Altered Beast follows the ancient Greek quest of one or two unnamed characters, brought back from the grave by Zeus to rescue his daughter Athena from Neff, the king of the underworld. A beat-em-up with relatively simple platform mechanics, Altered Beast's key draw is a unique transformation mechanic that turns the relatively weak humans into powerful hybrid wolf, dragon and bear characters. Despite the novelty, the game is a bit of an odd... beast, with a relatively slow pace that doesn't quite deliver the satisfying punch of beat-em-ups like Final Fight and other contemporaries – but that didn't keep it from grabbing a place in the pantheon of late 80s classics.