Golden Axe

The Good
There's like only 3 tunes in here (out of the 11 or so I know from the DOS and Genesis versions), but they are remixes done by Jeroen Tel, so it's party time!

The graphics, while not pretty (especially with in mind what they were trying to recreate), is very ambitious.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the way the graphics was done lead to the downfall of this port. The technical limitation that they only managed to put just one enemy on the screen at a time, completely killed the gameplay! They have faithfully ported how the player or the enemy attacks, and that's the problem: GA is not meant to be a 1-on-1 fighter. The challenge was in how the enemies co-operated with each other. How they sneak up on you while you are busy beating their mates, so you had to divide your attention between them, that's what made the fights so hectic. Without this, you just keep spamming the fire button and the enemy stands paralized, until it collapses. And what especially makes this an elongated borefest, that all the the enemy waves are here, but instead of comig in groups, they come in series. Turning it into a challenge of your patience foremost.

I would bring up that it lacks a 2 player mode. Or that it's an either music or sound effects situation. Or that it lacks in presentation, like missing the cutscenes or the map between levels. In the light of what I told previously, it doesn't even matter.

The Bottom Line
Golden Axe is one of my favourite games on DOS. Later, after discovering how good the C64 version of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken are, it re-ignited my interest in the C64. So I was pretty excited to see how GA translated to it. Pretty disappointingly, as it turned out. I have no reason to complain, I didn't burn my money on this port (condolences to whoever did back in the day).

But let's be realistic. At that point in time, it was a wonder that the C64 still recieved ports of the latest and greatest arcade games at all. The hardware was long in the tooth, and it was very hard to demake the much more advanced games faithfully.

At least this program puts up a nice show that is a medley of the arcade, so buyers at least got something for their money. It's not like C64 users could get a similar beat-em-up that was done better... apart from Double Dragon 2 and 3... or the Simpsons Arcade game... sheesh, why am I angering myself!?

The Good
I can distinctly remember the impact this game had when it came out. Before it was released I had played the arcade game at the theatre and at the local Wal-Mart. I had never been able to play it past the second level due to lack of time. It was a wonderful side-scrolling fighting platform where you could choose a barbarian, a woman, or a dwarf. The Genesis version came out sometime later in 1989.

This game really stands out in my mind as its purchase coincided with earning a brown belt on the same night I bought it in 1989. All of my friends who played it over at my house wanted a SEGA Genesis because of it. This was back when SEGA only allowed higher quality games to be released for its system, a policy dropped in 1991 with the introduction of the SNES. This was a fantastic two player game back in the day.

Surprisingly, the silly looking dwarf was the the most effective character. Though his magic attacks were weaker, if you wanted to beat the game on a quarter or two all you had to do was pick Gilius and master his special moves. This remained the same with the Genesis.

The Genesis version had an additional two or three levels and saw Death Adder taking orders from his pallet-swapped clone: Death Bringer (a character never to be mentioned again in the Golden Axe mythos).

The Genesis game controlled better than the arcade version. Considering the constraints placed upon the designers it was a fantastic accomplishment that truly put an arcade machine in people's homes. Most people could not tell the difference between the Arcade and the Genesis version. However, the Genesis version was inferior graphically due to memory and color pallet limitations (thousands of colors at several megabytes verses 96 colors at 6 megabits*).

1 megabyte = 8 megabits
The Genesis was only supposed to have roughly 64 colors but Sega's inhouse programmers frequently a used technique to get 96 or more.

The Bad*
The only true short coming of this game was that it was incredibly easy. This was especially true if you chose the dwarf and learned how to pull off his rolling attack. The additional levels were not particularly imaginative and merely used the same enemy characters and new, conspicuously bland backgrounds.

Gilius Thunderhead's "Golden Axe" was accidentally colored silver. Although this is not a major flaw, it is a quite an annoying oversight.

The Bottom Line
Golden Axe is a great beat'em up not to be missed. You can either get the cartridge off eBay for a few dollars or you can get it as part of the SEGA Genesis Collection for the PS2. It has a mediocre sequel called Golden Axe II, and a terrible game after that called Golden Axe III. A few other games similar to this are The King of Dragons for the SNES and the Dungeons & Dragons Collection for the Saturn (Japan only).

The Good
Yet another review-wannabe thing of this!? Of course, because it is GOLDEN FRIGGIN' AXE!

