I found Altered Beast happily in a used record store for the happy cheap price of $6.95, complete in box and with the manual. I was quite thrilled with the price and couldn't wait to slam it into my Genesis. If you've ever played this game, the difficulty of it is odd. It's one of those games where the bosses are easier than the levels. Since each boss has a "sweet spot" where you can basically just stand in one spot and keep pressing B, they become somewhat of a joke. To find this "sweet spot" takes multiple play through's and trial and error. You'll find yourself dying more often just trying to find them, rather from the difficulty of the boss. Anyway, having read the "hints" section of the manual I was quite excited to find out there was indeed a way to "continue" after you've died. So, excited, I happily died knowing I could just continue from where i left off! Little did I know this wasn't meant to be.
According to the manual, if you press the D-button in the upper left corner while pressing buttons A and B at the same time , you'll be able to continue. Look! It's there! You see it too right?! Well guess what. It doesn't work. This is especially frustrating when it tells you wrong information in its own manual. I then looked up on the internet what I was missing. According to various game sites, the correct way to continue is to press and hold A and keep pressing Start until you appear in the level you died. Yea, its completely different. The last few days I've been playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Genesis, determined to get those 7 chaos emeralds and unleash Super Sonic upon the world. This failed miserably when i got to Sky Fortress zone where I hit a glitched out launcher and wasted my 4 lives. Game Over. But wait a second, I had over 300,000 points! Thats 3 continues right?
Like Altered Beast, according to Sonic 2's manual, every time you achieve 100,000 points in the game you get the chance to continue the game if you lose all your lives. Yup, this is wrong too. The right way to gain continues is getting 10,000 points through the end level bonus; essentially gather 100 coins and bring them to the end of the level and you got yourself a continue. Whats up with this? I've asked fellow gamers and searched the internet high and low for the answer to this, I personally can't find anything. I can't be the only one who has noticed this? Or maybe its just that others don't care. But I do dammit! This false information would of wrecked childrens hopes and dreams back in 1989 and 1992, thinking they can continue but they couldn't! There was no internet back then so how would they find out? They'd be lucky to see if it was in a magazine back then, heck maybe it was and I just don't know.
Another thing that has irked me about Genesis games; Hidden menus. Altered Beast has you hold B and press start to access it. The same goes for games like Thunder Force. Why are these crucial option menus hidden? What purpose does this serve? Would it have killed them to add a selectable menu where you PRESS DOWN TO HIGHLIGHT IT AND SELECT IT?! Any other good game has their option menus right where you can see it on the title screen. You'd never know unless you read the manual to see how to access the options menus in Altered Beast and Thunder Force II. They certainly F**ked up there.
Also, how awesome is this picture?
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