Altered Beast (Sega Master System Review)

Altered Beast
Developed by Sega
First Released August, 1989
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Those poor SMS kids.

A.K.A. “Hey Mom and Dad, are you sure we can’t afford a Genesis? It comes with Altered Beast and it’s so much better than this.” Okay, that’s mean, and knowing some people who were running Sega at the time, I know they genuinely were trying to provide the best possible content for those who couldn’t upgrade to the 16-bit era. Look at the miracle they pulled-off with Castle of Illusion. But, in 1989, Sega hadn’t figured out that staying true to the spirit of the original while creating an experience better suited for the Master System was the better course of action. Altered Beast on the Master System tries to be as close an approximation of the arcade experience as possible, and the end result is bad, people. It features animation just barely a step above LCD games and character sprites so small that I genuinely felt sorry for those kids who couldn’t upgrade.

The OOMPH isn’t awful. That’s about the best thing I can say about Altered Beast SMS. Oh, and it’s oodles better than the Famicom port. Yes, the Famicom got Altered Beast, and it’s damn near impossible to play. I’m shocked Sega didn’t insist THAT port get a US release. It would have been the best possible advertising for the Sega Genesis.

8-bit Altered Beast strips down what limited gameplay the coin-op/Genesis games had to begin with. You only power-up one time, going straight from shirted and athletic to Dolph Lundgren on (more) steroids. It only has four levels, with the bear level missing entirely. All the enemies from the true versions of Altered Beast seem to be here, though they’re much smaller, and it’s much less satisfying to slay them. As the dragon, you don’t even let loose an electric field around you. You just blink. As the buff human, you don’t have a fireball-looking “power” behind your punch. Altered Beast is a game that relies entirely on spectacle. Take away that spectacle and it exposes what a shallow game it is.

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The whole game takes maybe twenty minutes to complete, and they will be twenty of the sloggiest minutes of your life. I did make it to the last boss in three tries (I couldn’t get the level continue or the extra lives cheats listed on the GameFAQs to work). The last boss was the only time I really cheated and used save states so I wouldn’t have to replay the entire game from the start. I found I needed multiple attempts to defeat the rhino due to the unresponsive jumping controls. You have to press both face buttons to jump, and the only way to both attack and defend yourself against the big baddie is to jump and slowly ping off health by doing a fireball dash move across its scalp. It’s misery, but a fitting conclusion to what has to be one of Sega’s less than bright ideas.
Verdict: NO!