Altered Beast

Altered Beast is a legendary side-scrolling beat 'em up set in Ancient Greece, where a fallen centurion is resurrected from the grave by Zeus. Your mission is to rescue Zeus's daughter, Athena, from the demonic god Neff. The core mechanic involves collecting spirit balls dropped by defeated white wolves, which cause your character to undergo dramatic physical transformations. After three power-ups, you morph into powerful creatures—such as a Werewolf, Weretiger, or Golden Bear—each possessing unique elemental attacks and supernatural strength to defeat the grotesque bosses guarding each of the five rounds.

PC DOS

Released in 1990 by Activision, the DOS port was developed by Unlimited Software and targeted a wide range of PC hardware of the era. The game is notable for its support of multiple graphics standards, ranging from the limited 4-color CGA and 16-color EGA to the more advanced 256-color VGA mode. In VGA, the game closely mirrors the arcade's color depth, though the sprites are somewhat smaller and the screen is framed by a large border to manage performance on slower 286 and 386 processors.
The audio experience varied significantly depending on the user's setup. While those with a standard PC speaker heard only basic chirps and beeps, the game featured support for AdLib and Roland MT-32 sound cards, providing a much higher quality musical score. However, like many early PC arcade ports, the controls can feel stiff when using a keyboard, and the scrolling isn't as fluid as the console or arcade counterparts. Despite these hurdles, the inclusion of the "Rise from your grave" digitized speech (on compatible sound cards) helped maintain the cinematic feel of the original experience.