Ultimate Guide: Golden Axe: The Revenge Of Death Adder
YOU WAIT ALMOST 30 YEARS FOR A HOME CONVERSION OF GOLDEN AXE: THE REVENGE OF DEATH ADDER TO COME ALONG, AND THEN TWO ARRIVE AT THE SAME TIME. WE CELEBRATE BY JUMPING ON A FIRE-BREATHING MANTIS AND BURNING SOME BAD SORTS
Now it’s more easily available, Martyn Carroll explains why you should seek out Sega’s ambitious Golden Axe follow-up
Sega’s sequel to its smash hit brawler Golden Axe barged into arcades in September 1992, running on the powerful System 32 hardware that was to be the final iteration of the famous Super Scaler series. Conversions were anticipated – it was a step beyond the 32X add-on, but the Saturn would have surely handled it – yet no home version appeared.
That finally changed last year, first with the release of Arcade1up’s replica cab, which was headlined by Golden Axe: The Revenge Of Death Adder (RODA) and also featured the original Golden Axe plus Altered Beast, Shinobi and Wrestle War. Then in December, Sega’s Astro City Mini launched in Japan
(you can read a review of the system on page 100) and included RODA in its impressive 37 game roster, alongside three other
System 32 games: Rad Mobile, Dark Edge and Arabian Fight. This tiny device deserves huge praise for finally showcasing these titles as the System 32 could be called Sega’s ‘lost’ generation. In the early Nineties it was quickly overshadowed by Sega’s own
Model 1 system and the emergence of true, polygonal 3D titles like Virtua Racing and
Virtua Fighter. And it has remained in the dark due to the lack of faithful home conversions (and yes, that includes Gale Racer, the pared back Saturn port of Rad Mobile).
Of all of the unconverted System 32 games,
RODA is probably the most disappointing – and baffling. This was, after all, the sequel to one of Sega’s most successful, universally loved games that was a hit in the arcades and at home. The popular Mega Drive conversion received its own follow-up, Golden Axe II,
in 1991, but this was a quick rehash rather than a brand-new quest. For RODA, original designer Makoto Uchida returned with the clear objective of ramping everything up to borderline ridiculous levels. And the result was one of the best beat-’em-ups of the Nineties.
The game featured a roster of four new adventurers (only Gilius Thunderhead returned, albeit as a sidekick riding on Goah the giant’s shoulders), and all four could be played simultaneously. Each character was now blessed with extra attacks, including special moves and a hidden finisher (dash, jump, then pull down and attack a felled enemy, in case you were wondering). In
multiplayer you could also team up with other characters to perform a powerful tag-team finisher. Rideable creatures returned, and they too had new moves, plus the ability to carry weapons. So you could be playing as Goah, riding on a giant stinging scorpion while catapulting flaming rocks, as Gilius casts petrifying magic. Throw in three other players and an army of enemies to hack through, and you’ll appreciate how brilliantly over-the-top the game could be.
The sequel also addressed criticisms levelled at the original that it was too short and lacked replay value. Each stage – or ‘scene’ – was now much longer, and there were branching paths which meant that you visited five of the seven scenes during each playthrough (the US version tweaked this, forcing you to play all seven scenes, resulting in an even longer game). On top of all the gameplay improvements, the game looked far better than the original. The characters were larger, more detailed and benefitted from extra frames of animation. In short, the sprite work was phenomenal and it was easily one of the best-looking 2D games of its era. Uchida and his team also deserve credit for using the System 32 hardware to deliver great visual fidelity and performance, and not going full-tilt boogie with the scaling and zooming effects. There were several into-the-screen sections, and sometimes things get flung at the screen, typically for comedic effect, but it was nowhere near as disconcerting as fellow System 32 brawler Arabian Fight.
“Original designer Makoto Uchida returned with the clear objective of ramping everything up to borderline ridiculous levels”
The game’s visuals were highlighted in the first Western review that appeared in the December 1992 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. “To say that the game is graphically intense would be a gross understatement,” commented the US mag in its 8/10 review. “Quite simply, one must see it to believe it. The four-player option makes a great game ever better. All in all, a great follow-up to a classic game.” In the UK, Sega Zone was less enthusiastic when it played the game at London’s ATEI show in 1993, calling it “more of the same” and awarding it 3/5. This comment was perhaps not just a reflection on the game, but brawlers in general, as there was a consensus that the genre had been flogged to death by this point.
The name of the game seemed to cause confusion. Sega Zone called it ‘Golden Axe
2’, while EGM called it ‘Golden Axe 3’! To confuse matters further, later in 1993 Sega released Golden Axe III as a Mega Drive exclusive, initially only in Japan. This was not a conversion of RODA, but it clearly borrowed a few ideas, including a fresh cast of combatants, new attacks and branching paths. The scenes set in a desert and on a ship were also similar to the ‘Gate’ and ‘Pier’ scenes found in RODA.
The series returned to the arcades in
1995 with the release of Golden Axe: The Duel. It would be this ill-advised one-on-one fighter that was ported to the Saturn, which wasn’t surprising seeing as the arcade game essentially ran on Saturn hardware. It was an easy port in other words, which is something
that couldn’t be said about RODA and the other System 32 games. In recent years, remaster specialist M2 has revealed just how difficult it is to port Sega’s later Super Scaler games to home systems, even when in possession of the original source code. To give you an idea, it took the team two years to convert Galaxy Force to the PS2, and they nearly threw in the towel trying to port Thunder Blade to the 3DS. And these were games running on hardware that wasn’t as advanced or as extravagant as System 32.
Due to the lack of official conversions, gamers have turned to emulators like Modeler and MAME to get their fix. The video emulation on MAME isn’t 100% faithful (this is most noticeable in
RODA’S ‘Cave’ scene), but the games are still playable. Happily we now have the Arcade1up cab and the Astro City Mini tabletop available, and we’re pleased to pass on reports that the emulation on both devices is accurate. For true fans of RODA the Arcade1up cab certainly makes a statement, standing almost five feet tall (a foot shorter that the original cab) and featuring accurate reproductions of the control panel, side art and marquee. The monitor is smaller however, at 17 inches compared to the original’s 25-inch display. The Astro City Mini obviously has a far smaller 4.8 inch screen, but the device comes with HDMI output for connecting to a display of your choice.
The hope is that now the game has finally made it home, and the emulation issues have been ironed out, we could see it released for other systems. Would it be unreasonable to expect a System 32 collection from Sega, headlined by RODA and including other ‘lost’ titles like Outrunners, Stadium Cross and
Segasonic The Hedgehog? If licences were sorted it could also include Spider-man: The Videogame, Alien 3: The Gun and Jurassic Park. Come on Sega, don’t make us wait ages.
“You could be playing as Goah, riding on an giant stinging scorpion while catapulting flaming rocks, as Gilius casts petrifying magic”