Chimera Beast (1970). Play online

Summary

Chimera Beast is a wild, underwater scrolling shooter that lets you control a mutable "eater" that devours foes to gain their traits – a crustacean’s shell, an insect’s venomous tail, even a cancerous weapon. The game’s power‑up system is a true sandbox, letting you grow the creature’s life bar by feeding and transform it into a bigger, tougher form that never truly dies with a single hit. Enemy design stretches from jittery jellyfish and lamprey to oddly menacing flying squirrels and eventually hulking war tanks and jets, so the battlefield feels like a bizarre sea‑to‑land mash‑up.

Even though it was slated for a 1993 Jaleco launch, the title never made it into the arcades; development was handled by C.P. Brain, and Jaleco ultimately never released it. I keep an eye on lost projects like this because their radical ideas often inspire modern indie shooters.

Storyline

Chimera Beast drops you onto a distant Earth‑like world swarming with strange predators called eaters. You start as a tiny eater, devouring microbes, then fish, and gradually climbing the food chain until you’re massive enough to challenge humanity’s fledgling space program. The game’s climax pits you against the Ultimate Eater after you sabotage the humans’ launch, forcing a showdown that decides the planet’s fate. Two outcomes are possible: a "good" ending where the eaters are sealed on the planet and eventually wipe each other out, and a "bad" ending where they escape, reach Earth, and the staff credits roll as if that grim future is the true conclusion.