The MS-DOS PC version might be a little bit thin compared to the arcade game, but I didn't know that when I was a kid. It was one of the first games I got more into and eventually have beaten it. It is regarded by most DOS-age gamers as one of the best hack 'n slash action games. I don't want to describe the playing mechanics here, I'm too lazy. But who doesn't know it anyway? Oh yeah, and it has the advantage over the arcade original that it has plus two more levels from the Genesis/Megadrive port.

Beside the "story" there is a Duel mode, where you have to face a small group of enemies in each turn in an arena. It gets harder and harder, but after the last turn nothing particular happens, just a usual rating and then back to the main menu. First I had a buggy version which after a certain duel turn wanted me to insert disk 2 (even when the whole game was on hard drive), and it kept me excited what happens after that. There is even a little practice mode, which is like the main "story" mode but easier and only lasts up to the 3rd level.

There is three characters to choose from when starting a new game. I always pick the dwarf, "Gilius Thunderhead", he was simply the strongest with his axe, even when his thunder magic was the weakest of the three. There was a glitch that changed the colors on him on each level (but I only noticed that when I connected a color monitor to the computer, because originally it had a tiny monochrome SVGA display) Once I even manged to get the maximal A+++ rating at the end. The amazon, Tyris Flare looks soo sexy and she can summon a giant fire breathing dragon! (haha, her bikini and pantie wear isn't a little bit too leisure for a medieval setting?). And there was that barbarian guy... I don't think I have gotten past even the second level with him. The magic system in the DOS version was simplified as I see now.

On the keyboard, Keypad 5 was the weapon attack, Right Shift was the magic charge, at least for player one. There was even a mouse control feature... it was VERY awkward XD

The graphics looks good by 16-bit standards (I am talking about VGA mode of course). It does not use 256 colors, more like 16, or maybe 64 because the gfx was directly converted from the Genesis/Megadrive version.

To me, the most memorable feature of the game is the PC speaker music and sound effects. I had no sound card back then in my 386 PC and the game still delivered polyphonic music via fast arpeggio beeping, and violent death screams via PCM digitized sounds, all that during gameplay. The mild music with the Adlib is nothing compared to that. The beeper was raw, wild, and LOUD, ear raping awesomeness. The buzzing metallic case created a harmonic bass together with the music. I liked the game called "The Cycles" from Accolade too because of this. PC beeper music lacked percussion, but I didn't realized it until quite recently. The crunchy digi sound effects interrupted the music, but it was not all that disturbing. All these sounded on each computer a little bit differently. The tiny internal piezzo speakers and emulators nowadays can't do justice to that. Yeah, this is the feature of the game that definitely aged much,

On some places where are pits the enemies can be pushed into then, making that part easier.

There is two player mode in both story and duel modes. Me and my friend always argued over the dwarf because we both wanted to play as him, but it was not possible. Also, we could hit each other in story mode too, so the cooperation easily turned into a deathmatch. We never got to the giant eagle in 2 player mode.

I once discovered that each sprites are stored in different files, so with renaming those files you can play as the enemies, haha! It was really buggy although. I scammed my friend with this: on the start of a 2 player game he picked the dwarf and I picked the barbarian. That moment when he realized that the barbarian is Death Adder himself...

My friend liked to make fun of the sound effect when the skeletons rise from the floor, because it sounded like farting.

When running the game with memory hog resident programs, the lesser the memory was, the more features were stripped away. First, no two player mode, then the enemies were all the same. I managed to run it with so little memory that even the magic attacks didn't work.

The Bad
Even with the plus levels, it was too short :)

Jumping over the wider pits... first it was a nightmare before I discovered the headbutting jump attack.

I think they should have implemented a save-able highscore feature in the PC version, because the rating screen was directly lifted from the console versions.

Occasionally, the midgets that held the power-ups, got stuck in the wall, and the game didn't let you further until they were gone, so it had to be restarted. Earlier I didn't even notice that with pressing Esc you can return to the main menu, so I restarted the computer.

It also lack many animations and small details compared to the Genesis/Megadrive and arcade versions. Like the little arrow on the speech bubbles that shows which character is talking, the floating feathers on the giant eagle level, the pen on the map screens, etc. Death Adder also lacks the underground fireball attacks so he is much easier to defeat.

The Bottom Line
Simple. Easy to get into. Addicting. Even if it didn't age well as a hack n' slash, it is still a very fun arcade action game. If you are new to it, I recommend you to look at the Arcade or Sega Genesis/Megadrive versions, or a remake, there must be one out somewhere.