[AMSTRAD CPC] 🐺 Altered Beast - Longplay & Review (+ All Versions Comparison!) 💀🕹️

#amstrad #amstradcpc #alteredbeast #amstradcpc464 #halloween
Longplay and review for "Altered Beast" on the Amstrad CPC!
(Plus all versions comparison!)
WISE FROM YOUR GWAVE! And Happy Halloween! (If you're watching this video on the day of release!) 🎃
Zeus has resurrected you to journey into the underworld, to rescue his daughter Athena from the evil clutches of the demonic Neff! Battling zombies, undead creatures, demons and huge monsters along the way! What you didn't expect to battle was horribly unresponsive controls, terrible scrolling and graphics that look like a toddler has vomited Lego bricks across the screen! A true Halloween horror! Oh well... perhaps there's still a decent game in there? Let's venture further into the underworld and find out along with the history of the game and checking out the other computer/console versions...
(c) Sega 1988 / Activision 1989
www.cpc-power.com/index.php?p...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered...
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Background music featured - "Actraiser (cover)" by "24:7" - 247retro.bandcamp.com/
Timings -
00:00 Video Intro
00:43 Game Introduction
01:57 Arcade Coin-op Original
05:59 Amstrad Longplay
14:54 Version Comparison (1 - 8-bit Ports)
20:03 Amstrad Longplay (cont.)
27:00 Version Comparison (2 - 16-bit Ports)
31:16 Amstrad Longplay (cont.)
34:37 Amstrad Action Review
36:48 Amstrad Longplay (cont.)
44:31 2 Player Footage
46:34 Outro

[@jeremygregorio7472]

As an American it is so weird seeing a computer with that modern design and a built-in tape drive.

[@AnthonyFlack]

That tape drive supplied kids with games that sold for £1.99 each.

[@Xyphoe]

If this is your first experience of an Amstrad CPC.... I am so sorry! 😞😂 Believe me it can do soooo much better! Check out "Alcon 2020" (Slap Fight) arcade conversion on my channel for example just for starters! There is also a disk drive variant of the Amstrad CPC - the 6128 too, and later models with cartridge ports, etc. The Amstrad is an interesting world...

[@paulwalker4195]

You're a brave man tackling this game, Mr Zyxphoe! Love a game where the main character starts dead - sets up expectations nicely! I remember buying this as part of a compilation around the time a mate received the first Megadrive of our little group - fair to say, I wasn't much taken with our version compared to the console!

[@Xyphoe]

Thanks mate! Well at least it was part of a compilation! Hopefully the rest of the games were good/better! (Which can't be hard!)

[@terriblecoughing4767]

Cracking stuff as always. Happy Halloween xy

[@Xyphoe]

Thanks mate!! Hope you had a good Halloween too!

[@CallofShame]

I have to admit I spent more time looking at the pack than playing it. I did play it bout a few times per month but I could never get into it. Great patience you have with this 😂 I love these uploads of long plays , thankyou. 👍

[@Xyphoe]

I see you kept coming back to it... hoping maybe it would get better? Ahh it's a shame indeed! When you've spent all your pocket money on a game back in the day... you were pretty much stuck with it then for months until you could afford the next one! Or until the next birthday or Xmas! Argh! Anyway, cheers for the kind words mate!

[@CallofShame]

@@Xyphoe haha, now thats a fact! lol

[@amjh4lah809]

3rd comment, 4th like and early 😊

[@Xyphoe]

Well done and thank you! 😄

[@amjh4lah809]

@@Xyphoe Thank YOU! 🤣👍🏻

[@MEGAMIGA]

It's colourful, although slightly messy at times. Soundtrack is really great. But that animation! 🤪

[@Xyphoe]

To be honest I would take this over an equally messy but dull 4 colour Speccy port any day. Bring on the explosion in a Lego brick factory Mode 0 vomit!

