When I was young and impatient, I thought myself extremely clever for ending creative writing assignments with "It was all a dream." I even heightened the climax by writing my hero or heroine directly in line with the dragon's mouth before he or she woke up bundled in sheets, heart thudding.
"That ought to impress the teacher!" I said.
The teacher was not impressed. Nor was I the only grade one student who'd latched onto the usefulness of "It was all a dream;" at least half the class had discovered My First Deux Ex Machina™ and exercised it frequently. "It was all a dream" became a verboten story-ender.
Now that I am old and impatient, I wonder how the ending for the
Altered Beast arcade game would have stacked up against teacher's rules against using the dream cop-out. The finale for the hairy beat-'em-up wasn't exactly a dream, but it wasn't a standard ending, either.
Of course, Altered Beast's setting and mythology weren't standard, either. The game mixed up Greek myth with Christian symbolism; towards the end of the game, there's even a cutscene wherein Neff, the antagonist (and Altered Beast's answer to Hades), restrains Zeus's daughter, Athena, on a cross. Maybe it's for the best that the whole game turned out to be a stage production put together by the students of Beefy High.
After the final showdown with Neff in the godforsaken City of Dis, Athena is returned to her father and all is well. Then the legendary heroes peel off their golden wolfsuits, shake off their sweat, and toast to their successful production along with other cast members who are too impatient to take off their costumes entirely before raising their own frothy pints. Even Neff joins in the festivities. As for all those instances where Neff's hench-demons kicked the heroes, smashed them, or tried to consume their heads? Pah, all water under the bridge! And the audience was entertained, right?
The ending for the Genesis version of Altered Beast is similar, but truncated. The heroes rescue Athena as per usual, but then the credits simply roll (and whack the hero in the head) and there is no drunken after-party. Lame.
What's interesting about the Genesis game's ending is that Zeus appears to be giving the nod to a romance between his daughter and a warrior who is half-man and half-wolf. Maybe Altered Beast doesn't stray so far from its roots in Greek mythology after all.
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