System Played: Game Boy Advance
Year Released: 2002
Year Reviewed: 2020
Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realms is a pretty straight sequel to Sega’s 1988 arcade title, popularised through its Mega Drive port, here developed by 3d6 Games.
A needless opening cutscene tells us through static imagery that some baddy, Arcanon, has stolen Zeus’s keys. Anybody who has ever lost their keys will know how inconvenient this can be! So like in the original, he commands you to “Rise from your grave” and go get his keys back…
Guardian of the Realms is very similar in structure to the original game.
The scrolling stages feel like you’re on a continuous conveyor belt, with enemies coming at you from left, right and above. You repeat passes of the stage again and again, only coming to an end after you collect the requisite three orbs to alter(ed) into a beast, and take on a boss.
The first stage is ancient Greece again (Crete apparently).
Starting out as a little runt, the range on both your punch and kick is quite poor. A lot of enemies have better reach than you, which can get annoying.
As the stage progresses, enemies get tougher (indicated by pallete swaps) but helpfully, you do too by not missing orbs when they come around. As you go from runt, to buff, to Schwarzenegger, your attack range also increases.
Power-up orb doling dogs have been replaced by ghost-wizard-things, who make no attempt to escape like they did in the original, so missing orbs is less likely.
Lots of other power-ups have been added in this version, with various takes on screen clearing explosions, health regen and extra lives.
There was no way to refill your health in the original game, and so Guardian feels much easier as a result. Extra lives and Continues allow you to respawn on the spot and carry on uninterrupted.
The length of the game is extended, from five (and a bit) stages in the original, to fourteen (and a bit) in Guardian of the Realms.
Each has a different background, and mostly unique enemies, but the layout is pretty much the same throughout. There’s usually two tiers (ground and something to jump up on to), various breakables (sometimes containing power-ups), and lots of enemies coming at you.
There is a surprising (almost unnecessary) variety of enemies, including some returning from the original, like the near naked purple unicorn dudes.
At the end of each stage is a boss fight.
Most, you just pelt with attacks until you win a few seconds later. A couple of them are real stinkers, who don’t seem to have an “easy” way of dying, so you take damage in exchange for each hit you land, eating through your supply of lives.
The number of beast forms has also been expanded upon, to ten in total (not quite a new one for each stage), with a few returning from the first game.
The opening stage is again the wolf form (albeit a big weird-looking lanky interpretation), with similar projectile and dash attacks. These just disintegrate any enemies daft enough to wander onto the screen.
Stage two is a snake man, which is new, but to be honest, they all have similar attacks, either a projectile, dash or (if you’re unlucky) a short range melee ...which is less useful.
The final form, the Chimera, is perhaps the most useless one, having a melee slap and short range growl for attacks. You’re relying more on your stock of lives and continues to get you through by this point (but I suppose, to be honest, you don’t really care anymore by this point).
After defeating a boss, you obtain the key to the next stage, and return to the Hall of Realms.
From here, you can also choose to replay previous stages. By doing this, you can collect what the game calls ‘Talismans’, basically palette swaps for your beast forms. I’m not aware of any additional benefit, apart from a different colour, so not sure there is any real point.
I guess Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realms is no worse than the original. It’s longer, with more beasts, but easier. I can’t say I’d recommend it, or any other Altered Beast game if we're being honest...
4/10
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