Golden Axe

The Good
The first time I caught a glimpse of Golden Axe was in an Arcade somewhere in France. I was really impressed by the marvelous graphics. On the PC the game still looked pretty marvelous, but unfortunately not on my PC (I had a 286 at the time). But Golden Axe’s graphics are among the best (maybe even the best) of it’s time. I like the creativity of the designers: the island that is a giant turtle, the huge eagle. The design of those stages is extremely well done. Moreover the magical spells are a joy to watch. The graphics are Golden Axe’s best feature. But there are some other things to like about Golden Axe.

• Great sound effects & midi music. I can still hum some of those tunes.
• You can knock enemy soldiers off their dragons and ride the dragons yourself.
• It has a two-player cooperative mode, there nothing more fun than beating up some bad guys together.
• It has a nice story twist. At a certain moment you think you have won the game but the toughest part is yet to come.

The Bad

• It’s not complete! The intro and the cool ending that MAT is talking about are not included in the PC port.
• The controls feel a little stiff.
• Gilius is a lot better than the other two heroes because of the broad range of his axe (combined with his jump-attack). Not only would this cause arguments about who would get to play with Gilius, it also meant you virtually had to play with Gilius in order to win. I could beat the game easily when I played with Gilius but never succeeded with one of the others.
• The “Duel” mode is lame and very difficult to complete.

The Bottom Line
A side scrolling beat ‘em up best remembered for it’s great graphics. Of course even great graphics look dated after a couple of years. In fact the whole side scrolling beat ‘em up genre is rather dated. Games like this one don’t get released anymore. In the early 90’s they were released in truckloads. Nowadays I find games like Final Fight, Double Dragon and Streets of Rage rather boring, but I still enjoy playing Golden Axe.

The Good
It was a really good game when it came out. I had fun playing it.

The Bad
Nothing I can remember.

The Bottom Line
One of the first good games of its genre, but below average compared to today's standards. I would play the more recent titles from AD&D before going to this one. But if you do it in "reverse chronological order," I think you would also agree to just take a pass at Golden Axe. Put simply, Golden Axe couldn't hold a candle to games in the same genre today.

The Good
The thing that will probably matter most when discussing this game is the conversion itself. Those that loved it's original incarnation only care about this, and those who don't really don't care anyway. Rest assured fans of Golden Axe, that the conversion is pretty accurate and save for some quirky details that make it more a port of it's 16-bit home incarnation rather than the original arcade one, this is flawless. The graphics are dead-on (at least as far as I remember) and the music sounded, well... "accurate".

The game offers a brand new duel mode that isn't exactly top notch but offers something different in gameplay terms, and most importantly: retains the 2-player co-op gameplay that is essential for these types of games.

The Bad
The only real downside to Golden Axe is that it isn't really that hot a game to begin with. I remember when it was around the arcades and it was interesting mainly because it was the first to offer a medieval-fantasy twist on the 2D -sidescroller beat'em up genre, but that was it. The sprites were pretty small making the action much less interesting, the gameplay was pretty unbalanced (tip: use the dwarf) and the amount of things you could do was pretty limited compared to other games that offered different throws, items, and more animations per hits. As far as I'm concerned It never even got close to the sheer genius that were Capcom's or Konami's 2D fighters like Captain Commando or the immortal Final Fight. And if the only reason that you cared about Golden Axe was it's fantasy-edge, then you still had better options like King of The Dragons or the pseudo 3d- Broken Sword.

Of course, since none of those titles where converted to the pc it's really pointless to compare them, right? Still... why should we settle for less??

The Bottom Line
For nostalgic medieval fantasy lovers only. Real action gamers come join me at the local arcade for a one-two of Final Fight, or heck: even Double Dragon!!