I loved Altered Beast SO much in 1989-1990 that I could not even stand the Genesis version. Altered Beast was THE game that got me comparing arcade games to home versions, noticing the differences.
my first glimpse of the Genesis version came when in summer 1989 when I was downtown in Chicago at B Dolton's Bookstore, downstairs thy had a Software Etc store. I picked up an issue of the multi-platform Game Players magazine. they had screen of the Werewolf doing his flaming kick, except it looked all wrong, it was like an arrow or triangle. I said to myself, that's not like the arcade. a few months later I really got to see the difference. I was at TRU and they had the Genesis on display with Altered Beast running. I watched it run through the attract screen, I notice immediately that the graphics were not as good as the arcade, I was quite disappointed. even though months later I would get a Genesis. there had been plenty of magazine coverage of the new 16-bit systems including pictures of Genesis Altered Beast next to the Master System version, highlighting the difference but no comparison between Arcade and Genesis.
in 1997 I bought my own Altered Beast arcade machine so I didn't have to deal with the inferior home versions.
just this past September I bought PS2 Sega Genesis Collection which contains both the Genesis and Arcade versions.
In my humble opinion, Sega should have based the Genesis DIRECTLY on the System 16B board. note that this board is NOT one of Sega's highend "Super-Scaler" boards, but a midrange board that could've been shrunk down into a console. commen misconception is that Genesis is basicly System 16 technology, it's not, other than the fact that both use the 68000 CPU.
