If you were playing games in the 1980’s then chances are you played Golden Axe. A 1989 arcade release, it was subsequently ported onto everything electrically powered, from the ZX Spectrum (where I first played it) to LCD handheld, via Megadrive, Master System, and home computers, whilst appearing intermittently on emulators and those sad retro compilations. It is in fact still being released today.

And while it never reached the level of popularity that would have seen a film starring the guy from ‘Terminator 2′ getting released directly to video, it still does the rounds on ‘ironic’ gaming websites and can safely be called a little bit of gaming history.

Several games exist in the franchise, the one of most interest to us being the one-on-one fighter, released by Sega in arcades in 1994 (on Sega’s ST-V arcade hardware) and then ported across, a year later on to the Sega Saturn.

I remember seeing this title running on a Saturn in a shop many years ago. It seems incredible, even now that there was actually a time where Saturns were sold openly, their games, displayed proudly and on sale at affordable, understandable prices - as opposed to the hidden underwater caverns you now have to explore to find them.

Golden Axe: The Duel is an interesting game, advanced for its years in some respects but critically, fatally dated in others. I’m glad I’ve finally got to play it, but it hasn’t changed my world.

Like most games of this era, the SF2 influences are clear - six-button controls, QCFs, charge moves, fireballs, DPs, two-in-ones and those oh-so familiar super combo motions abound. However when you take into account the engine and the fact that almost every character has a weapon, it turns out that the actual game bears as much resemblance to SNK’s early Samurai Shodowns as it does Capcom’s legendary thing-o.

But, it can never really quite make up its mind which camp it wants to belong to - it has the deliberate slowdown/reeling effect that follows a successful hard slash, lengthy recovery times on missed heavy attacks, the recoil of clashing weapons, the strategic zooming camera and the general accuracy of each individual weapons’ collision routine of a SamSho game, but the fast, fluid engine, combo system and character types we’re familiar with from SF2.

It’s this schizophrenic approach that lets the game down. It gives you these big supers, loose combo system, and fluid control scheme, but if you try and take advantage of them, you get killed; the CPU effortlessly dodging your flailings and striking with quick, lethal accuracy.

And it’s this that makes Golden Axe: The Duel so hard, as I found the mindset just wouldn’t stick. Savage barbarians, gruff dwarves, giant monsters and foxy elf warrior maidens don’t poke strategically! You never saw Conan chipping away with low jabs, or Gimli turtling, and Red Sonja certainly didn’t run away to the corner and throw endless projectiles. It’s altogether a more strategic, thoughtful game, belying its brash, cartoony look. Normally I’m a big fan of this sort of gameplay, and although it’s not a complete misfire, I do feel that it just never quite manages to gel together.

The game does make a valiant attempt to inject a bit of “Golden Axe” feel into proceedings; several of the characters and their weapons are recognisable, as are backgrounds and the odd move here and there. Having paid little attention to the series other than the first one I’m probably not the best judge of what’s new and what’s not, although I couldn’t fail to notice the little elf fellows that run around during the fight, the blue ones yielding potions that fill your super meter (the only way to charge it) when hit, and the green ones (who can be switched on or off in the options menu) giving up a tasty piece of life-restoring meat for your character to eat. Off the floor. In the middle of a life-or-death fight.

GATD does show it’s age, at times. There’s no combo meter (the last 2D fighter not to have one?) and there’s a noticeable lack of ‘defensive’ systems - no parrying, Alpha counters, guard-impacting or just-defending … the game is certainly a product of a time where fighting was all about blocking, attacking and uh getting hit.

It’s actually quite refreshing in some senses, although at no point so far has it suggested that there is vast depth, nor scope for improvement to invest time in. One area that the game suffers quite heavily from is the bane of several old fighters - The Curse of Two Moves. It’s strange the way some characters have a wealth of specials at their disposal, but then there are those with but two. But they have loads of useful normals, right?

No.

This renders several of the characters boring in the extreme. Their standing Fierce may well be huge, and damaging … but it’s just tedious having to rely solely on that, over and over again.

Everyone gets the regulation single super, which carries across rounds, whereby after collecting five potions pressing all three punches puts a character into ‘MAX’ mode (lengthy and totally invincible startup pose) - in which a character deals more damage and can perform their super repeatedly until the timer bar in the super meter is emptied.

This sense of of overall simplicity extends beyond the game itself. Aside from the regular options there is no customisation whatsoever, and there are no play modes other than ‘arcade’ and ‘vs’. A training mode would have been welcome, as would some sort of series retrospective/art gallery type thing. It’s old, I’m spoiled, I know.

I’ve never seen the arcade version, but the game seems to be a good enough conversion. Load times are present (this is long before the 4MB RAM cart), but bearable; slowdown, other than the deliberate ‘recoil’ pause is scarce, the large sprites are decently animated and the special effects; beams, explosions, general pyrotechnics etc. all look great.

It’s an aesthetically pleasing game all round, really, the sort of thing that the Playstation wouldn’t really have been able to manage. While nowhere near the level of detail, animation and indeed imagination of a Capcom or SNK game from the same period - it’s still an impressive sight, with some nice effects on the supers, and good detail on the characters.

Sonically it’s less praiseworthy. Much of the music sounds like it comes from a Japanese SNES RPG, and there’s one really great tune and one really horrible one. Voices are decent, the expected ‘clang’ of steel spot on, and the most eunuch-like, inoffensive-sounding announcer possible has been employed, a guy who makes Super Streetfighter 2’s castrato sound like Jesse Ventura.

The cast of characters are an interesting bunch, although not enough reference to the original game (which surely is the only one anybody paid any attention to) is made. “Kain Blade” takes the token shoto barbarian role (whither Ax Battler?); Milan Flare is a descendant of GA’s Tyris Flare - although her ‘busty elf warrior maiden’ shtick isn’t a
patch on Tyris’ “Mighty Amazonian sex goddess pubescent box art wanking material fantasy figure.”

Even the dwarf named Gillius is a descendant - his surname being Rockhead, not Thunderhead. Regardless, he’s still great fun to play, drawn really well, and exuding uh dwarf-ism, he’s probably my favourite character in the game. Aside from second-to-last boss, Death Adder the rest are unfamiliar to me. Zoma is a oft-floating witch-doctor with the ability to turn enemies into frogs, Green is a giant green (!) grappling monster, Doc an Andy Bogard-esque ninja swordfighter, Panchos a huge fat man armed with bombs, Jamm an animal fur-clad little girl and Keel a twin dagger-wielding elf guy. None are especially interesting or appealing, but they do the job.

After beating Death Adder, the final fight of the game is against the Golden Axe itself.

The fight begins with the legendary weapon floating above the ground, before it takes the admittedly unsuspected step of transforming into a huge horned warrior, clad in ornate golden armour with a nice red cape for decoration. Despite possessing several large energy blasts and hit boxes as big as my … arm, Golden Axe lacks the ability to block and as such is no mean feat to defeat.

With nothing at all to unlock and only the short, unimpressive endings for what is a fairly small cast - the game isn’t really conducive for endless replay. Once the novelty of fighting a bunch of Golden Axe characters wears off what we’re left with is a decent, if not exactly ground-breaking weapons fighting game, that looks pretty nice and is certainly not for the impatient.

The game is another welcome addition to my already incredibly smug Saturn collection, but it’s not something I’d go out of my way to play, and as such isn’t really worth the undoubted effort and cost associated with rare Saturn software.

• Publisher/Developer: SEGA
• Score: 80%