- Developed by: Sega
- Published by: Sega
- Released: 1990
- Reviewed by: Stoo
- Review written: Jan 2010
Huzzah for bikini chicks kicking people. Even in VGA.
Saddle up.
Update!
Six months after I wrote this, Sega went and released Golden Axe along with a stack of other Megadrive oldies on Steam. As far as I can tell that release is a perfect match to the Megadrive version. So it's a definite recommendation for anyone who looks back fondly on the 16-bit days.
This review is therefore obselete; there's no reason to go tracking down the somewhat lacking 1990 port about which I was writing. For now though I'm going to leave it in place; just as an example of how we sometimes had to turn to ports for our action gaming.
Until recently in over eight years of reviews, we'd not had any beat-em-ups, or other such games based on the noble art of people punching each other a lot. Not until Rik reviewed One Must Fall, anyway. That's mostly because, there isn't a whole lot out there worth commenting on in the first place. If you're thinking back to the early-mid 1990s days of Chun-Li and her epic thighs kicking people in the head, or muscular heroes prowling around the mean streets hitting punks with baseball bats, odds are good your fondest memories come from the 16 bit consoles.
The PC just wasn't taken too seriously as a platform for such things. I could think of a few reasons why that's the case, but one has to be that if you're playing with a friend, relaxing with proper controllers on the couch has to be the way to do it. Not hunching in front of a small monitor with one of you on a 2-button joystick and the other on keyboard.
There was a fairly meagre crop of home-grown efforts, OMF probably being the best. Otherwise, especially at the start of the 90s, we had to fill the gap with ports of games that mostly originated in the arcades then moved to consoles. These could often be a bit half-arsed, with sub-par graphics or sound, or poor handling. I recall Streetfighter 2 for example being poorly received. Still, they weren't always terrible. So today we're looking at Golden Axe, which I think complements Rik's review nicely.
As you probably remember, these fighting-based came in two flavours, and a bit of research (well 2 minutes on Wikipedia) suggests there are naming conventions for them although these aren't quite fixed. On the one hand you have the one-on-one match-based games where two combatants fight it out until one is knocked out. These are apparently the ones we should call fighting games. A beat-em-up then is where you fight through levels full of enemies, usually with a psuedo-3d effect to levels (ie you can walk in two dimensions and also jump). So since Rik reviewed a PC-native fighting game, I thought I'd like to take a look at ported beat 'em up.
Golden Axe was a much loved favourite of its genre back in the day. It began in the arcades and the definitive home version existed on Megadrive. While most beat 'em ups went for a gritty urban theme, this one stood out for its Conan the Barbarian style fantasy setting. So instead of some dude in a karate outfit or an angry cop, you choose one of three sword and axe wielding heroes. There's a barbarian guy (blue underpants), barbarian chick (red bikini), dwarf (thankfully in a sort of tunic). Meanwhile the locations are castles, villages and a few rather cool fantasy concepts like a town on the back of a giant turtle.
Another trick is magic; you pick up little blue potions by kicking gnomes(!) and these are used to charge up your powers. When unleashed there's a fancy graphical effect and everyone goes flying. So it can serve as both a hefty extra punch against bosses and just a general purpose panic button. It's also part of what differentiates the three heroes: Bikini chick can build her magic up to the highest levels but is the weakest at regular fighting due to low weapon reach. The Dwarf is the other way around, and bluepants the barbarian is predictably in-between.
When you sit down and play, it's all pretty easy to pick up. The range of moves isn't particularly wide - slash, jump and slash, running kick\headbut, throw. Annoyingly I'm sure there's meant to be a jumping downwards-stab that seems to have been removed. Also the game can seem a bit punishing sometimes, with you being beaten down onto your knees and several bars of health being knocked off by comon enemies while you're defenceless. Some reviews suggest it wasn't that bad on other systems. Still it's not unmanageable. You might just have to use the running attacks a lot.
There's one more cool feature you encounter a few minutes in - small dragons that you can ride. These either have an attack that's basically melee but further reaching than your usual swipe, or launch a fireball across the screen. You can knock enemy riders off to grab the dragon, and they can knock you off in return and reclaim it, until the poor creature gets fed up and runs for it. Controlling one can greatly help you dominate a fight.
Graphically it's fine for something originally dating from 1988. The sprites and backgrounds are a bit flat but crisp and effective. Certainly it's as good as any other system's version of the game. Sound-wise the jangly adlib-card music is acceptable, but the digitised sound effects sound rather tortured. As I recall they were actually squeezed somehow out of the PC's internal bleeper (now simulated by Dosbox), as adlib couldn't do digitised effects.
So overall, there's definitely still some oldskool fun on offer. Even if it does come down to charge, kick, slash a lot. There's a cheerful simplicity to jumping back nearly 2 decades and hitting skeletons with an axe until they fall down. It's not something you'd play at great length, but with a few beers can be part of a great retro-gaming evening with a friend.
However, unsurprisingly my best experiences have been on the Megadrive version, which you can buy on the Wii's virtual console, or in compilations for other modern consoles. I've mentioned a few annoyances in the PC version, and there are a couple more that suggest cutting space to fit the game on a single floppy. Like, each hero has only one graphical effect for their magic, whereas originally it varied according to the strength of the attack. Also the ending sequences were drastically cut down.
To be fair none of these annoyances ruin the game and the core playability is still there. Also if you lack a console, these days you can always plug in two usb joypads to your PC, and you might own a large monitor or be able to attach to a TV. So you can capture that traditional fighting cameraderie. But then you could still fire up the Megadrive version on an emulator, so there's still no particular reason to choose the PC port. Which is what you may have been expecting me to say from the start but what the hell, I thought this was worth including just for the records.
No you can't actually run away.
There's no pic of the magic attack because the control wasn't working on my laptop. So i guess it's Hammertime.
Requirements: If you've got the old port, use Dosbox of course. The Steam version is wrapped in some Windows launcher so no fiddling required.
Availability: Pick up the recent release for about £2 on Steam.