In the summer of 1989 Sega, The One noted, was “formerly known mostly for its hydraulic stomach-turners”: arcade cabinets such as After Burner that threw the player about in a moving seat. Golden Axe was a different kind of machine. It took the side-on street fight of Double Dragon, moved it into a sword-and-sorcery world, and gave the player magic to collect and monsters to ride. “The gameplay is first rate,” The One decided, “a real improvement over Double Dragon.” Within a year Sega had squeezed it on to a home cartridge for the Mega Drive, and by the end of 1990 it was on every British home computer that mattered.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Sega. Makoto Uchida, who had made the arcade Altered Beast, is credited with the arcade Golden Axe.
- Arcade: 1989, on Sega’s System 16B board, with a Motorola 68000 running the game.
- Players: one or two at once.
- Mega Drive: Japan, December 1989; Britain, 1990. It added a Duel mode and a practice round.
- Home computers: Virgin Mastertronic, 1990, for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC.
Three heroes and Death Adder
Death Adder has seized the kingdom, kidnapped its king and princess and killed members of each hero’s family. The Games Machine introduced the three who set out after him when it previewed the coin-op in September 1989:
| Hero | Weapon | Magic |
|---|---|---|
| Ax Battler, a barbarian | Sword | Earth: an earthquake |
| Tyris Flare, an Amazon | Sword | Fire |
| Gilius Thunderhead, a dwarf | Axe | Lightning |
The choice mattered. Edge, looking back at the coin-op in 2003, found the dwarf tougher and the Amazon “blessed with greater magic power”. ACE counted the levels: up to four of earth magic for Ax, six of fire for Tyris and three of lightning for Gilius. Zero put the trade-off more bluntly: Gilius “is best in combat but his magic potential is dismal”.
Magic, mounts and thieves
The magic is a smart bomb. “Magic is effectively a smart bomb, burning, burying or electrifying everything on screen when summoned,” wrote The One. Its strength depends on how many potion jars the player is carrying, and the jars come from small thieves, called elves in some reviews and imps in others, who run across the screen and drop a potion when kicked. Between stages the heroes camp for the night, and the thieves come back to steal what they can. Edge thought it “equally possible to lose precious health or magic tokens while the party sleeps”.
Some enemies ride beasts, and knocking a rider off lets a hero climb on. The Games Machine described “fire-spitting dragons, or a strange creature called a Chicken Legs which whips you with its tail”; a GamePro guide to the Mega Drive version listed three mounts, the tail-whipping chicken-legged beast, a fire-breathing dragon and a dragon that spits fireballs.
The fighting itself was more than a punch button. Edge liked the way the run and jump combined with the attack to give “barges, flying kicks and falling strikes”, which gave a choice of how to deal with a crowd. In two-player mode the heroes can hurt each other: “Not only can you damage the enemy,” Zero warned, “but your partner too.”
Edge’s 2003 retrospective gave the coin-op seven out of ten. It found the game got repetitive, with “fewer and fewer surprises as it advances”, but concluded that “playing as Sega intended — short and sharp — is no bad way to part with ten pence”.
On the Mega Drive
The Mega Drive version came out in Japan at the end of 1989 and reached Britain as an import in early 1990, at around £30. Zero’s review in April 1990 offered a test: “If you were to enclose a Mega Drive in a coin-op cabinet and place the system in an amusement arcade, few people would notice the difference. It really is that good.” ZZAP!64 went further that autumn, telling its readers that “Golden Axe on Megadrive beats the coin-op!”, though “for a price”: the console cost £189.99.
The cartridge added things the arcade did not have. GamePro‘s guide described “a Duel round that lets you battle different enemies one on one in a coliseum, as well as a beginner practice round”. When Sega launched the Mega Drive officially in Britain in the autumn of 1990, Golden Axe was at the top of Mean Machines’ Mega Drive chart: the magazine’s first issue reported that it “has sliced and diced its way to the top”, ahead of Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts and The Revenge of Shinobi.
The home computer conversions
Virgin Mastertronic, which distributed Sega’s consoles in Britain, also held the rights to convert its arcade games. ACE reviewed the results in December 1990, and Neil Young, a software producer at Probe Software, explained the approach: “Our brief was not to enhance or modify Golden Axe, but stay within the limits of the target machine.”
