Like the cultural heritage of other peoples of the world, the legends and myths of Ancient Greece also received a pass to the niche of interactive entertainment. One of the games that revealed to gamers the aesthetics of the ancient era, in the entourage of which the action of each of its five levels will unfold, is the arcade thriller Altered Beast. First appeared in 1988 on Sega, the game went on a real tour around the world. From the number of platforms on which Altered Beast received a lifetime residence permit, the eyes literally climb on the forehead: Amiga, Amstard, Atari, Arcade, Commodore, Master System, MSX, NES, ZX Spectrum ... And the list, one might say, is just beginning!
There are at least three reasons for this amazing phenomenon. Firstly, familiar to almost every player on Earth from Mega Man, Commander Keen and, what is there, Golden Ax gameplay, which boils down to deftly moving your virtual alter ego along the game location with overcoming or - most often - destroying various kinds inanimate and very living obstacles. In Altered Beast, the player is able to move only in one direction - forward, jumping on adversaries with a ten-meter jump or dodging their diving carcasses, practically falling on their backs.
Secondly, the plot foundation, on which a number of gameplay features are based. The fact is that our hero, in general, is an ordinary homo sapiens, albeit of an athletic build. Besides, it's been in a crypt for a long time. Dead, in a word. And it was on this mediocrity of his that a god named Zeus decided to cunningly play in his personal dispute with another deity - Hades, who, using a long-standing veto imposed on any fights between the Almighty, kidnapped Athena, who is Zeus's own daughter. Deciding to do without the oatmeal porridge and the natural craving for unnecessary exploits, dad in absentia awarded the resurrected warrior with a complete amnesty from the cemetery dungeons and some, ahem, privileges in hellish hell, where our hero from the world of the dead ends up ...
Unable to avoid using the "gifts" of God, a person, in order to fight with infernal forces on an equal footing, is forced to turn into a wolf, then into a bear, then into a tiger, then into a dragon, then again into a wolf, but much more ferocious... Moreover, the features of each level provide for the appearance of only one specific creature, whose abilities best meet the specifics of what is to be faced. The wolf, bear and tiger are the same type of animal, and their mystical superpowers presented in Altered Beast are very similar. Unlike an electrified dragon, which can surround itself with a protective field of pure current, the chordate trinity wields fire, balls of fire and special techniques, as a result of which the body of any of the listed mammals simply crashes into the enemy, causing truly bestial damage to the monsters of Hades wit.
Finally, thirdly, the pictorial virtues of an ancient action movie from the same developers from Japan that released Castlevania, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and After Burner II. Despite the significant loss of colors from the palette and, therefore, the quality of the picture when porting from SEGA from SEGA, the DOS version looks at least authentic. For example, the pleasure of contemplating a soft, rich range of shades that is pleasing to the eye has diminished, but the surrealism that is happening on the screen is emphasized in one fell swoop. And this is good in its own way.