In the late eighties the beat ‘em up genre was just beginning to take off. Earlier releases, such as Double Dragon, were popular but it wasn’t until the likes of Final Fight and Streets of Rage that this type of gameplay really hit the prime time. Sega was one of the early supporters of this genre, and one of their early releases within it was a an arcade title called Golden Axe. This was very different from your typical beat ‘em up. While others were focused on urban environments with one tough guy against an army of punks and musclemen this instead took on a medieval setting. This was very unconventional at the time, and it’s one of the reasons why Golden Axe was very popular at release. I was very late to the party with this one, and therefore I’m able to look at it without any associated nostalgia. Unfortunately I have a difficult time seeing how this release achieved such critical acclaim. Golden Axe is kind of boring to be honest.
This game takes place in the fictional medieval kingdom of Yuria. The king and princess have both been captured by an evil entity known as Death Adder, and three warriors set out to rescue them and restore peace to the land. It’s very basic, but some of the locales are interesting (many of them are based off of and named after animals). You begin your adventure in Golden Axe by selecting from one of three characters. The first is called Ax Battler. He’s your typical rounded character who has no real strengths but makes up for this by featuring no distinct weaknesses. He wields a long reaching broadsword and is decently strong and also fairs well with magic. Next is Gilius Thunderhead. This dwarf wields an axe and has the greatest strength of the trio of protagonists. To balance him out the developers gave him the weakest magical properties. Then we have Tyris Flare. She’s the fastest of the bunch, and also has the greatest abilities in magic. That’s all fine and dandy except for the fact that she’s physically weak and her longsword does the least damage of the three weapons. The character roster is very standard here.
Golden Axe plays like a very typical beat ‘em up title of this era. Gameplay takes place on a multi-tiered two dimensional field wherein you can move in all eight directions. You have a standard attack button which swings your character’s weapon, another allows you to jump, and the third is designated for your magical attacks. The latter of these are limited in that they consume blue potions. These are gained by smacking around elves that randomly appear in each stage. Enemies approach from the edge of the screen and you cannot progress until you’ve defeated all of the foes in said area. It’s pretty repetitive, but many of the stages feature some light platforming elements to mix things up. One thing that bothers me about this release is the fact that your opponents have no visible life bar. This makes it tough to tell how close they are to being defeated. It might sound like a small issue, but I found it helpful in most other similar titles.
I’m going to start with what Golden Axe does right. The small story expositions are a very nice touch and helps keep the narrative in perspective. The gameplay mechanics are simple, but ridable animals help to keep things interesting. There are only two different varieties; one is a small dinosaur that can swing its tail, and the other is a fire breathing dragon. Enemies can knock you off of your steed which can be annoying, but I really like the fact that they can take over riding it. The mount system is particularly great when playing with a friend. Speaking of multiplayer the two player co-op mode is also really cool. Unfortunately Golden Axe’s problems are hard to overlook. The stage design is stale, uninteresting, and highly repetitive. There’s some light platforming elements, but for the most part absolutely everything is stale beyond belief. None of the eight stages throws any curve balls your way, and there isn’t even any interesting scenery to offset this issue. Furthermore there’s a huge lack of variety in enemies and their attack patterns. It makes the whole thing painfully stale. Even Double Dragon had more variety and better stage designs than this train wreck.
Sometimes pleasant graphics can make up for a few shortcomings, but unfortunately Golden Axe is as stale visually as it is in the gameplay department. Let’s start with the color palette. It’s fair to expect a fantasy based title to be vibrant, but everything is rendered in dull shades. There’s a lot of brown here, and even in the grassy countryside the developers went with some truly ugly tints of green for the foliage. Things only get worse in Turtle Village, and even moreso within the castle areas. The palette used here is about what you would expect from a game released on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The character models are highly generic, and there are very few different enemy designs. Golden Axe makes heavy use of palette swaps which is really boring. The animations are also very dull with few separate frames that are very lacking in detail. Golden Axe is very bland looking overall. To make matters worse the soundtrack is just awful. The composer failed to make a single noteworthy or even slightly memorable track. It’s just dull percussion and is very limited. I recommend muting the game should you decide to play.
I’m really not sure why anyone still remembers this title. I understand that it was an early beat ‘em up, but even Double Dragon was much better. This came out the same year as the original Final Fight, and therefore it’s difficult to cut it any amount of slack. The medieval fantasy setting was a good idea, but Sega botched this release in some pretty significant ways. One thing’s for sure; Golden Axe isn’t going to make any new fans now that the market has so many different options. Steer clear of this abomination.