[@MEGAMIGA]

I agree! Your sentence, for some reason, reminds me of Trantor and its massive explosions! 😁@@Xyphoe

[@Legion_Centurion]

Heres your retro cyberspace Legion Centurion, another interesting longplay here, your always good at narrative like on longplays reviews an showing the comparisons.🎉🎉 Looking at yeah on the Amstrad shame it doesnt look smooth it doesnt at all sadly, the music sounds at least somewhat decent an stuff so good effort. Mostly just doesnt look smooth enough which is a shame as there as many other Amstrad games which certain look smoother than this Id tend to have seen if its game that was original in arcade those tend to be harder to convert for the systems sometimes may the game itself. One arcade game thow i think still to this day...of course you know i mean ❤RENEGADE❤ that one game i actual prefer the Amstrad version😅😊

[@Xyphoe]

Hey Legion! Thank you! Definitely take a look at the Renegade video I did earlier this year where I took a look at the new "Renegade Reloaded" version someone did updating the Amstrad original! I think you'll like it!

[@mark-andrews]

The first home version of this game I experienced was, the pack-in version, with the, at that time, brand new Sega Mega drive. I recollect liking it, not too difficult, probably played it via EASY mode. Played the ZX Spectrum version via emulation, well you mention emphasis is visual, audio, in the Arcade original, and less gameplay, so yeah I consider the Amstrad and Spec versions are decent ports, of what was never the best playing arcade game. I will have to put some time into another play here before I offer a score. I almost forgot 'Wise, fwon your Gwave.'

[@Xyphoe]

I mean yea... the arcade game plays perfectly decently, it's just when you boil it down... it's a fairly bog standard beat 'em up with later on some very light platforming elements really. Nothing wrong with that... it's just by then Double Dragon had already been out 2 years earlier offering a lot more, Final Fight was out a year later.... etc. :)

[@TheSocialGamer]

The Sega Genesis port added parallax which the arcade didn't have.

[@alfonsobonzo3782]

I’ve never noticed that. Bravo for pointing that out for me. 👍🏼

[@Xyphoe]

Did I forget to mention that? Arse. I even had that in my notes. (I have 'notes' not a 'script' to read from, I like to keep things 'loose' and not sound like a robot!)

[@Gambit771]

This was the pack in for my MegaDrive (I'll never include genesis as that's a stupid name). I though I was getting better at games as I completed it and that wasn't something I did too often on my Amstrad.

[@Xyphoe]

Yea it's definitely a completable game with another dedication, time and patience because it seems like enemy spawns and attack patterns are the same if you want to learn it! So it's memory test, and it can be a short game over 5 stages! Well done mate!

[@AnthonyFlack]

The game that everybody loves to dump on but the arcade game was stunning when it first came out. We'd never seen anything like it before. Sure it's no Shinobi and like a lot of arcade games the quality takes a dive in the later parts, but the first two stages are iconic. The SMS version I think is remarkably faithful to the source material. It plays all right, in its own fashion. The player is drawn with background tiles and not sprites, which is how they managed to get such big characters on screen at all, and it's an impressive bit of coding but there is an obvious drawback to that. I don't know why the ground is purple.

[@Robahue]

yeah, they did the same with Golden Axe for SMS... Big sprites and lookin good... on paper :D

[@Xyphoe]

Definitely graphically / visually and presentation wise I would agree it really stood out, but gameplay wise it was very thin. That's why it never really took off or performed well in Japan I would guess, gamers there demand more and see through such things.... compared to us easily dazzled Westerners it appears! 😂

[@AnthonyFlack]

​@@Xyphoe - I think in the context of an arcade in 1988, it did what it needed to do to get your coin and five minutes of attention, just to see those next-gen graphics and evocative designs. Just like Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga. But it is an experience more than a serious game, and two stages of it is plenty. They do try a few interesting ideas I think (compared to some of the other graphical show-offs of the day, like Splatterhouse and Ninjawarriors) but it doesn't quite come together like it should. But for a couple of minutes anyway, you get to be a roided-up zombie kicking the heads off giant snakes. Japanese gamers might not be into undead centurions but if your character was a schoolgirl and her boobs got bigger every time you powered up, whole different story.

