Overall this is a pretty nice-looking (and sounding) game for the genesis, ported from arcade. I think it actualyl looks better on the Genesis! It has a brighter, more colorful palllette. The sound is also pretty good. It controls ok, but there are so many gotchas in this that have nothing to do with the controls!

The good news is you can lure enemies into falling into pits (even bosses!) and they dont come back, the bad news is you also die if you fall in one by mistake. I managed to lose my first game getting to the final level and then fallling into the games first jumping puzzle pit... losing my last two lives in seconds. Overall the game isnt hard, the final boss is a real doozy though. you'll have to Master the Jump Attack, it is the only way to fight at times, and if you spam it you can cheeseball bosses, (including the ultimate boss!) I picked the dwarf with the axe, it asn't golden, but an axe is an axe.

The trouble with this game that holds it back from being better is the way enemies fight is kinda cheap. The game is designed from a quarter-stealing machine though, so i guess that makes sense... Enemies tend to go at you from both ends, leaving you vulnerable, and as soon as an enemy hits you, 99% you are going to receive all of their follow up moves because the game stun locks you (and enemies too) so you are really at a disadvantage fighting multiple enemies. enemies also have a tendency to charge and attack you. evading this is hard, seeing it coming is impossible (they will start the charge at different distances) a jump attack can work if you can somehow time it perfectly,, but its best to just avoid it.

your magic 'bomb' is interesting. best i can tell the more you have the stronger it is. you use them for bosses obviously. It looks visually appealing but its hard to even tell how much damage it does, i just hoped it made the fight easier.

oh you also have dinosaurs which you ride and fight with. This is mostly annoying because since you are always fighting multiple enemies, its more of trying to stop the enemy from getting onto the dinosaur to take you out, since it seems they fight better on the dinos than you can. still, capturing a dino to fight the boss with is helpful, as they have decent range, one is even a ranged attack of spitting fireballs!

In Conclusion this port could have stayed in the arcades where it belonged, however its a very nice looking (and sounding) genesis game, with okay controls, just not the best beat em up mechanics with its many 'aha!' moments and pit-falling frustrations.

“If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher’s cleaver.” -Lord Byron

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As I sneak away from my handheld post, hoping that the Well-Red Mage doesn’t notice my absence, I’m debating what game to play. The game I’m craving is Golden Axe. Maybe it’s my recent trip to Cornwall, full of beaches, castles, fields, rocks and sea. Maybe it’s because I recently played its (disappointing) sequel. Maybe it’s because I’m a Sega kid who misses the arcades. Maybe because Golden Axe is such a much loved game, to us Europeans anyway.

Those of us who grew up with Sega in the 90’s adored Golden Axe – any conversation I have about the Mega Drive usually features the question “Do you remember Golden Axe?” I’d argue that Golden Axe is one of the most fondly remembered Mega Drive games, after Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage 2.

The question I find myself asking now is “Does Golden Axe deserve that love?” Is it just nostalgia playing tricks with us or does Golden Axe still have something to offer?

“I had a feeling that arcade games should be competitive against the great hit console title Dragon Quest (created by Enix) and therefore studied the world of magic and swords, combined this with the gameplay of Double Dragon, and finally came up with the concept of Golden Axe.” -Makota Uchida, interview with Retro Gamer, 2014

You can’t tell the story of Golden Axe without first mentioning Double Dragon. Technos Japan’s 1987 arcade brawler was a revelation at the time. Double Dragon took the concept of Technos’ earlier game Renegade further, adding a simultaneous two player mode plus different weapons and moves to the action. So when Makota Uchida’s AM1 team were asked to begin work on a new game towards the end of Altered Beast’s development, the new game in question was to be Sega’s answer to Double Dragon. Uchida knew he had to develop a different game than Double Dragon, feeling he couldn’t compete with the more experienced Technos team (Altered Beast was Uchida’s first project). Wisely, Uchida looked at Double Dragon and kept the assets that made Billy and Jimmy Lee’s game a hit – the 2.5D perspective, two player mode and the variety of attacks – and decided to add a unique feel to his new game.

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2017/08/31/golden-axe/