Golden Axe

The Good
The graphics in the PC conversion of Golden Axe are very good; if you were to pipe the output of your VGA onto a television, they're indistinguishable from the Sega Genesis version.

The Bad
First and foremost, the PC version is damn near impossible to complete without continuing. After an hour of gameplay, I would have hoped that the game got easier to master. It doesn't. After 30 minutes of getting repeatedly kicked into unconciousness less than a second after getting up, I was ready to smash the screen. The original arcade game was easier than this!

There are other problems that bother me a bit: There are entire sections of land missing in the PC version. Since the game is disk-based, it would not have been a big deal to include them. And while the CGA graphics run on almost any platform (8mHz and higher), the EGA graphics really require a 286 and the VGA graphics require a 386 to run smoothly.

The Bottom Line
If you liked the arcade game and don't have access to a Sega Genesis or arcade emulator, the PC version will satisfy your Golden Axe cravings. But if you haven't played the arcade game and aren't familiar with it's style of gameplay, look somewhere else for a side-scrolling fighting game.