Golden Axe is a slash 'em up video game initially developed by Sega in 1989 for the arcades and the 16bit console Sega Mega Drive. A year later, a Golden Axe port hit the 16bit home computers Amiga (OCS) and Atari ST.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY You travel through the fictional world of Yuria, to find Death Adder. Death Adder is a warrior who kidnapped the King and the Princess of the land and found the great Golden Axe. He threatens to kill everyone if they don't accept him as a ruler. You can fight through Yuria, facing multiple enemies by choosing one of the three available characters: Gilius the Thunderhead, is a dwarf who lost his brother by Adder's soldiers and he wields a battle axe. Ax Battler is a Barbarian with a strong two-handed sword seeking to avenge his mother's assassination. Tyris Flare is a beautiful but cruel amazon, who can slash everyone in her path with her long-sword. Her parents were killed by Adder's soldiers as well. Apart from each characters main weapons, you can use magic by gathering energy bags from other dwarfs that show up in the game after completing a level and resting on a campfire. The game is absolutely gorgeous, entertaining and fun, especially when played in 2-players mode. You slash and blast foes around, you avoid traps or even ride dragons that spit fire and crash your enemies with their tails. Death Adder's army varies from simple warriors to armed skeletons and other "nice" creatures. Golden Axe is pure fun and looks fantastic even today!
GRAPHICS / SOUND The visuals on the Amiga version are quite good, although the PC (MS-DOS) version -when running on VGA mode- looks crispier and is more close to the original (the coin-op). The Amiga version features smooth sprite animations and background scrolling, 29 colors on screen, daylight changing effects and offers the most of the original arcade details. Sonically, Amiga has the best sound compared to the other 16bit (home computer only) versions, successfully reproducing the original in-game stereo music and the coin-op quality sampled sound effects.
CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHz MEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM. GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once). SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs