WIIIIIISE FWOM YOUR GWAAAAVE!
—Sound compression making the game's opening memorable for the wrong reasons.note
A Beat 'em Up by Sega, appearing at the arcades in 1988. It later ported to home consoles like the Sega Master System and Sega Genesis. Two pseudo sequels were made, one for the Game Boy Advance titled Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realms, and a PlayStation 2 reboot titled Project Altered Beast (which was released in Japan and Europe, but not in America). The main gimmick is that your character can turn into various humanoid monsters, like werewolves and dragons.
Interestingly enough, the first game of this series is considered by many as a cult classic game and an average game at the same time. The reason is because the Sega Genesis port was extremely similar to the arcade version in gameplay, sounds, and even graphics.* This doesn't sound awesome nowadays (we even have a trope called Polished Port), but don't forget we are talking about the late '80s, ports were either terrible, different, or simpler games.
Storywise, the original game has Zeus' daughter Athena being kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Neff and two centurions being resurrected to rescue her.
Wiiise Fwom Youw Twoopes!
- Abnormal Ammo: Aggar, the first boss, decapitates himself and throws his head at you. His head regrows quickly to replace the lost one however.
- Adaptation Expansion: The NES version adds a werelion, wereshark, and werebird, and the GBA game adds power ups and beasts.
- Ancient Grome: The manual says the protagonists are Roman centurions, yet the setting is clearly Greek and so are the gods' names.
- Animorphism: The main mechanic. By beating up flashing enemies and grabbing the Spirit Orb that appears, your character will gradually become more muscular. Upon collecting the third one, you become a beast, the form of which changes in each stage.
- Arcade-Perfect Port: A claimed example, and it was one of the biggest selling points for the Genesis / Mega Drive port. In truth, it's not even close, neither in terms of technical fidelity or content wise. From a technical perspective, the arcade version has higher quality sprites, larger color palette, much better audio quality, and scaling effects the Genesis version lacked (the Genesis version did however have parallax scrolling which the arcade version lacked). Neither is it very faithful in terms of content: The level layouts are different, the beasts perform differently than they did in the arcade, and trying what works easily on most of the bosses on the Genesis version will get you killed in five seconds in the arcade. Yeah, it SEEMS close, at least until you actually go back and play the arcade version.
- Still, compared to every other port of the arcade game at the time which had very significant alterations made (especially in graphical quality) and other arcade game ports, next to those the Genesis version was very accurate for its time. 40% of the arcade version may have been lost or deliberately changed, but on other platforms you could see as much as 80% of the arcade version lost.
- Bald of Evil: Neff.
- Bears Are Bad News: The Werebear, the beast of Level 3. On one hand, you become a bear that breathes enemies into stone and can turn into a rolling buzzsaw to shred your enemies. On the other hand, this bear is bad news for your enemies.
- Camp: Between the comical designs of the animal transformations, the weird powers, the even weirder transformations of the villain, and the ending, it's pretty clearly going for this on some level.
- Classic Cheat Code: There are three in this game.
- When starting the Genesis/Megadrive version, hold down-left, A, B, and C all at once, then press Start when the title screen appears. This will bring you to a menu where you can change what beast you turn into in each level.
- At the Title Screen of the Genesis/Megadrive version, hold B and press Start to access options for choosing your starting stage, the difficulty level, and how many lives and health segments you get.
- At the Title Screen of the Genesis/Megadrive version, if you hold A and press Start, you'll begin on the last stage you got a Game Over on. This is also how you start on the stage you picked from the aforementioned option screen.
- Cycle of Hurting: No Mercy Invincibility means this will happen a lot if you aren't careful. Especially with the Chicken Stingers in the second stage who will trip you up and then just destroy you while you're on the ground.
- Dub Name Change: The Chicken Leg is the Chicken Stinger outside Japan.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: At the start of the game, Zeus says "Rise from your grave!" but in the Sega Genesis port, due to the audio being compressed compared to the arcade game, the "r" sounds are more heavily muffled.
- Evil Laugh: The main villain goes "Ho ho ho ho" when stealing your spirit orbs.
- Faceless Eye: Octeyes, the boss of Level 2. In fact, its main attack even consists of firing off hundreds of poisonous spores shaped like eyeballs.
- Fair-Play Villain: Neff will refuse to fight the player if they reach the end of the level while still in human form and will flee up to two times to allow the player to achieve transformation. It is implied that he does this because he doesn't want an easy victory. However, if the player still hasn't transformed after running into Neff for the third and last time in a level, he will decide to stop running and fight you right then and there, leaving the player to fight with a more limited means of offense than he would've had in a beast form.
- Forced Transformation: The cutscenes show Neff turning Athena into a bird. Once he's dead, she's returned to normal.
- Foreshadowing: Level 4 has statues of anthropomorphic rhinos. Guess which form the final boss takes?
