The very first time I played altered beast I was seven, living in Manhattan, and in an Indian smoke shop. I was going to play Spy Hunter like I usually did after a long day of second grade, but it was replaced by this alien machine named Altered beast. "What the hell happened to Spy Hunter," I said as I threw cigars at the owners (eh, sounds more interesting then just accepting change).
I didn’t want to play it at first, so I stood to watch its demo. "Wow! Flying bloody heads" I was sold. Compared to Spy Hunter's crappy top view of squares and cheesy 007 rip off music, not only were bloody heads amazing, they were flying!
Quickly ramming a quarter into the machine I constantly clicked start until the game spoke..."WISE FRUM YOU GWAVE!" Oh man, Elmer Fudd was the guide for the next quarter’s worth of gaming. Now, I was never a big fan of side scrolling games that scroll on its own every other minute, so when I realized this was one of them I started to get frustrated. I would be done with a scene and have to wait forever until it scrolled off. Stupid Game!
In the end it would be all worth it, just to see the boss of the stage. The scene with the bloody stump monster was about to begin!
As I murdered the last angry white two headed wolf and received the "get-it" orb I became a werewolf. I went to buy chips or what ever I ate when I was seven to kill the two minutes before the game scrolled to the next scene. "Hooray!" The bloody stump monster was finally in the right hand corner. The Stump began to throw his heads as I giggled like a crazy child. I was so excited as if I wasn’t supposed to see this hideous image. Inevitably, I had wasted more quarters trying to defeat stumpy and had to head home to do what seven year olds did in '88.
Overall, Altered Beast had the best graphics I had ever seen in the cheesy cigar shop arcade. The game play is for crap with its stupid scroll screen every other moment. The game's best qualities are the blood and gore. I give this game a two out of a possible four. Stupid scroll screen.
-eep!
