Altered Beast Amiga

Description

Altered Beast Amiga

• Plot: A resurrected Roman centurion is tasked by Zeus to rescue his daughter, Athena, from the demonic god Neff.
• Combat: The player fights through a series of levels populated by undead and mythical creatures. The gameplay is a horizontal, side-scrolling beat ’em up with punches and kicks.
• Transformation: The core mechanic is the ability to collect Spirit Balls dropped by white, two-headed wolves. After collecting three balls, the centurion transforms into a powerful magical beast with special abilities. The forms include a weredragon, werebear, and weretiger.
• Multiplayer: The game supported two-player simultaneous cooperative play.

• Technical shortcomings: Many felt the conversion was poorly executed and not optimized for the Amiga’s hardware. Critics noted it was less colorful, slower, and lacked the impressive parallax scrolling and digitized voices of the arcade original.
• Comparison to other ports: The port was based on the Atari ST version, a common practice at the time, which meant it suffered from that hardware’s limitations instead of showcasing the Amiga’s stronger features.
• Repetitive gameplay: Similar to the arcade original, reviewers found the Amiga port’s gameplay repetitive and short, lacking the lasting appeal of other classic arcade beat ’em ups like Golden Axe.
• Nostalgia factor: Despite the criticism, some retro gamers have a nostalgic fondness for the game, recognizing its place in Sega’s history, as it was a pack-in game for the Mega Drive (Genesis) in Europe and North America.

Another great retro game – Platoon (Amiga)