- Gainax Ending: The Arcade release ends with the revelation that the entire thing was just a movie being filmed, and that the cast and crew all go out for a cold beer after wrapping the shoot.
- Giant Flyer: The pterodactyl like enemy.
- Growing Muscles Sequence: The effect of the first two powerups.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Most of your beast forms. Neff's final form in Level 5, along with the Rad Boar, Dark Unicorn, and Gory Goat enemies from the same level.
- Magic Pants: Character grows. Shirt rips. Pants still on. Though the shirt still gets shredded with each expansion.
- Market-Based Title: It's known as Jūōki (獣王記, "Beast King's Chronicle") in Japan.
- Mood Whiplash: This otherwise dark game ends with a jarringly peppy ending theme,
which wouldn't be out of place in Puyo Puyo. The arcade version even ends with the game being revealed to be one big movie production. - One-Winged Angel: All the bosses are Neff transforming into some kind of monster.
- Our Monsters Are Different: All the transformations of Neff. Including Aggar, a legless flesh monster with endless heads that he can rip off and throw at you, Octeyes, an eye composed plant creature, Mouldy Snail, a literal dragon snail (too much snail), and the Crocodile Worm, a jewel wielding dragon that can summon smaller, fiery dragons to attack. His final form is a giant Rhino-Man hybrid called Van Vader.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The Werewolf and Golden Werewolf of Levels 1 and 5.
- Palette Swap: The Golden Werewolf's actual powers are no stronger than the normal Werewolf's. He just looks shinier.
- Panthera Awesome: The Level 4 beast, a Weretiger. It can perform an attack that launches it upward before coming back down, and it can fire projectiles that travel in a wave motion.
- Personal Space Invader: The Round Leech that goes on your head and stays there until you punch it out.
- Playing with Fire: The powers of the Werewolf, Weretiger, and Golden Werewolf are based on pyrokinesis — the werewolves being able to dash forward for a flaming tackle and throw fireballs that fly straight, whilst the Weretiger's fireballs move up and down in a wave pattern and its dash attack goes up then back down to attack enemies in mid-air.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:Neff: WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM!
- Proscenium Reveal: The ending of the arcade version reveals that the entire game was, apparently, one really bizarre movie.
- Rescued from the Underworld: The player characters are tasked with finding a kidnapped Athena. After the first stage, which is the Necropolis, they venture deeper and deeper into the Underworld until they face Neff.
- Rise from Your Grave: Possible Trope Namer. Zeus commands you to "Rise from your grave and rescue my daughter", whereupon your newly-reanimated body does exactly that.
- Savage Wolves: The two-headed wolf enemy, which in its albino (blue in the Genesis port) version provides the Upgrade Artifact.
- Save the Princess: The goddess Athena has been kidnapped by Neff, and Zeus has tasked you with rescuing her.
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Neff can transform into creatures twice the size of him.
- Shirtless Scene: In the Genesis version, the first Spirit Orb removes your shirt.
- Shock and Awe: Weredragon's powers — consisting of being able to fire off long ranged laser bolts, or produce a powerful electric field around itself in order to block projectiles and fry any enemies that come close.
- Shout-Out:
- The two headed wolves are likely a reference to Clash of the Titans.
- In the first level, the tombstones read Alex and Stella, after Alex Kidd and his girlfriend (the Genesis version only has Stella).
- In the arcade version, the first part of the weredragon's roar during the Transformation Sequence reuses one of Godzilla's roars from his debut film. The second part reuses Gamera's roar from his debut film.
- The last level has in the foreground two bodies that resemble famous works of art◊, namely Rodin's The Thinker and Munch's The Scream.
- Spin Attack: One of Werebear's powers — the Body Spin — enables it to leap up for a Screw Attack style vertical spin that can rip through enemies, and is the most effective way of defeating Mouldy Snail.
- Taken for Granite: One of Werebear's powers — the Bear Breath — enables it to turn enemies to stone by breathing on them for a One-Hit Kill. However, it doesn't work on Mouldy Snail or any of the other bosses.
- Temple of Doom: Level 4.
- Transformation Sequence: The player character, after getting three "POWER-UP!" spirit balls (the Werewolf morph is pretty detailed,◊) and the villain when seeing you're transformed.
- Interestingly, the other transformation sequences were not nearly as detailed — they usually consisted of flickering back and forth from an image of the two forms rapidly.
- Instant in the C64 version.
- Turns Red: The bosses.
- Underground Level: Levels 2 and 3.
- Technically, Levels 4 and 5 are also underground. The centurions are traveling to the underworld, after all.
- Upgrade Artifact: The orbs that pop out of the blue wolves when you kill them.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: After you defeat Neff at the end of each stage (except the last), he steals all your powerups and escapes.
