Golden Axe

"SEGA's Coin-Op classic is improved on for home conversion!"

SEGA follow up the middling, but successful, Altered Beast with a more refined coin-op / home experience. Set firmly in a dark ages swords and sandals era Golden Axe owes as much to Robert E Howard's demented Conan adventures as it does Tolkien's oeuvre. Golden Axe comes to SEGA's 16 bit home system in an inaccurate, but ultimately rewarding conversion.

Much like Altered Beast, Golden Axe takes the form of a scrolling 2 player beat-em-up. Players move from left to right fighting colour coded mutant hordes until the reach a 'Boss' enemy. Beat him and it's on to the next level. Sprites are large and detailed; each has a distinct look and personality. In early levels users are faced with endless processions of stooping, shambolic looking sub-humans, generaled by obese twins with hammers. As you progress these ranks will open up and include Harryhausen skeletons and enormous knights. As mentioned before enemies are ranked by colour - dull hued foes make up early levels, later levels feature brighter / bolder armour palettes, culminating in warriors draped in gold. The higher up the colour chain the enemy is, the more aggressive and capable their attacks.

Levels are expansive and multi-layered allowing the user to jump on top of buildings and mount guerilla like attacks on opponents on lower levels, thankfully such tactics are not lost on CPU characters - Skeleton warriors on later levels will rain in britzkrieg like aerial attacks if not taken in hand. Later stages even have (intentional) gaps in scenery, topple over and you'll lose a whole life bar, cause an enemy to topple over and they'll simply die. It's very satisfying to bait a Skeleton warrior to charge you down whilst standing near one of these precipices, moving at the last second and watching them tumble over into oblivion. Levels start off as deserted outpost settlements before moving onto the splendor of military garrisons and palaces. Players are also offered assistance from the benign giant animals that make up several of the actual levels. One stage in particular involves a battle across a giant Eagles back, Skeleton and Zombie enemies springing from gaps in the feathers as you attempt to reach the head.

SEGA make cursory nods towards a 3D landscape by allowing the players the parallax freedom of Capcom's Final Fight. The user is thus able to attack their enemies from a number of map positions - moving upwards and attacking, seemingly the most useful. Arsenal wise players have basic slash commands, which have cumulative attributes that can be styled into combos. IE: Slash twice and your third move will be to strike your stunned opponent with the butt of your sword. Dashing strikes and piledriver jumping blows are also possible, and more importantly, useful. The available moves also have distinct tactical advantages and disadvantages. More sustained beatings do your enemy more damage, but they are slow and leave you open to attacks from behind. Thankfully the fighting system is flexible enough that multiple enemy fights aren't frustrating, rather they are manageable. Gameplay is most rewarding when the user is able to frantically frit between several stunned enemies, each blow lengthening the opponents' stunned animation, and allowing you to middle-manage your foes into the grave.

A nice touch is the ability to batter and even harm your two-player accomplice, an amusing hang-over solution to an unwanted player joining in on your arcade jaunt no doubt. It also serves to reinforce the idea of your character as a deadly force; even allies that wander into your kill zone are not safe. Such a move encourages players to chose a particular area to concentrate on screen wise, a logical step to opening up co-operative / tandem gameplay.

The second primary form of attack available to the user is a smart bomb ability, represented by Dungeons and Dragons-esque magic spells. The more magic held by a player, the more damage it'll render. Bars at the top of the screen represent magic levels, and force available. The bars are divided up into sections each level filled allows a more powerful and graphically spectacular assault to be unleashed. Magic is acquired in brief (breather) sections of levels that are overrun with small scuttling imps. Blue imps hold magic potion bottles; green imps carry small rations used to bolster the players' health. Interestingly the imps return for rematches in the between level fireside rest sections. The sequence begins with the user(s) asleep allowing their possessions to be stolen. Once awake you must frantically recover (and more than likely increase) your magic stash.

