32. Juuouki (Altered Beast) (Interlink, Famicom, 1990)

I've decided that for February (my birthday month), I'm going to try to focus on games that I'm really excited to play. A lot of times when I'm choosing what to play, I'll skip over a game if I think it's going to be "too good", because that will require more writing / thinking, but as a treat to myself, I'm going to give it a try this month and see what happens. So without further ado, a game that is definitely not "too good".

Juuouki (literally translated as "Demon Beast Chronicle") is a home console port of Sega's famous arcade game, Altered Beast published by Asmik on the Famicom.

Altered Beast was a Sega arcade game that was (in)famous for being a launch title for the Sega Genesis, so it's interesting to me that Sega would allow one of its bigger properties (remember, Sonic didn't exist yet) to exist on a competitor's console. For what it's worth, Nintendo also allowed PC ports of Mario games in the 80s, so I guess it's not so weird by Japanese standards at the time.

The original Altered Beast, as well as the Genesis port, are pretty well known for:
- Not being very good games (the action is sluggish and it's easy to get overwhelmed by enemies)
- Containing hilariously bad voice samples ("wise fwom your gwave" and "welcome to your doom" are the classics)
- Casual homoeroticism (your charter grabs powerups, which increase his musculature and decrease the amount of clothing he wears, up until you become a naked animal-hybrid)

Needless to say, as someone who loves dumb video games, I actually enjoy Altered Beast (or at least enough of it to always be down to play a level or 2). For an 8-bit port, Juuouki is a surprisingly faithful port. Obviously the graphics have taken the biggest hit, as your character is only about half the size he would be in the 16-bit versions. Other than that, the gameplay is almost identical to the arcade, you have a punch and kick button, both of which are fairly weak in human form. Jump is moved to up on the D-pad to account for the 2 attack buttons, but this doesn't feel like a total dealbreaker, even though I would always rather jump with a button.

Definitely the best part about this version is that your on-screen extra life counter uses cute animal faces, likely because cute, simple faces were all they could get away with, graphically, but the cuteness totally clashes with the rest of Altered Beast and it's perfect. The game is also marginally easier than the original. The boss in the cave level is annoyingly difficult in the original version, but in this port, it takes way fewer hits and shoots out a lot less projectiles.

This port also has a double jump that was not featured in the original, and there is no animation for it, so it's one of the worst / funniest looking double jumps I've seen in a video game. At this point the use of up on the d-pad becomes an issue, as it's hard to control you in-air motion while double jumping.

2/5, a pretty bad port of a pretty bad game, and I really miss those voice samples.