CURIOSITYThe ’80s Games That Laughed While They Destroyed You6 min read
Altered Beast and the Illusion of Power
Sega released Altered Beast in arcades in 1988 before porting it to the Genesis the following year. Zeus resurrects your warrior with one purpose: rescue his daughter Athena. The setup sounds mythologically grand. The gameplay is chaos. Enemies flood the screen, projectiles come from every direction, and the controls don’t always respond the way you need them to.
The orbs scattered through each stage transform you into powerful creatures — werewolves, bears, dragons — and for a few glorious seconds you feel unstoppable. Then the next wave hits. The arcade version is the more brutal of the two, though neither one is gentle. Altered Beast remains one of the hardest early Sega titles ever made.
Mega Man’s Controls Were Working Against You
Capcom released the original Mega Man in 1987 and launched one of gaming’s most beloved and punishing franchises. Dr. Light’s robot battles the rogue creations of Dr. Wily across a series of themed stages. The premise is clean. The execution is anything but. The controls feel slick in the worst possible way, like sprinting on ice while enemies throw things at your head from three directions.
Every entry in the original series carries real difficulty, but the first game compounds the challenge in ways later titles corrected. The vertical stages are notoriously brutal, demanding pixel-perfect timing across platforms that won’t stay still. Later games refined what this one established. For anyone starting with the original, that refinement feels very far away.
