Alterations required

Back from a week off - Real life kinda took over for a minute there.

Anywho, for today, lets talk about Altered Beast: One of the infamous of all the games Sega ever made. Originally an arcade game, it found fame as the original bundled game for Sega Genesis/Megadrive.
I remember seeing this as a kid played out on the Megadrive and me immediate thought was the striking presentation. For me it came across as a game leaden with doom: Your character is constantly fighting a horde of shambling zombies and other monstrosities, the end boss appears throughout the level as if in a taunting fashion, the music was somewhat grim and the Player Character is turning into some beastie to defeat the foes in his path. Embracing some bizarre, potentially irreversible power to defeat the baddies? Now there's a thought!

Of course all of this was largely built upon the imagination of my youthful mind. When I finally got to play it, well over a decade later of course, the game came across as total trash: The gameplay was ghastly with too may cheap deaths and button mashing. And for a game offering the beast modes the time spent using them is sure slim - and indeed painfully slim when one considers the ratio of time spent trying to find the power ups necessary.

I know I've spoken a lot about retro games in this blog and how they seem to have a lot more heart and soul than many of the games around today but not everything can be viewed with rose-tinted glasses. Still, whilst Altered Beast may be crummy game it is interesting to see how my imagination made it look better than it actually was. In fact I would like someone make a game based on my descritpion listed above.

There's a challenge for you. Any takers?