[@Xyphoe]

@@AnthonyFlack Yea pretty much! Those gameplay flaws though are just more exposed when (down) porting to home systems of course! :)

[@beagsx3]

I had this for my trusty CPC back in the day, and ohhhhh boy. It did look great, but the 2fps made it unplayable 😄. Happy Halloween 🎃

[@Xyphoe]

Haha!! Hey Greig! Good to hear from you again matey! Hope you had a good Halloween too! And measuring the FPS in this game..... can you even measure it in seconds?? Lucky if it's 2FPS!!

[@ManOutOfTime-ej9yu]

Maybe we'll get an improved homebrew version...

[@trevornugget36]

Well done for ploughing through this arse pit of a game!

[@Xyphoe]

Well I did need a true horror for Halloween!! Thanks Trevor!

[@lewiswaddo5045]

Great long play! Such a shame, it has everything going for it about the frame rate in my opinion. If only some programmer with 30 years of hindsight could fix the coding, and make it a little smoother.

[@Robahue]

yep I agree. Fixing the code to enhance the frame rate, and you have a pretty good conversion! I hate to say it, but maybe dropping the second player might help a bit? As is suspicious two player game has the same frame rate as single player. It looks like is fixed to avoid different experience with two players?

[@Xyphoe]

Thanks mate! Honestly I'm intrigued what is slowing it down so much, but I suspect it's some kind of 'emulation' of the Speccy code... that's been rushed ported across. Then lumbered with a Mode 0 re-skin of the graphics that made it worse? I dunno. Someone ought to do an inspection! And see if anything could be optimised!

[@ArttuTheCat]

I had ALTERED BEAST for my Commodore 64 (tape) and Amiga 500. The Commodore 64 version of this game may not be perfect, but it does have an amazing soundtrack 🎵🎶 😺👍. I have finished the Amiga version of this game several times 😹👍🕹️. The Amstrad CPC version looks OK. The scrolling could have been a little bit faster 😹. The music 🎵🎶 is definitely awesome 😺👍.

[@Xyphoe]

Yea that music on the C64 title screen is flippin' awesome!! Just a shame it had no tunes in game?? How weird... it's one of the first C64 arcade conversions of the late 80's I've come across to be silent, it's just so odd! And of an coin-op that's well known for it's tune!

[@Robahue]

Terrible conversion, but then... two players, have an ending, music and SFX, with no level cut from arcade, even the megadrive version has no proper animation when attacking with the werewolf, so... yeah, shame on the terrible framerate. So, not that terrible at the very end. I played this when I had nothing better (until the lovely Megadrive was on my hands!) As usual, great video!

[@Xyphoe]

Yea I was surprised they bothered putting in the ending sequence! Good for them! I'd be shocked if anyone made it that far on the Amstrad version back in the day though! Can't imagine it'd be that fun in 2-player with that small width screen being all cramped in!!

[@davidfernandezsabio3844]

The port in Amstrad CPC is very bad considering how good and accurate was Galaxy Force from the same studio(Activision).A real shame as the CPC when properly programmed had more better games than this one.Cheers

[@Xyphoe]

Yup I'm a fan of the Amstrad Galaxy Force port! Underrated and under appreciated game/conversion that one!

[@clauderains1534]

Sadistic...

[@Xyphoe]

As usual I suffer for you all!

[@clauderains1534]

@@Xyphoe you could ramp it up,go true hardcore.Next time have the cat and Mrs Xyphoe in the room while you do a review , after they've both eaten sprout curry 😷

[@Xyphoe]

@@clauderains1534no thanks!!

[@luffy-yy9zc]

this version is a shame !! 👊👊👊👊👊👊🧨🧨

[@Xyphoe]

It is really, it's something the CPC could have handled despite the large sprites - it's on a single plane and it's a pretty simple beat 'em up. Dragon Ninja did far more and hardly struggled.