Golden Axe

The Good
One of the best soundtracks I've ever come across on the C64. The tunes here really do have atmosphere. The graphics are good for an 8-bit machine, and the characters look like the ones in the arcade version (albiet smaller).

The Bad
Let's be honest, it was mainly the graphics and music which made the 16-bit versions of Golden Axe playable. Without those, the raggedness of the gameplay is clear for all to see. Added to that is the problem that only one enemy is on the screen at a time, and that there's only one type of enemy and one type of boss in each level (though as they all behave in identical fashion, I don't suppose it makes any difference). What you have to do, as one of the three heroes, is wait for a baddie to come on the screen, walk up to him and press the 'attack' button until he falls over. Repeat this until he dies. Then another identical baddie will appear. Then another. After you've dealt with several of these villains, an arrow will instruct you to move a bit further along the level until another bad dude appears. Then you must repeat the procedure of killing the naughty folk who come onto the screen, one by one. I think the challenge must be to see if you can reach the end before you die of boredom. Quite often, as you're slashing away with your sword or axe, the baddie you're fighting will suddenly start hitting you back. Your character will then fall over and lose some energy. There isn't really anything you can do to stop this happening. You just have to hack away and hope for the best. The original batch of C64 Golden Axe tapes apparently had the last two levels missing. Frankly I wouldn't have noticed. Backgrounds apart, they're all identical.

The Bottom Line
As with the arcade version, the evil Death Adder has filled the land with his villainous minions. So it's up to you, as one of three heroic figures, to make your way through several levels of hack-em-up medieval horizontally-scrolling fighting action. The characters all have some personal grudge against Death Adder. He pulled the arm off Ax Battler's teddy as a child, hid a spider in Tyris's pencil case and blew a raspberry at Gillius Thunderhead. Or something like that. Anyway, during the level you will sometimes come across little figures with bags containing either food or magic. The food replaces lost energy, whilst the magic can be used to destroy or injure enemies. The more magic pots you have, the more powerful your magic. In Tyris's case, possession off a full magic bar will allow you to summon a dragon to incinerate foes. Enemies include knights, club-wielding brutes and even skeletons.

The Good
Golden Axe, I always wanted to use the Golden Axe. But alas only the Baddies can.

This was a game which was a side on hack-em-up, for one or two players. Best in two player but fun nonetheless in single player.

Taking control of either Ax Battler (The Warrior Hero who strangely wielded a broad sword), Tyrus Flare (An amazon whose speciality was Fire magic), and Gilius Thunderhead (He was a Dwarf with Thunder & Lightning based sorcery). You must save the day by defeating Death Adder who has taken control of the Land & its people with the use of the fabled & powerful Golden Axe.

There are about 6 levels to this game where you cut the enemy to bits and defeat strong end of level guardians. With the help of the local Reptilian creatures and a bit of Magic for good measure. It is a good conversion of the original Arcade game which is itself an excellent game.

The end of the game 'Brings' a surprise but many Golden Axers will already have found this out for themselves.

The game is extremely addictive and holds excellent replay value. The 'Duel' mode is good for a laugh too.

A very worthy game which is recommended to all.

The Bad
There are parts in the game where you have to leap across larger than normal chasms & gaps in the level. Repeated deaths are often found here & can prove mighty frustrating.

The Bottom Line
The original and best hack-em-up.

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.