Altered Beast is a side scrolling platform game where you control a centurion and basically fight hordes of demons and zombies. The game was released in the year 1989 in North America and made available for the Wii virtual console in 2007.

The story is about Zeus reviving a centurion (a rank in the roman army) to save his daughter Athena from evil demons. That’s basically the entire story, as the game is very short and contains few levels.

Some may not be able to tell what the story is about at all, as the game simply opens with Zeus saying, “Rise from your grave,” and the main player rises out of the ground.

The character starts out scrawny, but two-headed blue pigs contain something called “spirit balls,” which gradually give the main character huge muscles, and once all of them are collected, that main character transforms into a beast such as a tiger, bear, wolf, dragon, and more. The beasts that are available for transformation are different in each level to add variation to the game.

The beasts each have different powers, such as the dragon’s ability to fly and the wolf’s ability to shoot beams out of its hands. The beast forms are recommended if the player wants to defeat the bosses easily, as it is very difficult to beat them in the human form.

 Regardless, the levels can still be beaten even without the beast form. The game also features two-player co-op mode, allowing for another person to help beat the quest, which proves to be very helpful as the game is quite difficult at times with multiple enemies appearing at once to basically destroy the player.

The game is not meant to be amusing but can be at times with the characters grunts, voices, and basically the look of the game itself with the ridiculously buff characters and the bosses.

The spoken dialogue in the game was sometimes misinterpreted because of the muffled audio recording technology that was used at the time, making the game more amusing for the players to experience. At the end of each level is a small picture scene that supposedly depicts what is happening to Zeus’ daughter Athena, but the scene has so much unbalanced color and is so dark it is hard to tell what is actually going on in the picture scene.                                                                          

The music is also very random at times. For example, the music that plays once the player gets a game over sounds like a hip-hop jazz beat, which is very different from the rest of the music in the game, which sounds more epic.

The game was generally well-received at the time it was released and it inspired a sequel that was produced for the Gameboy advance in 2002.

The game makes references to Greek and Roman mythology from the Gods to the setting of the game resembling Ancient Greece.

 Overall, the game is considered a classic with good game play that gives the player a good challenge. The multiplayer mode is good for a small get-together with your friends. The game is available on the Wii Virtual Console for 800 Wii points and it deserves a play through for fans of side-scrolling beat’em up games.