Andrew Fisher (697) on 11/16/2022 11:33 AM · Permalink · Report

I realized from reading Wikipedia Japan that the Altered Beast back story was originally a bit different, still the Greek mythology setting, but you're not a dead Roman soldier risen from the grave and given were-beast abilities by Zeus, instead you're a member of an ancient race of beastmen frozen in stone by Zeus himself and the other gods, because they had become too powerful.

I learned a good method of translating written Japanese text earlier in the year, feeding pics of the text to Google Keep and having it "grab" the text. It works very well, then of course Google Translate. I've used it to translate screenshotted Japanese text from games, more recently Japanese game manuals. I decided today to translate the Mega Drive Altered Beast(Jūōki) manual to see if there was anything else interesting in the back story. It turns out the story portion of the manual is quite long, it tells of the race of beastmen turned to stone by Zeus, but then brings in Hades, ruling god of the underworld, trying to repel an invasion by an unknown, alien demon and his army(he's not called "Neff" here), Hades calls on Zeus for help, Zeus sends Athena to lead an army against the demon and just as they are winning, he finds a way to capture Athena and warns Zeus not to send more armies, so Zeus decides to free one of the beastmen to send on a rescue mission, then the game starts. Reading this shows just how half-arsed the story in the English version is. Now you're just a dead Roman centurion bought back to life in a world of Greek, not Roman, gods and given were-beast abilities so you can save "the girl".