Altered Beast
| Altered Beast | |
|---|---|
European Mega Drive box art | |
| Developer(s) | Sega |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Designer(s) | Makoto Uchida |
| Artist(s) | Rieko Kodama |
| Composer(s) | Tohru Nakabayashi |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Famicom, Atari ST, Amiga, Master System, Genesis, PC Engine, PC Engine Super CD-ROM² System, Commodore 64, Game Boy Advance |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Beat 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Arcade system | Sega System 16 |
Altered Beast is a 1988 beat 'em up video game developed and published by Sega for arcades. The game is set in Ancient Greece and follows a player character chosen by Zeus to rescue his daughter Athena from the demonic ruler of the underworld, Neff. By collecting three power-ups in a level, the player character transforms into one of five magical beasts. It was ported to several home video game consoles and home computers. Altered Beast was the pack-in game when the Genesis launched in North America and the Mega Drive in Europe.
The game's development was led by Makoto Uchida which was his first time as a project lead. Uchida and his team used the System 16 arcade system board.
Altered Beast's arcade release and its ports received generally positive reviews, mainly praising the gameplay and graphics. The game has been re-released several times for various consoles and as part of video game compilations, and there has been one sequel and one reboot.