although the 8-bit chiptune rendition of the music isn't all that bad. The Spectrum ZX version is essentially identical play-wise, but suffers from the usual brightly miscolored graphics, while the MSX version is a port of the Spectrum version.
The only arcade perfect port is featured as an unlockable game in the Sega Classics Collection for the PlayStation 2, and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection/Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. It is included as an unlockable bonus, so you must reach a certain score in the first level of the Genesis version to play it.
 
Although Altered Beast is hardly Sega's most well known property, it is referenced in the 2012 Disney animated movie Wreck-It Ralph. In the scene where Ralph meets with other video game villains (including M. Bison from Street Fighter II and Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog), Neff is also present, in his final rhinoceros form.
In 2011, Sega and Wavemaster released the Sega System 16 Complete Soundtrack Volume 2, which includes the music to Altered Beast, amongst other games like Dynamite Dux, Shinobi, and Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair. The most amusing aspect is the cover, which depict the animals of Altered Beast as cutesy, moe-type girls wearing furry outfits.
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Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Arcade)
Altered Beast (Famicom)
Altered Beast (Famicom)
Sega System 16 Vol. 2 Soundtrack
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Screenshot Comparisons
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Arcade
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Genesis
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Amiga
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Sega Master System
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PC Engine
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DOS
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Famicom
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Commodore 64
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MSX
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Amstrad
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Famicom Screenshots
PC Engine CD Intro Screenshots
Ending
Sega had a weird thing going on with the endings of some of their arcades games. In Golden Axe, all of the enemies break free of the arcade game and raise some ruckus in the real world, completely shattering the fourth wall way before Hideo Kojima made it cool. In Altered Beast, after the game shows you all of the beast forms, it reveals that everyone in the game are merely actors, who all take off their costumes and then share a drink.
The Famicom version is even stranger. After the staff roll and a cinema of the hero returning the princess to Zeus, the curtain goes down, revealing the screen to be in a movie theater and...the beast and the princess are in the audience? How meta.
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Jyuuouki (Famicom)
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Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realm - Gameboy Advance (2002)
American Cover
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Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realm
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Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realm
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Sega entered into a devil's pact with THQ regarding their Gameboy Advance games. A few of their classic properties were given to Western developers to "update" them for the portable format. The GBA version of Revenge of Shinobi turned out nothing like the game it was based on. Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realm ended up a little bit better - at least the developers, a small company called 3D6, seemed to be familiar with the original game, even including many recreations of the famous sound clips. The result is a game that's maybe a little too close to its source material.
Once again, you're a fallen soldier who's been resurrected to fight evil. This time a dark reaper named Arcanon has stolen the keys to "Realm Gates" in an attempt to command an undead army to take over Olympus. The gameplay is just like the arcade version, except there a couple more power-ups to find, including health restores, power waves, earthquakes, and a strange item that temporarily sets your guy ablaze. The biggest change - and ultimate downfall - is that the levels are way too long. Each stage feels like they take forever, same repetitive scenery scrolling over and over and over again, and there's no way to cut them short like the arcade game. Plus, there are fifteen stages altogether, though you can save between levels. Admittedly, the backgrounds are pretty cool, and the levels run the gamut from Ancient Greece to Egypt to a volcano land to an underwater stage to some kind of weird cosmic outer space level. Even still, it's hard for the visuals to have the same impact as the arcade original when it's running on a tiny screen.
The same compliments can't be paid to the sprites, which all have a crappy computer rendered look to them. Many of the monster forms look pretty bad, although there are some interesting transformations. The returning forms have been granted new names - the Werewolf is now Canis, the Dragon is now Draco, and the Tiger is now Smilodon. New ones include the Naga (a serpent), Terapis (a spiked turtle), Carcharodon (a shark, borrowing from the Famicom version, perhaps), Cerathos (a rhinoceros), Avion (an eagle), Scorpios (a scorpion) and Chimera (a chimera, of course). You can even upgrade the forms by replaying levels to find special artifacts. Overall, it's pretty far from a remarkable game, but it's good, cheap, stupid fun, as long as you play in spurts.
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Altered Beast: Guardians of the Realm
Altered Beast: Guardians of the Realm
Altered Beast: Guardians of the Realm
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Project: Altered Beast - Playstation 2 (2005)
European Cover
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Project Altered Beast
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Project Altered Beast
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Around 2003, Sega started remaking many of their old arcade games using 3D graphics, and publishing them to the PS2. However, Sega decided that Altered Beast was worthy of a full blown sequel, a completely new game. It just so happened to turn out to be one of the worst 3D action games on the system.
The story has moved from ancient Greece to modern day America, where there's this weird "genome mist" polluting the air. Only you, a super soldier "Genome-Cyborg" named Luke Custer that can morph into all kinds of beasts using the power of science, can save the day. In the beginning, you can only turn a werewolf (with a similar dash attack and a spinning jump a la Samus Aran's Screw Attack) but later can gain the power of the Merman (which results in way too many tedious underwater segments), Wendigo (a glorified Yeti), Garuda (a hawk), Minotaur (self explanatory), Dragon, Grizzly, U.W.H. (an alien "Unidentified Weightless Human" that lets you flip gravity) and the Weretiger.
When you're in human form, you're practically defenseless, so it's in your best interest to keep your green power meter up so you can stay transformed. Luckily, it can be harvested from every enemy, either by killing them or jamming your fist into their guy and sucking the goo out of them. This is all easier said than done, because Project Altered Beast has a terribly design brawling system. You can't lock onto enemies, and the process of merely hitting an enemy is far more difficult than need be. Sure, you can upgrade your monsters and gain more combos, but you're mostly just jamming buttons and hope they don't drain too much of your health. Even the camera is nearly impossible to tame.
The graphics are dark and murky, and while they set the mood, they're still viciously ugly. The only semi-remarkable aspect of the game are the overly grotesque transformation scenes. Every time you transform, you're "treated" to a movie scene of your characters limbs twisting and his flesh falling off, and his eyes burst and head practically explodes, as the body over the chosen beast takes over him completely. In additions to this, there's an extreme amount of violence, as blood flies and stains itself on the screen - which, combined with the English voice acting, makes it seems like Project Altered Beast was targeted towards a Western audience. While it was released in Japan and Europe, someone sensible decided not to bring the game to America.
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Project Altered Beast
Project Altered Beast
Project Altered Beast
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Altered Beast (Arcade)
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