Altered Beast: Spirit Ball Transformations, Beast Forms, and Five-Round Brawling

Spirit Balls and the Three-Stage Transformation

Transformation in Altered Beast is earned by defeating three-headed wolves, which release spirit balls as they fall. Because the balls drift upward, the player must touch them with the character's body to absorb their power; a ball left to float off-screen is lost. In one-player play a defeated wolf yields one spirit ball, while two-player mode produces two. Collecting balls is therefore a matter of positioning as much as combat: the wolf must be beaten, and then the resulting orb reached before it rises out of view.

Each captured spirit ball advances a three-part process. The first increases the hero's size, the second increases his brawn, and the third completes the change into the Altered Beast; strength and fighting techniques shift with every ball collected. The beast form the third ball produces is fixed by the current round rather than chosen by the player. The sequence thus runs from a larger fighter to a stronger one to a full beast, with three balls needed to finish the transformation in a given round.

The Power Gauge, Life Gauge and Game Over Rule

Two gauges track the Centurion's condition during play. The Life Gauge shows three starting lives, drawn as either a beast or the Centurion's face with a number beside it; each lost life reduces that number by one. The Power Gauge displays the energy level through changing color, and every direct hit drains it. If the energy is fully depleted, a life is lost, so absorbing enemy blows and watching the gauge's color both matter during a fight.

Losing all three lives brings up the Game Over screen, and a fresh game restarts at round one. The screen offers a way back: holding the Continue button while pressing Start resumes play at the beginning of the last round reached. Combat itself rewards observation, since every enemy has a weak spot that particular kicks or punches exploit more effectively, and remembering which blows work best supports survival across the rounds.

Five Beast Forms and Their Punch/Kick Attacks

Altered Beast assigns a different beast to each of its five rounds, and transforming rewrites what the Punch and Kick buttons do. Round one turns the hero into a werewolf, whose Punch shoots fireballs from his arm while Kick becomes a Flame Streak dash into enemies. Round two yields a weredragon that fires lightning bolts from its arm and uses a laser Barrier to fry anything touched. Round three brings a werebear, which turns foes to stone with Bear Breath and drains their life with a wild Body Spin.

The later rounds continue the pattern. Round four makes the hero a weretiger that shoots Bouncing Flames from his fingertips and destroys enemies above and below with a Pillar of Fire. Round five produces a Gold werewolf who hurls blazing balls of Golden Fire and crushes evildoers in waves. Across all five states the transformation also enlarges the fighter and raises his strength, so each beast combines a bigger, stronger body with specialized fire, lightning or stone attacks tied to that round.

Five Rounds, Smoke-Shrouded Bosses and the Neff Bonus

A run through Altered Beast is divided into five sequential rounds, and the difficulty climbs as the player advances. Each round is populated with underlings that must be cleared before the stage's conclusion, and the ultimate objective tying the whole sequence together is reaching Neff, God of the Underworld, who holds Athena captive. Beating the enemies in a round and surviving its hazards are the two tasks the structure sets, with the five rounds forming the gauntlet the Centurion must work through before the final confrontation.

At the end of each round a boss appears inside a cloud of smoke and attacks relentlessly; defeating that boss is the condition for advancing to the next round, and the encounter itself is shaped by the round it closes. Neff also manifests during rounds amid thunder and lightning, striking with life-threatening blows. He can only close to a certain distance, so keeping away is a viable tactic, and attacking him is optional but worthwhile: defeating him yields bonus points of up to 100,000.

Two-Player Brawling, Options and Controller Setup

Altered Beast is built for one or two players, with each player given a separate control scheme and life counter. Controller support extends to any Windows-compatible gamepad that has a directional pad and at least four other assignable buttons. From the input configuration screen, the gamepad for Player 1 or Player 2 is chosen from a drop-down menu, and pressing the assign controller mapping button opens the sequence in which the physical buttons are matched to the A, B, C, X, Y, Z, Start and Mode inputs, in that order. A pad with fewer than eight buttons cannot be assigned the X, Y, Z and Mode buttons.

An options menu gathers several pre-game settings, navigated by pressing the directional button up or down to select an option and left or right to change its value. The round option chooses the round from which to begin play. The level option sets difficulty to Normal, Hard or Hardest. The power option increases or decreases the number of color units shown on the Power Gauge, and the player option raises or lowers the number of lives available. These settings sit alongside the two-player arrangement, letting both participants configure their own pads before a run.

First published Oct 19, 2026.