Golden Axe: Taking 21 years to beat a 40-minute game.

Most people who play games have done Golden Axe. It is one of the staple games of the Sega Mega Drive, in a time when side-scrolling arcade beat-em-ups were being ported to the home consoles. I first played it when I was eight years old. I’m now twenty-nine and I’ve just beaten it for the first time. I shouldn’t be too pleased with that, but now that I’m in a better position to concentrate on what the game is doing and how to respond to it, I stood a much better chance of beating it and finally managed it yesterday.

Here’s a setting so generic it’s almost cliché: Evil monsters, lead by the horrendous Death Adder, have taken over the land and kidnapped the King and Princess. Three Heroes, from whom Death Adder has taken their family, their friend Alex and also in two cases their outer clothing, swear to bring vengeance down upon the evil commander. They are Ax Battler,[1] Gilius Thunderhead and Tyris Flare.

Mechanically, the characters are quite similar. They all move at roughly the same speed and have the same moves: While the move animations differ for each character, they all have a regular attack that can develop into a combo, a dash attack and a magic attack. It is only on the latter that there is any significant difference: Magic is generated by carrying potions. The more potions you are carrying at the time you cast the spell, the more damage you do, but each character has a different track of developing magic. Gilius the Dwarf, only has three levels. Ax has four. Tyris has six, but you need to collect four potions just to get her past the first level of spell.

Once I could tear myself away from the many
pictures of Tyris Cosplay girls, I found this one.

I chose Tyris for my playthrough. Apart from my usual habit of playing the female characters if there is one available, I also found she has the best dash attack – purely because the attack goes futher. The regular attack combo is all well and good but locks you in place for too long. The dash doesn’t do a huge amount of damage by itself but it means you’re moving more quickly than most of the enemies, so you can attack two or even three of them before they have the chance to react. The Magic attacks are powerful but with these brawler-style games, it is helpful to remember that these attacks also have a function: breaking stun-lock. If the enemies are attacking from both sides you often find that they’re attacking more quickly than your stun animation allows you to react. At that point, you can cast a spell and no matter how much damage it does, it also has the effect of knocking enemies away. It’s also useful for boss battles – not necessarily for damaging the bosses, but for clearing the screen of their lesser minions which can be a pain to deal with.

The dash attack, though, is where you do the real damage. The minimal amount of damage coincides with a knockback effect, which if you do it close enough to a ledge means that you can take out the minions with one hit. This is particularly true for Skeletons, second only to Dark Souls in how much of a pain in the anal cavity they are. They usually attack in numbers and take a good few attack combos to go down – but there’s no getting up from being pushed off a cliff.

This, I found, was the ONLY way to defeat the last level – the one where, having rescued the King and Princess, he sends you on your way to kill Death Adder’s mentor, Death Bringer. On the way through the castle you find narrow paths and ledges, and with several enemies appearing out of nowhere and attacking you at once, the best thing to do is to knock them off the edges. Problem solved.

The ending sequence is what I’d expect for this level of game; not brilliant, but the fun was in getting to the end and finally beating a game after 21 years. I probably won’t play this game alone again, but if someone wants to play the game 2-player co-op, I wouldn’t say no.

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[1] Ha!