#9 GOLDEN AXE

You know what I REALLY hate, giant ghostly dragon heads!...There's one right behind me...isn't there?

Gold all up in my Chicken Leg.

Here we stand at the precipice of an important moment in this blog and this quest. This is the birthplace of a Sega franchise. A big one at that, one many people closely associate with the console itself. Now it's true that pretty much everything we’ve played so far has been a Sega game and many have been part of a Sega franchise. What makes this one unique is its popularity and its continuing, albeit somewhat diminished, presence as a Sega staple. The most recent Golden Axe game came out on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

The Genesis itself would get three games in this series, though the last one only saw a brief release in the US through an online service. And sadly, the best installment of this series never saw a console port. But we will get to these things later. With installments on the Master System and Game Gear, Golden Axe is definitely a staple of Sega and is closely identified with the Genesis.

How well does it hold up though?

Firstly let me say beat em ups are one of my favorite genre. In single player or multiplayer, they are one of the most addicting and enjoyable experiences I’ve had with video games. So by genre alone, I already have a softspot for this one.

That said I wouldn't call Golden Axe my favorite. Another Sega beat-em-up franchise claims that place in my heart. But this one is certainly a worthy starting point and in many ways a great introduction to the genre.

You play as one of three warriors - the thunder wielding dwarf Gilius Thunderhead with your mighty axe, the amazon Tyris Flare, or the barbarian warrior Ax Battler. Your mission is to rescue the King and Princess from the clutches of the invading Death Adder, who has killed your friends and family. Each of you has a slightly different balance of abilities. Gilius is the strongest but his magic is the weakest. Tyris has the strongest magic, and Ax is balanced. In addition each of you has a gamut of spells powered by blue “jars” (they call them jars they are clearly bottles). Gilius uses lighting, Tyris fire, and Ax has earth related powers like quakes. The animation on this is very cool for a very early Genesis title.

My favorite magic animation in the game.

The difficulty level can be just a bit cheap at times on single player, which is why I recommend starting off by increasing your health bar in options before your first venture and if you want to master the game reduce it back to normal once you get some crowd control strategys down. Crowd control is really the kick to these early beat em ups.

If you wait a bit at the title screen you get to see these really awesome sketches.

One of the major selling points of the Genesis version of the game is that it featured a bonus level and new ending not found in the arcade version. This new last level is interesting- multiple pit falls could be the end of you or it could work to your advantage depending on your skill. However, the new end boss, Death Bringer, is a very cheap fight and even when I’m at my best it's usually a game of just having enough lives left over to kill him before he kills me.

If I have any other complaints its that the tactics in this game can sometimes get monotonous. Jumping attacks have to be used a bit too frequently compared to standard moves. But the worst is a running lunge attack performed by double tapping in the direction of movement to run, and then slamming the attack button which will cause the character to headbutt or perform a flying kick depending on who you are playing as. It's actually a cool technique. The problem is for some of the boss fights this is the only safe way to dispatch them, and performing this technique over and over can be repetitive.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Golden Axe. Its not my favorite beat-em-up on the console by any stretch but its a great place to start and the campy silly Conan the Barbarian flavor makes it an enjoyable adventure, especially with a friend. I look forward to watching this series evolve over the course of its future installments.

Surely Revive: I still like Golden Axe more for its theme than for its actual gameplay. I think, too, beat-em-ups as a genre have fallen a little lower on my list of favorite genres. One series in particular was so good it both colored and spoiled my view of the genre. Golden Axe is one I like to replay from time to time for its old 80s fantasy style and for its place as a classic arcade game, but my complaints about repetitive tactics and the last boss being a war of atrition still stand. I think in some ways this game shows my changing tastes more than the others I reviewed despite my overall opinion being similar.

#8 FORGOTTEN WORLDS

It so IS camouflage! We go to a lot of bright blue and orange places!

I hate it when that happens. Chillin on the couch and tiny muscle men open up your chest cavity with a rocket launcher. Ugh. Mondays...

Often times the beauty of an arcade cabinet is in its unique creativity. While there are some standard forms we see often in terms of their layout, most machines that are not multicarts like an SNK Neo-Geo unit are designed to play just one game. The artwork and design of the cabinet can therefore be curtailed to match that game specifically, making an arcade cabinet a work of art before you even start to play it. But one of the most interesting ways this can be implemented is in the control scheme.

