Golden Axe (PC Engine CD) Playthrough [English]
339A playthrough of Telenet Japan's 1990 beat 'em up for the PC Engine CD-ROM², Golden Axe.
This video shows the game completed with all three characters. The game was a Japanese-exclusive release, so I've translated and subtitled the cutscenes in English.
Ax Battler 3:08
Tyris Flare 25:50
Gilius Thunderhead 47:37
The PC Engine CD format regularly played host to cutscene-laden adaptations of famous arcade games. R-Type; Strider; and NEC Avenue's 1989 CD take on another of Sega's hits, Altered Beast (https://youtu.be/s4PwJwcm5d8), are particularly notable examples of the trend.
Though the quality of Telenet's output tended to be somewhat uneven, they were responsible for a good number of classics in the late 80s/early 90s, including Gaiares, El Viento, and the Valis and Cosmic Fantasy series. They had the occasional gaffe, but you could usually trust the quality of their stuff.
Golden Axe, an "enhanced" remake of Sega's 1988 arcade brawler classic designed for PC Engine machines equipped with a CD drive and the base system card, turned out to be one such gaffe.
It makes a great first impression. The PC Engine CD conversion features nearly thirty minutes of high-quality, fully voiced cutscenes that do a much better job of establishing the story and characters than the original game's text boxes did. In addition to the opening movie, each of the three heroes has a set of character-specific story sequences that include an intro, a trash-talk scene before the final battle, and an ending. The game also offers up a remixed Redbook soundtrack filled with synthed-out bangers that's a clear upgrade over the arcade game's FM-based music in every respect.
The weight of that first impression is quickly forgotten once the adventure begins, unfortunately. As soon as the first stage loads, it's immediately clear that the gameplay received but a small fraction of resources that had been poured into the cutscenes and music.
There's no sense of impact when landing a hit, the controls are awkwardly lagged, and the moveset has been simplified. You can still dash, swing your weapon, jump attack, cast a spell, and hop on dragons, but you no longer have the ability to hammer away at or throw stunned enemies. You can also cheese every enemy in the game, Death Adder included, by repeatedly dash attacking as they attempt to get back on their feet.
The sound is poor - all of the effects sound like they're coming from an Atari 2600 - and the graphics are rough. There's more color and detail than what was seen in the Master System version, but the heavily letterboxed playfield only fills a bit more than half of the screen, the spell animations are lousy, and some of the spritework is hilariously terrible. Take Tyris, for instance. What did they do to her face?! She could pass for a truck driver with that five o'clock shadow, and she looks a fat middle-aged man with Fabio hair whenever she dashes while riding a dragon. There's no good reason why a PC Engine game, even when held back by the memory limitations of the CD-ROM² standard, should look this much worse than its Genesis/Sega CD counterparts.
This would've easily been the definitive home port had the game lived up to the quality of its window dressing. It clearly did not, but as poor as the game is, the PCE CD-exclusive cutscenes and the awesome music do justice to the source material and are worth checking out for anyone who enjoyed the other, better versions of Golden Axe.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.