Golden Axe
1989 Sega Sega Master System Golden Axe is a 2D is beat ‘em up style side scrolling game where progression is achieved by overcoming a certain amount of enemies on the screen before a sword style arrow allows the game move forward. Golden Axe is set in the fictional world of Yuria and draws parallels to Dungeons & Dragons, Conan the Barbarian and other fantasy themed media such as the likes of Thundarr the Barbarian. The 8bit version of Golden Axe features a slightly altered storyline, forsaking the other playable characters in the Genesis/Mega Drive version to focus on the warrior class. You play as Tarik, a typically fantasy style barbarian, he has long dark hair, is dressed in nothing but his little blue undies, a pair of bracers, boots and wields a two handed sword. Tarik has been gifted by the Earth, Thunder and Fire Gods their respective powers, who sets out the retrieve the Golden Axe from the evil tyrant Death Adder. The 8bit version of Golden Axe isn’t particularly long, clocking in at a little over 45 minutes and is composed of only 5 relatively short levels. Each one of these levels is followed by a ‘bonus’ stage where you get to kick thieving gnomes into dropping magic pots or food to replenish your health. Every level on Golden Axe gives you access to a creature, this can either be a two legged lizard with a sweeping tail, amusing enough, the manual calls these ‘Chicken Legs’ to a pair of dragons, both are capable of breathing fire. One dragon is able to breathe fire directly in front of it, whereas its counterpart prefers to spit fireballs. As a port backwards, Golden Axe isn’t great at times. The 8bit port feels jittery and quite unresponsive and this can cause you to take a lot of unnecessary damage. This issue comes in to play mainly when fighting the Jason and the Argonauts style undead skeletons. The good news is, once you get over the fact that Golden Axe is jittery, you can easily adapt your play style to compensate. The 8bit graphics aren’t too bad considering that Golden Axe was scaled down, quite significantly for 1989 and you can tell that these graphics were starting to push the boundaries of what 8bit could offer. Unlike the 16bit Genesis/Mega Drive version, the colour palette is pretty limited, each general humanoid mob is dressed in silver armour, except for the Giants, who stick to their blue. As the levels progress, the amount of damage that the mobs can take increases, however, there is no indication that these enemies are tougher. As with the graphics, the sound is also scaled back. The background music is the same as the 16bit, just composed in 8bit and it still works just as well. In regards to the sound FX, the Golden Axe FX sound a lot more crisp than many of its peers and has the feeling that Sega put a lot of budget behind the Golden Axe project, even if the sound for landing a successful sword swing sounds directly taken from the Alex Kidd in Miracle World vaults when Alex fires from his power ring! Golden Axe can be flawed at times, even bordering on frustrating with the port not being great. However, it doesn’t take long to complete and a lot of fun can still be had from playing. It is interesting to see how Sega compensated by altering the story/graphics/levels by having to scale back and in doing so have managed to create a near separate game and it would be unfair to fully compare the 8bit to the 16bit version. 5/10 Adam
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