Old school gamers may recall the glory days of the Sega Genesis, which added the popular action titles Altered Beast and Streets of Rage to Sega’s impressive lineup of 16-bit wonders. Nearly three decades later, these franchises may live again on the big screen or on television.
Variety is reporting that Sega is teaming up with Circle of Confusion and Stories International to adapt Altered Beast and Streets of Rage as potential movies or television series. Considering that Circle of Confusion has a track record that includes The Walking Dead, Outcast, and Dirk Gently, there’s a strong possibility that these projects may go forward.
Streets of Rage may be difficult to bring to live-action simply because it was a pretty generic Final Fight clone. Streets of Rage II had a great soundtrack, and the game was fun, but that’s not a lot to build on. Altered Beast, however, has a lot of potential as a series or a movie. The original game only hinted at the story of a fallen Greek warrior who was resurrected by Zeus to rescue Athena from a god of the underworld, but it had the amazingly fun feature of letting the player-controlled character transform into a werewolf, a weretiger, a werebear, and even a weredragon.
Using the traditional Greek mythology would be an easy way to expand on Altered Beast‘s world and backstory, but its premise doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to the past. Sega’s 2005 reboot of Altered Beast brought the action to the present, and explained that its main character was a “Genome-Cyborg” who could shift between different anthropomorphic forms. That premise wasn’t quite as fun as the original mythological take on the concept, but between the two games there is at least a framework for fleshing out the franchise.
Sega and Stories International have previously attempted to adapt Shinobi, Golden Axe, Virtua Fighter, Crazy Taxi, but those projects have yet to come together.
Which Sega games do you want to see as films and TV shows? Let us know in the comment section below!
Image: Sega
