Quote Originally Posted by djshok View Post
I don't know man, Altered Beast was pretty bad, even for a tech demo. There were a lot of late gen NES games that looked and played a hell of a lot better.
The sizes of the sprites in Altered Beast were a huge step up at the time. The music and voice samples were also way beyond what most home games had to offer. I think it was a wise choice, demographically, too since it had a dark theme and featured "tough men" battling things like a boss that throws severed heads. They probably felt the game would make the system attractive to older teens. The screenshots of Altered Beast being shown in magazines were enough to convince people that this machine was a large step up.

Without Altered Beast, I don't think the system would have sold as well in those early years. Of course it didn't matter anymore once Sonic came around.