Altered Beast
Too Funny Game #1
type of Game
A damsel-in-distress rescue that's both hyper-classic and completely madcap. One of the most famous so-bad-it-becomes-good projects of the videogame world.
Release date on our Machines
November 1990, the same day the Mega Drive arrived in France. The day I was about to lose my soul for several years.
Developer
Attention, I'm taking a deep breath: Arcade version developed by Team Shinobi, part of the Sega R&D 1 division. Ported to Mega Drive by Rieko Kodama and Toshinori Asai. Phew...
Publisher
Sega Enterprises LTD. A certain No Nukes coordinated the Console port. What does coordinated mean? Ehhh, yes eh! I agree with No Nukes too, well, I mean I like her nickname.
Altered Beast : available on the Mega Drive Mini, and the SEGA Genesis Nintendo Switch Online.
At the end of 1990, maybe at Christmas, but not for sure, in the middle of the maternal home's living room. My mother and stepfather let my sister Elena Vestibule and me open a big box. Inside, the SEGA Mega Drive: the brand-new console, ultra-powerful, giga-cool, essential! With Altered Beast included (pronounced Alteurède Baiste in french). So awesome! I think? Fortunately for the game anyway, otherwise I don't think many people would have touched it. Sure, the arcade machine performed pretty well, but I had no idea at the time. Like other smart guys who see themselves as visionaries, my father-in-law bought the machine a little too early, missing the chance to get the Sonic bundle instead. But is that really such a bad thing? Having nothing to compare it with for several weeks, I devoted a great deal of love to this Altered Beast.
An Beast of an Alternative
Love by default, but love all the same. At the age of five, I'd fall in love with a whole lot of stuff; and when I saw where the game's limits ended, it was too late! My brain had already suffered irreversible damage, and I was going to remain a fan of this videogame Z series for eternity. In fact, I pity those who got Sonic instead, by buying the console a few months later (and even more those who got Sonic 2 with the Megadrive 2). Because everyone ended up getting their hands on Sonic, but few people had the chance to dive into the... let's say “original” world of Altered Beast.
Once upon a god...
Despite the rather cool way in which it arrived in our apartment, the Mega Drive didn't really belong to Elena and me. My father-in-law had bought it for himself, and let us play with it, that's all. Except that he never really appreciated this very title, and we were able to sit through it at will (the game, not the father-in-law). Altered Beast takes us on a strange epic, to put it mildly: we play as a zoomorphic bodybuilder in a bikini who defeats hordes of semi-mythological creatures (sometimes pretty damn creepy) using his fists, his feet and various more or less useful powers. A bodybuilder resurrected by Zeus, because why take someone who's still alive and available, right? All this to go and save Athena, or who knows which of her daughters, who had the misfortune to be bothered in the street by Hades or some other demon.
Like Zeus couldn't go himself either, disguised as an ibex or a gust of wind. Nah, he just does it to fool around. And would Athena need a helping hand from a zombie cutie to beat up her opponents? Isn't she the most badass goddess on Olympus or something? What kind of message are we trying to get across here? Eh, don't bother trying to put it into words. Moving on, the stages have no connection with each other, and don't make much sense in themselves either. It doesn't often feel like Greece, although maybe the landscapes were inspired by regions that exist in mythology. I don't know, I've never visited Tartarus, after all. Gameplay? You hit anything that moves, advancing from left to right. With your hands or feet like we already said, or by jumping, or upwards after ducking. It worked pretty well, and remained fluid, despite a few odd hitboxes that cost us a bunch of games.
We didn't really care about all these details, as long as we could fight all over the place. But after eating three crystal balls, we moved into another dimension, as our favorite bodybuilder transformed himself! One wereform per stage. First as a wolf, then as a dragon, a bear or a tiger, and finally... er, again as a wolf, but with differently colored hair. All these beasts gain new ways of beating up any aberrations that get in their way. And even if it doesn't revolutionize the experience from one level to the next, it impressed me enough to cry genius. I loved the tiger's design, but not so much his fireball skills, which fly all out of control, or his less-than-optimized vertical attack against enemies arriving mostly in front or behind us. The bear on the other hand, with its petrifying breath, was a dream come true.
Still at the age of five, I found the whole thing quite horrifying. The approximate graphics did nothing to detract from the dark and gloomy aspect of Altered Beast, a sort of apology for a depressive, angst-ridden nonsense. Our monster-slaying grunts may have been classy as hell (I was five years old, I insist), but you could tell they weren't having a good time. You'd have to be one square behind to accept the ordeal they were inflicting on each other, princess offered as a trophy at the end of the adventure or not. By contrast, Mario's journey seemed like a walk in the park. Well, they had no choice in the end, since Zeus had brought them back from the afterlife to send them on their way.
Not funny at all
Otherwise, I was talking about the unrelated levels a little earlier; that didn't stop them from producing an anxiety-inducing effect, each in their own way. From the slimy walls of a cave infested with giant leeches to the austerity of a haunted temple housing various types of demon or undead, we couldn't count the cold sweats that chilled our spines with each game. And of course, the various metamorphoses of Neff, the great villain with the voice of a tuberculous patient with a blocked nose, always led to a retching of horrified disgust.
waze fom wou gwaive
The music oscillates between inspired melodies and slightly more regrettable overtones (all of which I admire equally, nostalgia permitting). As with the mechanics and graphics, it's clear that Kazuhiko Nagai, responsible for porting the tracks to the Mega Drive, had a lot of trial and error to do! Did he deliberately leave these nasal instrus in the finished product, or did he never manage to tame the console's sound processor? Nothing personal, I just said I loved it. And on Arcade? Did Tohru Nakabayashi do better? Well, it doesn't sound the same, of course. In any case, the two musicians ended up dropping out, the titles of the last two levels being the same as those of the previous two. Nevertheless, it did the job; each song is draped in a little epic air with oppressive volutes. I'm still shaking to this day, whether from repulsion or pleasure, I'm not sure. Maybe a mixture of all these things. Okay, I'm grumbling, but the truth is, if a god resurrects me one day to go smash mouths with giant biped ants and purple ninja unicorns, I'll tell him OK, as long as he gives me some ear pods and puts on this playlist.
Why is it funny, then ?
Why did Altered Beast make such an impression on me? First of all, because it could be played by two people at the same time! Too ! Ama! Zing! And then the second werewolf turned forest green, and the second dragon wore goose-poop colored scales, and the other bear, er... painted himself turquoise blue? Well, what the hell, guys. Elena sometimes let me struggle through two or three games on my own, before stepping in to give me a hand. She knew I'd never get to the end without her help, despite the low number of levels. I found the last stage extremely hard. As soon as one of our characters got a bonus, we imitated the noise he made, then laughed for a whole minute. It went like this: “Hao-eh-ahp”! It was even more hilarious when the two warriors made their announcement almost at the same time. Years later, I could still send that punchline to my sister, and make her cry with laughter (or the other way around).
In fact, our champion was saying “Power Up”, but to understand that, you had to earn a PhD in 16-bit digitized English voices, and we'd only just started primary school. Besides, we called this game Alteurède Baiste, and we weren't the only ones. I was also convinced that a secret transformation existed, halfway between human and werebeast. Would that make the guy a semi-werewolf? Or just a very ugly, very hairy dude. Which is why I was hitting all the buttons during the metamorphosis cinematic, hoping to unlock this specific feature. In fact, my neighbors made me believe it just to make fun of me. Damn Nelson and Mortimer Paprika! It marked the beginning of a long series of turmoil and fabulous adventures along them. Thanks, guys.
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