It's amazing to consider that Altered Beast has never had a good sequel. It was one of Sega's biggest coin-op titles of the late '80s, boasting huge sprites and iconic sampled speech, and it would later help the company to launch its 16-bit Genesis / Mega Drive, even becoming a pack-in title in the West. For many, Altered Beast is the game that kicked off their Sega journey, so why has Sega struggled to make a half-decent follow-up?
2002's GBA title Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realms wasn't even developed by Sega; instead, production was handled by 3d6 Games and the game itself was published by THQ. In 2005, Sega tried to update the template with the PS2 Altered Beast, which set the action in the future. However, the final game was so bad it only got a release in Japan and Europe, with Sega deciding to avoid a release in North America, arguably its biggest potential market. That should speak volumes about the quality of the game.
While the company has occasionally returned to Altered Beast for digital collections and re-releases, it's never had anything even approaching the sequel it deserves. While Sega has recently returned to some of its classic franchises, a good Altered Beast 2 may have to come from the homebrew community first, with _fabianodigital_ showing off his work on an unofficial follow-up on social media:
Built using the Scoprion Engine, this Altered Beast sequel looks very similar to the first game, at least for now. It's being developed for the Genesis / Mega Drive, and it seems like the dev is getting his head around the game's iconic transformations at present.
There's clearly a long way to go for this project yet, but would you be interested in playing an Altered Beast sequel, even if it's not official? Let us know with a comment below.