A home console generally has a standard controller used for 90% or more of its library. It comes packed with the console, and you probably keep it plugged in all the time. Other controllers may be released like light guns and such but for the most part, you stick to that standard controller design. Arcade cabinets however can change how a game is played in any way the developer wants, and many cabinets have taken advantage of this, like the stationary machine gun on Operation Wolf, or the centipede trackball.

Forgotten Worlds was an arcade cabinet with a unique design, similar to those seen in games like Ikari Warriors. The game plays as a shoot em up, where you control a human being with some sort of jet pack like propulsion, carrying a gun. A satellite also follows you that fires special weapons. What made this shooter unique in arcade’s was that you could twist the control stick to change the direction of fire. While the game was mostly horizontally scrolling, you could - and in fact needed to - fire in many different directions to clear enemies off the screen who would leap on you from everywhere.

I personally like how plain metal the twisting knobs are. It gives them the same gritty DIY feel as the game.

Now the problem with arcade cabinets that have unique controllers is they may lack something in translation when they are brought over to home consoles. Virtual On, for example, used a twin stick design that wasn’t implemented on home console controllers prior to the Playstation 1 Dualshock analog controller. As a result, its Saturn port suffered in the controls department.

Forgotten Worlds easily could have suffered from this same problem, the same way that Ikari Warriors on NES did. It does not, however, much to my delight. In fact this is such a simple concept that I don’t understand why I should provide leniency to similar games that lack this option.

While it takes some getting used to and it isn’t the default setting, Forgotten Worlds gives you the option to simply have firing the gun be automatic. And why not? Rarely is there a time in a shmup when you won’t be firing. So why bother needing to press a button to do it if your just going to hold it down anyway? Instead the B button is left alone under this option, and A and C pivot the character clockwise and counterclockwise. Again this takes some getting used to and possibly an adjustment to the speed in which this happens (which is also in the options menu) but its such an obvious move its hard to fathom why many top down shooters that also used this scheme in their cabinets didn’t implement this in their home ports. Clearly I’m excited about this. I spent over five hundred words now talking about it.

So how does the rest of the game fair? Pretty well! The bosses are interesting, the game play is solid, and their is a pretty unique risk versus reward shop system for buying upgrades to your weapons and armor. I also love that there is a health bar. I know this would make the genre much less “hardcore” but having these at least as an option more frequently would make shoot em ups much more enjoyable and accessible to me.

My favorite boss! Unfortunately it is an early one and they aren't all this epic.

The story revolves around two guys fighting to free the world from some recently arrived possessive god-like entities that have taken over the Earth in the distant future. As such the game really focuses on multiplayer - and here is where a few flaws come in.

Firstly, the difficult of the game on single player gets very steep. I mean very steep. Near impossible. With the pivoting motion you can make to fire in every direction, it's clear at certain points they wanted one player to fire in one direction, while player two fires in another - something you just can’t do with one player so grab a buddy. But once you do grab a buddy, this otherwise epic shooter turns into a rental.

Many of these classically hard arcade action games had respawn codes to make the game easier by basically bringing your lives up to infinity. But they were just that - codes. Technically secret, albeit not so much now in the age of the internet. But Forgotten Worlds just skips over the middle man here. When you are playing a two player game, if either player dies simply pressing start will respawn them instantly. This not only makes the game incredibly easy to beat in one session, it eliminates the need to even upgrade any of your gear. Standard shot and no life upgrades will still see you through as long as you press start each time you croak.

My rule with most games is if the manual or the game itself says I can do it it is not cheating. Playing at lower difficulty perhaps - but cheating is reserved for exploiting secret codes, glitches, debug modes, or external hardware and software like a game genie. Not only does the manual say you can do it, but the game will offer this ability to you as a power up.

For a large chunk of in-game currency you can buy the ability to do this in a single player game. It even describes the power up as granting you 2nd player ability.

This is so easy to exploit though its not even worth the cost. You can play on two players by yourself, just pressing start on the other controller quickly when the second character dies, and exploit the hell out of this to complete the game.

Of course nothing is forcing you to do this - but it's just one button. If you wanted to you could of course take your hits and die like a warrior rather than using this clearly naturally granted ability. None the less, this does take a lot of the challenge and risk out of a game of Forgotten Worlds. Which otherwise, is a solid and unique shooter from Sega’s very early Genesis lineup.