- Amiga: written by the Dementia team, with Richard Costello programming, Kevin Bulmer leading the graphics and David Whittaker adapting the music from the coin-op. Amiga Action reported that the backdrops were drawn by hand rather than digitised, and that the final level, with too many sprites to fit at once, was split in two, making six stages instead of five. ACE thought it “very close to the original coin-op” but found the play repetitive.
- Commodore 64: programmed by Mark Kelly with graphics by Steve Crow. When ZZAP!64 visited Probe’s Croydon office, Kelly said Sega had given them very little to work from, so he played through the whole coin-op while Crow photographed the screens. “Memory is the biggest killer,” he explained, “so we had to make the dragons vanish when you’re hit.”
- Spectrum and Amstrad CPC: programmed by David Shea, with graphics by Jason Green.
In Germany the Amiga version was indexed by the federal office that judged media harmful to young people, which meant it could not be advertised or sold openly. Torsten Oppermann, who worked in marketing at Sega’s German arm, recalled that it was “deemed too violent”.
Sequels
Golden Axe Warrior (1991) turned the series into a top-down adventure for the Master System; Computer and Video Games warned that it was “in fact a sprawling medieval RPG” and gave it 42 per cent. Golden Axe II followed on the Mega Drive in 1991, an arcade sequel, Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, in 1992, and Golden Axe III on the Mega Drive in 1993. Golden Axe: The Duel later turned the series into a one-on-one fighting game. In 2006 Edge reported that Secret Level, a studio Sega had just bought, was making a new Golden Axe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360; it came out as Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
Sources
- The One issue 9, June 1989, p. 90: arcade review (“hydraulic stomach-turners”; the three characters; magic as a smart bomb; dragons and mounts; “a real improvement over Double Dragon”).
- ACE issue 22, July 1989, p. 23: arcade column (Golden Axe, Sega, 30p).
- The Games Machine issue 22, September 1989, p. 25: coin-op preview (the three heroes; lightning, fire and earthquake magic; dragons and Chicken Legs).
- The Games Machine issue 28, March 1990, pp. 30–31: Mega Drive review (£29.99; Chicken Legs; magic jars).
- Zero issue 6, April 1990, p. 74: Mega Drive review (“few people would notice the difference”; Gilius’s magic; damaging your partner).
- Amiga Action issue 12, September 1990, p. 80: preview of the Amiga version (Dementia, Kevin Bulmer, Richard Costello, David Whittaker; six stages instead of five).
- ZZAP!64 issue 65, September 1990, pp. 53–55: visit to Probe (Mark Kelly and Steve Crow’s Commodore 64 version). Issue 66, October 1990, p. 63: “Golden Axe on Megadrive beats the coin-op!” and the Mega Drive at £189.99.
- Mean Machines issue 1, October 1990, p. 50: Mega Drive chart.
- ACE issue 39, December 1990, pp. 30–31: review of the computer versions (magic levels; the programmers and artists; Neil Young of Probe).
- GamePro, Video Game Greatest Hits, 1991, p. 45: Genesis guide (the three mounts; the Duel round and beginner round).
- Computer and Video Games issue 114, May 1991, p. 74: Golden Axe Warrior review (Master System, 42%).
- Computer+Videogiochi (Italy), December 1992, p. 96: Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder among Sega’s new arcade games.
- Edge issue 164, July 2006, p. 55: Golden Axe for 360 and PS3 (Sega; developer Secret Level).
- Edge issue 129, November 2003, p. 111: “Retrotest” of the arcade game, seven out of ten.
- Edge issue 176, June 2007, p. 9: Makoto Uchida’s works, Altered Beast and Golden Axe (arcade).
- Charles MacDonald, “Sega System 16B hardware notes”, 2003 (technical document, web): Golden Axe among the games on the 171-5797 ROM board, with 68000 program code.
- Torsten Oppermann, interview by Sega-16, 21 March 2014 (web, secondary): the Amiga version indexed in Germany. https://www.sega-16.com/2014/03/interview-torsten-oppermann/
- Wikipedia, “Golden Axe (video game)” (web, secondary): release dates; Makoto Uchida; the sequels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Axe_(video_game)