MadCap's Game Reviews - "Sega Vintage Collection: Golden Axe"

Is there a genre in gaming as old and as pure as the classic sword and sorcery tale? Really, there's nothing like the tale of an epic quest in order to save the land from some great evil.  When it comes to many games, you don't need more than that.  As with Golden Axe, a game that doesn't get any more complex than "wizard bad, you hero, go kill!" or, in this case, a warrior.  But what's this? Two more games added into the pot? Sega, you generous people.

I mean, when you're not allowing Alien games to be made by Gearbox Studios.

But we have the first of three games together, Golden Axe, a child of the Arcade era of gaming where the machines were gluttons for quarters and gamers were gluttons for punishment. A side-scrolling, beat 'em up, hack and slash in which you select one of three heroes to go on an epic quest to save the world from the infamous...Death Adder. Yes, the evil overlord who has stolen the mighty Golden Axe and threatens all of Yuria will be forevermore known by the terrifying name of...Death Adder. That's like calling yourself "Fluffy the Terrible". That's something a 13-year-old would name the villain in their Harry Potter fanfiction. To be a supervillain with that name, you really have to do something a little more intimidating than steal an axe.

So he kidnapped the King and his daughter...touche, Death Adder, touche.

That's about as brain dead simple as the plot of Golden Axe gets.  The evil person is evil, go beat them to death and save the kingdom. To do this,  as I said before, you pick from one of three protagonists: "Ax Battler", a warrior with a broadsword and a fetish for speedos; Gilius Thunderhead, a dwarf who doesn't get good range with his attacks and I'll explain why that's troublesome in a moment; and Tyris Flare, a female barbarian who fits the stereotypical image of what people in the 1980s thought one of the Valkyries looked like.

As such, because these characters are given no personality and, in fact, their names aren't even given within the game, I have decided to refer to them as "Larry", "Curly", and "Moe", respectively for the rest of this review.  No particular reason, I just feel like being cheeky.

You're allowed, as with all characters, two different attacks, but I can't seem to find too much of a difference between the two options unless you're jumping. Besides swinging the blade only slightly differently, they both seem to hit enemies with little trouble...provided you're on the same plane as the enemy you're trying to hit. The game is a side-scroller, using isomorphic perspective to create the illusion of depth. So the closer to the top of the screen you get, the further away from it you're going.

It's bizarre even when you see it, much less having it described, but take it from me, there are few things more frustrating than taking a leaping swing at an enemy only to seemingly sail right through him and land on the other side just in time for the AI to reorient itself and pummel you with attacks from behind.

Here we come to the splits in combat styles.  Larry, as I mentioned before, wields the broadsword and has the best balance in terms of range. Generally, enemies can't hit him without getting hit themselves.  Curly, being all dwarf-y as he is, wields and axe and actually has a very poor range, forcing you to run up an into harm's way more often than not to even hit enemies. Moe attacks with a short sword, so she has the least range of all, but she has an ability that the others don't have - spellcraft!

Okay, so the others have spells as well.  Larry uses magic related to the element of Earth, Curly wields the almighty power of electricity, and Moe has at her command the powers of fire.  And with their powers combined...they can damage all the enemies on the screen, sometimes even take them out if they have enough blue potions stocked up to do so with. All magic comes through these blue potions that can be collected along the way, sometimes from containers that can be broken, sometimes from bandits who rob you in bonus stages.

This might be leaving you wondering how this could possibly apply to all three games, or why I didn't try to milk three reviews out of this Collection? Very good question, and the answer is simple: they're all fundamentally the same.  Sure, II added some new moves and allowed the player to select the intensity of their magical attacks and III brought in a gaggle of new characters, but the gameplay did not change so drastically from game to game.

So, instead, I'll just rag on the plots of the other two games.

Golden Axe II sees the Larry, Curly, and Moe once more testing their steel against the infamous "Dark Guld" (and now I'm heavily re-considering my mocking of "Death Adder") who have stolen the Golden Axe for themselves.

Golden Axe III sees Ozzy Osbourne taking away the Golden Axe (seriously, King of Yuria, lock that thing up somewhere) and cursing the warriors of legend so that they are unable to stop him...save for the one that manages to break free of the curse and do so. Despite appearances, in this one, the only hero from the previous games to appear if Curly. Despite the fact the male warrior and the female Valkyrie both look like Larry and Moe, they're apparently not. Just warriors with identical range and abilities.

I shall refer to them as "Shemp" and "DeRita", respectively.

Or I would if I had anything to say about them, but I don't. It's pretty much all been covered above.

They are joined this time by not one, but two characters. A man who looks like the forbidden lovechild of Carrot Top and the Ultimate Warrior (who I shall call "Skronk"), and a humanoid panther who kicks all of the asses (who I shall call "T'Challa"). Skonk, unlike the others, is an unarmed fighter, preferring hand-to-hand and wrestling moves over puny weapons. However, he's also the slowest of the bunch and the problem with the perspective rears its head quite often with him. T'Challa is much the same, but much faster and possibly even the best of the bunch due to his super move (it's amazing to watch).

So, in terms of storyline the games never really evolved that much. In terms of graphics, though, they seem to have de-evolved. Golden Axe and Golden Axe II look good for the era, but Golden Axe II looks absolutely inexcusably bad. For a game that came out in 1993 (1995 in the States), it looks like a game from ten years earlier. Hell, I've seen bits of Atari games that look better than this does. So no, this was not a time when Sega did what Nintendon't. This was one of Nintendo's points to point and laugh at Sega...like many others.

But Console Wars aside, the first two games were pretty good.  Nothing to write home about, certainly, besides the option to mount fire-breathing dragon raptors.

...oh, did I not mention that? Yeah, that was a thing in all three games.

But it's your standard hack and slash, the simple save the MaGuffin, save the world shtick. Pretty good when you're in the mood for a hack and slash, but otherwise not that memorable.

The Sega Vintage Collection: Golden Axe is now available from Sega on the Xbox Live Arcade.

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