What can be said about one of the great sidescrolling fighting games from the 16-Bit era? Not many know that Golden Axe is developed by the same man behind Altered Beast, Makoto Uchida. You choose one of three fighters (a Warrior named Ax, a Dwarf named Gilius and a female Warrior named Tyris, thanks Wiki) and go on a multi level trek across the land (you even ride on a giant turtle at one point) to end the tyranny of Death Adder and his murderous rampage on the land.
Each warrior has different magic (you replenish it by attacking little blue elfs of some sort while you are sleeping between levels). Ax casts Earth spells, Gilius casts lightning and Tyris casts fire magic with each broken up into different levels of intensity depending on how many potions you have gathered from those little midnight camp crashers). You can also ride different creatures in Golden Axe, dragons and even some kind of beaked creature are included. These creatures are just like weapons in other scrolling fighting games, get knocked off three times and they are gone (in other games, you lose a pipe or some other weapon three times and it is gone too). While not the first scrolling game to be released, GA is highly remembered and is respected as one of the better ones that has been released. This genre is seeing a return of sorts with newer games being released (more on those in other reviews here on Pixel 
Perfect Gaming). Golden Axe is the first of many many more to come cross promotion reviews that PPG will be doing with Gamer Network Radio‘s The ESCape Show, which is available on Wednesday nights at 9pm EST.
8 out of 10
Sega for Genesis
1989
Review by TriVerse
Catch the Retro Review on The ESCape Show #88 podcast (podcast archive version available here)
