The History of Sega's Golden Axe | Classic Gaming Quarterly - YouTube

On this episode of Classic Gaming Quarterly TV, we take a look at one of Sega’s

all-time classic arcade games; Golden Axe.

I still remember the first time I played Golden Axe, fittingly at a Round Table Pizza.

But in 1992, my best friend and I both got Genesis consoles, and Golden Axe was one of the first games he bought.

We spent countless hours playing the game in 2-player mode, and as

a result it’s still one of my all-time favorite video games. So now, let’s take a look at

the original arcade version, the man behind it, and its various home console releases.

Released into arcades in the Summer of 1989, Golden Axe was the brain child of Sega game

designer Makoto Uchida, whose only earlier work as lead creative developer was Altered

Beast, a moderate arcade hit that played a key role in the early life of the Megadrive

and Genesis.

At the time, Uchida was fascinated by the Arnold Schwarzenegger flick Conan the Barbarian,

and wanted to create a game that would combine it with the gameplay mechanics of Double Dragon.

Leary of creating a copycat game with a different theme, Uchida decided to give his characters

weapons, and also to allow them to ride on various beasts, after getting the idea from

a piece of concept art drawn by someone on his team.

Uchida drew his inspiration for the Golden Axe characters from three sources. The main

character Ax Battler was based on the aforementioned Conan, female sidekick Tyris Flare was inspired

by the paintings of Boris Vallejo, and the axe-wielding Gilius Thunderhead was modeled

after the dwarves of The Lord of the Rings.

Golden Axe was developed for Sega’s “System 16” arcade platform, which used a Motorola

68000 CPU combined with a Zilog Z80 processor as it’s sound chip, a combination that would

be copied by Capcom for their CPS-1 and CPS-2 platforms, as well as by Sega themselves when

designing the Megadrive.

After it’s release into the arcades in 1989, Golden Axe was ported to the Megadrive and

Genesis, the Master System, the PC Engine CD, and finally to the Sega CD as part of

the Sega Classics Arcade Collection. Subsequent releases in the Golden Axe series include

1991’s Genesis and Megadrive exclusive Golden Axe II, 1992’s arcade-only Revenge of Death

Adder, which was the only follow-up game to the original that was designed by Uchida himself,

and 1993’s Japan-only Golden Axe III on the Megadrive. But while Golden Axe II and

Revenge of Death Adder were both critically acclaimed, neither of them were able to recapture

the magic of the original game.

In Golden Axe, the king and princess of… wherever have been abducted by the evil Death

Adder. As the game starts, your friend Alex stumbles on the screen to tell you what the

deal is. Doesn’t that seem like an oddly normal name for a character in this game?

I’m surprised the end boss isn’t called “Warren”.

As is the case with all beat-em-ups, multiplayer play is one of the hallmarks of this game.

While Golden Axe is certainly fun to play through by yourself, it’s much more fun

in 2-player mode. Although you have to be careful because it’s easy to accidentally

attack each other during close-quarters combat.

As is generally the case, the three playable characters each have their own strengths and

weaknesses. Tyris is the physically weakest of the three (of course) but has the strongest

magic, my personal favorite Gilius is the strongest, and has the longest reach, but

has less powerful magic, and Ax is somewhere in between the two.

Aside from standard physical attacks, you can also perform a running attack by double

tapping either left or right to start running, then tapping the attack button at the appropriate

time. Your character can also perform a combo attack, but that just takes care of itself

when you repeatedly hit the attack button. You can also use a magic attack that affects

all of the enemies on the screen. The strength of this attack is dependent upon how many

magic potions you’re carrying, as shown at the top of the screen. As Tyris can cast

more powerful spells, she can hold more of these potions, but that of course means that

it will take longer to collect enough of them to allow her to unleash hell.

Enemies will often show up on the screen riding one of three beasts, and once you knock them

off, you can go ahead and climb on yourself. The first is the chicken leg, who attacks

by swinging its tail around. The other two are the blue and red dragons. One breathes

fire, while the other spits fireballs. There are a few areas of the game where I think

this is particularly effective, but overall it just makes you a lot less maneuverable

and makes me just feel like a sitting duck.

Speaking of enemies, this game has a wide variety. There are your standard enemy foot

soldiers who’s strength is indicated by their color. These Amazon warriors are a bit

tougher to dispatch but a LOT easier on the eyes. Skeletons are the toughest enemies in

the game, as they can attack more quickly, and love to perform jump attacks. Bosses like

these giants, or this enormous sword-wielding knight make a return later in the game as

minibosses, and the final boss, Death Adder, is a real pain-in-the-ass. As was common with

arcade beat-em-ups, it often wasn’t enough to have a boss to deal with, so he’d bring

along some friends. This is especially problematic during the final boss battle when you have

to deal with one or more skeletons and Death Adder at the same time. If you successfully

kill Death Adder, you’re greeted with one of the best game endings of all time.

