Preamble: This isn't a review. It doesn't contain critical analysis, just the subjective opinions of one person. The intent is to remember the games I've come across in my life and share the nostalgia, nothing more. And some of those games I didn't play in great depth.
Golden Axe
Developer: Sega Platform: Sega Megadrive/Genesis Release Year: 1989 Stephen's Rating: 6/10
Golden Axe is a side scrolling action and battling game.
Basic Plot
Death Adder has captured the king and his daughter. Your job is to fight your way through his henchman and rescue the king.
Gameplay
The player controlled one of three character classes; the dwarf, the barbarian, and the amazon. Each had a different balance of combat and magical abilities. You moved through the game defeating enemies and battling bosses.
Choosing a character class.
Mana built up over time as you defeated enemies and could be spent releasing a magical attack. The kind of attack used depended on the character class you controlled as well as how much magical energy you had saved up.
Throughout the game the player could find mounts to ride. Mounts provided the player with special attack abilities while riding them such as a tail attack or emitting balls of fire from their mouth.
Positives
The combat system was intuitive and simple. It didn't take long to pick up the game and get into the flow of it.
Mounts and magical abilities were exciting to use and had an epic quality about them.
The dwarf using a magical attack.
Negatives
The game was too short. I've completed the game a couple of times and always end up feeling a little cheated.
Memorable Moments
When I was at primary school the general consesus among the other students was that Golden Axe was the greatest game of all time. Because I only had a PC, I didn't get to play it for almost a decade after that.
I loved playing this when I was younger. Hell, I have it on my arcade now and I still fire it up once in a blue moon.
I think the reason why it seemed short is because it was an arcade game (wasn't the console game just a port of the arcade version?). If it was longer kids would probably rage at how it ate too many quarters.
And I'd agree with your rating. It's fun for a young audience but the hack & slash just gets soooooooo tedius after awhile.
golden axe is such a bad ass game i loved it as a young man i have beat it many times. I used to really hate this one part on one of the later levels where u had to do this one jump and there is not alot of jumping in the game but that one jump was obnoxious but other than that the game was incredible one of my top 10 older console games ^_^
This game was awesome on 286 processors. I remember playing this on a 286 and when you use the old man with the axe, his swing will hit two times because the animation was slow. It didn't slow down the game but was able to get two hits in instead of one.
It's been too long, but Golden Axe controls were a bit stiff and the game not that exciting...I think. A lot of the '90s beat-em-ups were better, but maybe that's not a fair comparison.
One of my favorite games from my childhood. I played this game with everybody when I was in elementary school: my dad, friends, brother etc. I was ALWAYS Thunderhead and I called him "Poppy" when I was a kid.
Last summer me and my friend got drunk and downloaded it on the Virtual Console for Wii and tried beating it four or five times before giving up, each play through we got stuck at the jumps inside Death Adder's castle. :p
Easiest way to cross that jump in Death Adders castle is to use the running attack. Also allow me to share this absolutely amazing medley of the soundtrack -
Best beat-em-up to play co-op through. I loved every minute of it and charging enemies off cliffs was awesome (or allies cause of friendly fire which made hilarious moments). This game and Streets of Rage were the best beat-em-ups on the market at the time (IMO).
I always picked the Dwarf, he was the most bad ass fighter.
EPT![[image loading]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_1A2feBnTmE/TrmqGLAd57I/AAAAAAAAAhE/sD_bRYPliuE/s320/250px-Golden_Axe_Genesis_box.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Rr0YRnysf7M/TrmqXK0TdEI/AAAAAAAAAhM/IdK3o86N1xI/s320/golden-axe-2.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_Kq8q6Nm4VI/TrmqfBn1X8I/AAAAAAAAAhU/Z8nbAWZrJik/s320/zX3y64dpmZ9iNChLTVbRipUjjkbCWz-e.jpg)
