Golden Axe (PC Engine CD) Translated Playthrough - NintendoComplete
317A playthrough of Telenet's 1990 beat 'em up for the PC Engine CD-ROM, Golden Axe.
This video shows the game completed with Ax Battler. I have translated and subtitled all of the spoken dialogue to English.
Telenet (Renovation) usually put out reasonably high quality games, and they were responsible for a good number of classics in the late 80s/early 90s. They had the occasional gaffe, but you could usually trust the quality of their stuff.
And then we come to Golden Axe, their port of Sega's classic arcade brawler, for PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 machines equipped with the CD system add-on and the base system card.
Renovation added a few really cool things to this conversion. It has a new remixed soundtrack that streams from the disc, and it sounds really good with its heavy use of 1980s-era synthesizers.There were also a number of story-based cutscenes that were added - a new intro, ending, and unique cutscenes for each character were all included. They looked fantastic and added a lot to the bare-bones story scenes of the other versions.
The gameplay is alright - certainly not as good as the Genesis port, but it plays better than the Master System version. Where this game really falls down is the in-game graphics. I can usually overlook mediocre graphics, but these are beyond poor. The game looks worse than Sega's 8-bit versions with such limited animations and details. The colors are generally bland and dark, and just to add insult to injury, there's a huge border around the screen. What gives? Granted the PC Engine CD with the original system card was badly hobbled by a lack of system memory, but it could manage far better than what Golden Axe pulls. It reeks of laziness (and poorly allocated resources, given the apparent cutscene budget), and the uneven quality really kills the experience.
Trainwreck graphics aside, the exclusive cutscenes are well worth a look for anyone that has played the other versions of Golden Axe - they do justice to the source material and really help to flesh things out.
If only the gameplay was as well done, this would've easily been the definitive home port. As it stands, though, it's a wickedly uneven adaptation of a classic that succeeds in some ways, and falls flat on its face in others. It's a great novelty for fans of the series, either way.
I've never seen any translation of any of this game's unique material, so I thought I'd offer this up for anyone that is interested. I hope you all enjoy it!
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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