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System:
Arcade
Genre:
Beat 'Em Up
Publisher:
SEGA
Developer:
SEGA
Players:
1-2
Release date/year:
1988
Other systems:
MasterSystem
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- Altered Beast
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1988 SEGA - SEGA - Arcade
- Again, Sega is known for their action games in the early days. One of their first times out was with Altered Beast in which you take control of a dead soul and fight your way through hordes of the undead to save a girl whom you loved in a past life. Setting a strange standard in the way that action side scrolling games were played, Altered Beast features mindless fighting and endless hordes of enemies that ranged from the disgusting to the mediocre! As you would figure from the name, at certain points, you could morph into a different Beast in different stages with the collection of power-ups.
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-Game Play 7/10-
While not the most inventive, or even the most challenging, the draw of Altered Beast is the fact that the game is so mindlessly simple any gamer of any age or skill could play this on one or two quarters depending on what stage they were at. The game doesn't really offer any difference in the Boss department, in which you fight a different incarnation of the same bad guy throughout the game up until the end! As the game progresses, you collect power-ups that take your character through a change akin to extreme steriod use until they freak out and turn into a beast of various types that range from wolves to tigers to dragons!
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-Control 7/10-
Mindlessly simple, all you have to do is hit the attack button and jump up to other platforms from time to time. Back and forth motion is what this game is all about, and again, any gamer of any age can learn to use the ultra simplistic control to their advantage!
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-Visual / Audio 7/10-
While well drawn, Altered Beast suffers from an aliment known as image break-up. As the stages go on, and the action gets more and more intense, the images on the screen start to break down from the amount of things going on during the battle. Even though this isn't a complete downfall, it is noticable and very very distracting at times!
The music is also not the best that can be heard out of any arcade game there is. With flat beats and a very tinny sound that blares from the speakers, the sound effects clash together with the metallic sounding MIDI music that the game was programmed with forcing a massive headache!
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-Quarter Crunching 2/10-
As it was said earlier, there really isn't much quarter crunching to do here in Altered Beast. With the straight forward action and lack of hidden secrets or stages, this is a one time through kind of game that really doesn't require much more than a buck to play!
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-Overall 7/10-
While Altered Beast is a grandfather of action, it is a mediocre game with very view innovations, even in it's prime! With the image problems as well as the mindless game play and tinny audio, there isn't much that would or could impress anyone in the arcades today. Quickly fading into obscurity, Altered Beast could probably be featured at the local 7-11 or maybe in some roller rink that is too cheap to dish out for Marvel vs. Capcom 2!
//KasketDarfyre
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