While not my personal favorite for nostalgic reasons, this is technically the best version

of the game. If you lack the means to play the original arcade board, you can download

this game on either Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network for just $5.

Let’s get the bad home ports out of the way before we talk about the good ones. Golden

Axe was released on the Sega Master System at around the same time as the Genesis, which

would have been either very late 1989 or early 1990. You can only play as Ax Battler but

can choose which type of magic you’d like to use.

As you can see, the game runs at a buttery-smooth, I dunno, 10 frames per second? Aside from

that, the graphics really aren’t that bad although I don’t understand why the screen

is squished. Aside from the title screen music which is a completely new track, they also

did a nice job of dumbing-down the original music for an 8-bit system. They also did a

good job of faithfully recreating each level. Due I’m sure to the limitations of the system,

the giants are no longer giant, and why is my dragon breathing steam instead of fire?

Even if I had had a Master System back in the day, I can’t imagine myself being happy

with this version of the game.

The PC Engine CD version was a Japanese exclusive ported over by Telenet Japan, a developer

better known for the Valis series on both the PC Engine and Megadrive, Gaires, Exile,

and the Sega CD pack-in game Sol Feace. Point being, they know how to make a decent game.

First, the good. This version has some pretty sweet-looking cut scenes although I of course

have no idea what anyone is saying, and the soundtrack has been completely re-done and

is now of course CD-quality. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where the good ends.

While the music sounds amazing, the sound effects sound like something out of an arcade

game from 1982. The graphics, while certainly better than the Master System port, are still

not good. I get it that the PC Engine isn’t the Genesis, but it could have done a lot

better than this. At least the map screen looks nice, I guess.

The Sega Genesis version is clearly the best home version of the game, and is my personal

favorite for primarily nostalgic reasons. As the game starts, your good buddy Alex can’t

be bothered to make a repeat appearance, but he gets a shout out anyway.

While it is not arcade-perfect it damned close, and for some reason to me the game just feels

better than the arcade version. I swear it’s just a little bit faster. The graphics take

an obvious hit, but for some reason I like the sound effects better. The screams of the

vanquished in the arcade version just sounded a little bit too real, and the sound of you

carving up your enemies was just unsatisfying.

Oddly, Gilius’ axe is no longer golden. Supposedly the “Golden Axe” referred to

in the title is Death Adder’s axe and not Gilius’s, but does this look golden to you?

Anyway, who cares?

The biggest difference between this game and the arcade version is the extra level that

was added. Remember Death Adder? When you beat him and save the king in this version,

you learn that he was just the public face of a puppet regime, and the king sends you

inside his castle to confront the real end boss, the unimaginatively-named Death Bringer.

This level throws a ton of the hardest enemies in the game at you, but there are so many

pits everywhere a smart player has to do very little actual fighting. Once you get to Death

Bringer himself however, things get tough fast. The ending to this version isn’t as

cool as the arcade version, but it’s still pretty neat.

The game also has an interesting “Duel” mode that lets you go head to head with increasingly

more difficult enemies, giving you 30 seconds to win each battle. While this gets old pretty

fast in single player mode, in 2-player mode instead of fighting enemies you fight each

other, and there is no time limit. Back in the day, we probably spent as much time playing

this as we did playing the main game.

Released in 1991, the Sega CD version of Golden Axe was technically a launch title, as it

was included on the Sega Arcade Classic Collection, which was packed in with the original system.

On the positive side, the soundtrack has been upgraded and presented here in redbook audio

format, although some of the crappy sound effects from the arcade version also made

it over. I’ve read that player animations have also been slightly improved, but if they

have I can’t tell the difference. Other than that, it’s basically the Genesis version

on a CD with one glaring and inexcusable omission. 2-player support has for some reason been

removed. While this didn’t really bother me with the Master System and PC Engine versions

because frankly, that was the least of their problems, it’s simply unacceptable here.

That being said, if you never plan on playing this game with any one else ever, I guess

it would be fine to pick this game up in lieu of the Genesis cartridge.

Golden Axe is easily one of the greatest, and most influential, games to ever come out

of Sega. Whether you play the original arcade version, or the Genesis or Sega CD port, this

is an absolute classic that no gamer should be without.

That’s going to do it for this episode of Classic Gaming Quarterly TV. If there are

any games, systems, franchises, or topics that you’d like to see covered on the show,

please let me know. And if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe so that you don’t

miss out on any future episodes. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.