PixlBit

Altered Beast was Sega’s showcase game for the Genesis debut, doing its best to attract extreme-minded 90s teens with its muscular protagonist who could transform into kick-ass werewolves and dragons. Although I was smack dab in the middle of the game’s focus group at the time, I was dorkier than Sega ever imagined and wasn’t interested in the least. With M2’s 3D conversion of Altered Beast hitting the 3DS, I figured it deserved another chance, and boy am I completely indifferent about my experience.

Since I wasn’t a Genesis owner, I have very little nostalgia for Altered Beast, and dipping into it with intentions to play through the whole thing was a little troubling at first. Your character has a rod jammed straight up his hindquarters all the way up to his miniscule head. Not only are his movements incredibly stiff, but his range of motion is laughable. Luckily, when you collect orbs to power up, your reach is artificially extended by a flashing blue something-or-other. Eventually, I adjusted and settled in to plow through the five levels, which turned out to be pretty tough to do.

It’s obvious that the difficulty is set high to make the short game last a lot longer for new Genesis buyers. With only two lives to spare, no healing items, and no extra lives lying around, punching and kicking through the whole affair is pretty challenging. Even with the single save-state provided in this port, it takes a lot of work to make it to the end.

There are interesting things in Altered Beast that I never noticed when I dabbled in it previously, like the fact that you will run into the boss for each level periodically but can’t battle him until you’ve collected enough orbs and transformed into a half-man/half-animal. This means that if you collect all the orbs, the level is about three or four screen-widths long, but if you miss one it stretches on until the next possible encounter.

The bosses are pretty tough to defeat too, but beating them in this port may provide incentive for fans of the game who have fought these battles countless times already. M2 has added an option that the beast you transform into is randomized on each level, which mixes up the standard order of things. This means you can try fighting the bosses with different critter abilities, sometimes making it extraordinarily easy, and other times making it difficult or impossible. It’s a nice feature to liven up the game but still keep things within reasonable bounds.

If you’ve got a soft spot in your heart for this game that you spent many hours with twenty years ago, you might want to pick this port up to remember what it was really like. If you’re curious from a historical perspective, there are some interesting things to experience. From the notable voice sampling, strange level design, and attempts at creepy bad guys, there are some real console-defining elements that are worth checking out, and if you want to get extra old-school, there's an option to play in a simulated CRT. If you want to play a fun action game and have no Altered Beast nostalgia or historical curiosity, then you should just keep searching the eShop for something else.