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JYU OU KI - ALTERED BEAST
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(c)SEGA 1988/ NEC Avenue 1989
CDRom˛ HACD9001
Platform / Beat'em up game
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Altered Beast is the adaptation of the famous arcade game released by
Sega in 1988. Zeus' daughter, the beautiful goddess Athena, has
been abducted by the cruel Lord of the Underworld. The hero of the game is brought back
to life from the dead to defeat the approaching army of zombies and monsters.
To fulfil his mission, has has been granted amazing
powers - the main one being the ability to transform into powerful mythical beasts.
Altered Beast is a horizontal action game - the action first takes place in a
grave yard but our hero soon travels through five large areas, from dark caves to creepy swamps.
Power orbs can be picked up along the way by killing two-headed white wolves.
Once three orbs are collected, our character turns into a powerful beast.
Each stage features a new transformation (which gets recycled in later levels)
such as human-wolf, human-dragon or human-bear, and they
all come with their own set of powers and special attacks. Once the
the 'beast-form' is reached, the Lord Of Underworld appears and casts
a powerful spell which turns him into a huge creature that must be defeated to
unlock the next area.
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Related
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AlteredBeast (Pce-Hu)
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The original arcade gameby Sega was released in 1988 and called Jyu-oh-ki.
The game was converted for many systems of the time: Sega Master System (1988), C64 (1989),
Atari ST (1989), Amiga (1989), Sega Megadrive (1988), Nintendo Famicom (1990),
PC Engine Hucard (1989) and CDRom˛ (1989). Sequels recently appeared such as
Guardian of the Realms (GameBoy
Advance, 2002) and Juu Ou Ki - Project Altered Beast (Playstation2,
2005) which is supposed to be a 3D version of Sega's popular hit - the story line, however,
seems to be closer to Resident Evil than the Greek mythology. Finally, it is
also possible to find a LCD game created by Tiger.
Altered Beast was designed by the Team Shinobi who also designed
other famous Sega games such as Alien Storm (1990), Golden Axe (1989) or Bare
Knuckle (Megadrive).
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
O
V
s
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I have never been a great fan of Altered Beast.
It is not a bad game, really, and it is graphically more than correct
with nice and large sprites - but the overall game is a bit sluggish
and the gameplay repetitive.
If I remember well, the arcade game suffered from the same
problems... in that respect, we can say that Nec Avenue has done here a 'correct' job.
This CD version is also looking surprisingly similar (identical?) to the HuCard version,
only an average introduction sequence was added - and the two player mode from
the arcade is sadly gone. I also wished they had included
a CD quality soundtrack, or at least used the original
arcade music.
All in all, an 'Ok' convertion of a game that never
felt quite right to me, even in its original arcade form.
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