The final, and most interesting form of offence is to capture slave beasts from the CPU characters. There are three types - a squat chicken alike beast with a huge lashing tail, a bi-ped dragon that spews flames at the feat of opponents and finally a dragon that spits horizontally travelling balls of flame. Great for taking out charging foes. Complete a level with one of these creatures and you'll receive an amusing easter egg during the fireside stint.

Players take control of one of three unique ability characters - A Dwarf, Barbarian or Amazon. As with Final Fight each has a specific area of strength and weakness. Gilius Thunderhead, the Dwarf, is physically stronger than the other two characters. His basic attacks therefore do more damage. His magic bar however is small, only allowing 4 potions to be used simultaneously in a some-what weak Lightning blast attack. Tyrus Blair the Amazon is (on-paper) physically the weakest, but has a substantially increased magic ability. When full she is able to call on an enormous Dragon to drench the playing area in flaming napalm death. Ax Battler the Barbarian, the laissez faire option, offering the happy medium.

Gameplay isn't perfectly balanced though. A brief play reveals a couple of broken areas. In practice the physical damage dealing difference between Ax and Tyrus is so marginal as to render the Barbarian useless. In addition the weaker Amazon has a much more useful dash move - taking the form of a pointed flying kick, the smaller attack area offered by the animation means Tyrus is able to push enemies away with the minimum of risk. In comparison Ax's move is a full-on shoulder barge. Fail to connect with this and you're wide open. Fail to connect with Tyrus' rush and you'll likely sail past the enemy. In this sense the same kind of team approach as Guantlet is encouraged. Any two user controlled characters compensate for each others weaknesses, and make for an imposing team - even if you'll typically end up with a Dwarf / Amazon combo. The special move offered by pressing the B and C button simultaneously also takes on undesirable properties. If the user activates the move whilst getting up from being knocked down by an enemy they will be invincible (and dealing substantial damage) as long as they can consistently keep the animation sequence rolling. Armed with a turbo button pad the user can effectively coast their way through the game with the minimum of fuss. Goad a dash knockdown and you've beat the screen.

Unfortunately this Mega Drive / Genesis conversion doesn't quite replicate the full arcade experience. There are fewer enemies on screen, meaning a less frantic experience. Graphical flourishes and touches have been downsized as well. A battered and bloody compatriot no longer greets players at the beginning of the first level. Similarly the petrifying corpses of fallen enemies are no longer able to crowd up the screen. A brief flash and they are gone. The final battle with your nemesis Death Adder sadly loses its dramatic flourish. Adder is no longer born from a seething mass of wretched corpses and writhing snakes. Instead he toddles on stage left. Thankfully SEGA have taken note of such shortcomings and offered special home version exclusive material. Beat Adder and you'll learn of immediately accessible puppet master and two extra screens to serve this twist. The new level is particularly interesting - a narrow, hole laden path complete with a couple of pixel perfect jumps and the cream of the newly revealed Death Bringers' army.

The ending screen has been changed as well, this time for the better. Instead of the Fourth wall busting Keystone extravaganza of the arcade version, users who finish this iteration will receive biographies of their vanquished foes and allies - an excellent touch - before a sleepy credits sequence and final ranking. As such a delicately comprised ranking system exists, there's always that incentive to go back and attempt to do that little bit better and achieve a higher grade.

This conversion also allows the user to tailor difficulty levels - attempt EASY and you'll receive an amusingly truncated version of the main game - and control set-ups (always a welcome inclusion) as well as lengthening your in-game life bar. The most interesting inclusion is a Duel mode that places your character in a Roman Coliseum style adventure, battling a claustrophobic one screen full of enemies. Substantially more difficult than the main game, it'll take more than perpetual special moves to clear this section.

Golden Axe is a charming and surprisingly flexible game. The basic gameplay never really rises above "walk left, kill enemy", but it's executed with such verve and skill that it hardly matters. Golden Axe is a short but gratifying experience that deserves a place in any Mega Drive / Genesis collection.

8 / 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/04