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!?