Altered Beast

Altered Beast Master System is Sega's 1989 eight-bit conversion of the 1988 arcade action game. Sega developed and published this version, bringing its mythological rescue story to the Master System rather than simply duplicating the larger arcade or Mega Drive/Genesis releases. Zeus restores a fallen centurion to life and sends him after Athena, his captive daughter; the route to the underworld is guarded by Neff and an advancing army of undead and demons. The result is a side-scrolling action game built around close-range fighting and the chance to become something far stronger than the hero who rose from the grave.

The centurion moves through automatically scrolling stages, confronting threats from both directions with punches and kicks. The Master System's two action buttons handle those attacks, while pressing them together makes the hero jump, an adaptation for the console's controller. Enemies arrive in set encounters: walking undead, airborne creatures, leaping wolves, and larger monsters make positioning and timing important. A health display and a limited supply of lives put a premium on avoiding crowded attacks, and the game supports one or two players on the same screen, with each player fighting through the same supernatural gauntlet.

The central goal in every round is to find the white two-headed wolves among the ordinary packs. Defeating one releases a floating Spirit Ball. The first ball enlarges and strengthens the centurion; collecting a second changes him into the round's Altered Beast, replacing ordinary fighting with more dramatic special attacks. This is a key difference from the arcade original and its 16-bit Sega counterpart, where three power-ups are needed for the full transformation. Reaching beast form also speeds the push toward each confrontation with Neff's current monstrous incarnation, though a determined player can continue as a human and face a boss after clearing the stage's encounters.

The Master System version is a compact, platform-specific arrangement of four rounds rather than the arcade game's five. Its transformations are the Werewolf, Weredragon, Weretiger, and Gold Werewolf, so the werebear stage found in the arcade and Mega Drive/Genesis game is absent. Each form changes how a round plays: the Werewolf fires projectiles and rushes forward in flames, the dragon can fly around the screen and use electrical attacks, and the tiger combines bouncing flames with a fiery aerial movement. The final gold form echoes the wolf's ranged fire and charge, giving the closing battle a familiar but more powerful shape.

That reduction makes Altered Beast Master System a distinct Sega port, not the Genesis pack-in release often associated with the name. Its ancient-Greece-inspired world, resurrection opening, Spirit Ball progression, and shape-shifting premise preserve the identity of Makoto Uchida's arcade design, while the altered round order, reduced transformation requirement, four-stage structure, and two-button jump solution reflect the Master System hardware. Released as Altered Beast in Western territories and Juuouki in Japan, it remains an early example of Sega translating a recognizable arcade concept to its eight-bit console with its own set of mechanics and content.