Ultimate Guide: The Legendary Axe
ULTIMATE GUIDE
John Szczepaniak is here and hopes you’ll love this Turbografx-16 curiosity as much as he does
Readers in Europe will know of the PC Engine by NEC and Hudson, thanks to a small but passionate importing crowd (especially in France). Over its lifespan the system received several major classics. What is perhaps less known is the Turbografx-16, its rebranded US equivalent with a distinctly American following, magazine coverage, and localised release schedule. Interestingly there’s no precise consensus on the exact day the Turbografx-16 and its earliest games launched, but sometime between August and November 1989 it received the following line-up: Alien Crush, Blazing Lazers, China Warrior, Dungeon Explorer, Keith Courage In Alpha Zones, R-type, Victory Run and Vigilante. It was a strong collection covering the most popular genres of the time. In that list was also The Legendary Axe (hereafter TLA), arriving end of August or early-ish September. As we’re about to show, it was a phenomenal showcase for NEC’S new hardware.
The Japanese PC Engine release of TLA, known as Makyou Densetsu, came out a year earlier on 23 September 1988. In many ways TLA exemplifies that wonderful epoch of the 16-bit generation when a small Japanese team from a minor developer could punch above its weight to produce something distributed and acclaimed internationally, competing and succeeding on the world stage, yet remaining deeply enigmatic. Not only is there no consensus on its US release date, but there’s conflicting citations of which company actually created it. Japanese Wikipedia claims Aicom, and some of its development staff did later work on games credited to Aicom, but neither the game itself, nor manual, nor old magazines, nor various websites cite anything other than Victor Musical Industries.
The team was small, only around nine people; two of the programmers doubled up as the only credited testers (keep this in mind when contemplating the difficulty). Many of the staff never had credits beyond the Nineties, reflecting the consolidation of Japan’s games industry with each successive generation. Lead designer Tokuhiro Takemori previously worked on Robowarrior at Hudson and later created TLA’S true successor The Astyanax for arcades in 1989 (see boxout). Afterwards he made Avenging Spirit and then vanished. Co-designer Keisuke Abe immediately afterwards created the Bonk franchise and rose to fame. Programmer Mamoru Shiratani would program TLA’S
WHILE EUROPEAN READERS MIGHT NOT NECESSARILY RECOGNISE THIS, OUR US AUDIENCE DEFINITELY SHOULD. ACTIONPLATFORMERS WERE UBIQUITOUS IN 1989, BUT THE LEGENDARY AXE HOLDS A SIGNIFICANT MULTIAWARD-WINNING POSITION AS ONE OF THE TURBOGRAFX-16’S FINER LAUNCH TITLES. IT’S SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST RASTAN WORDS BY JOHN SZCZEPANIAK
pseudo-sequel and see multiple credits for decades. Composer Jun Chikuma did a fine job making TLA’S soundtrack almost as memorable as Castlevania’s, then went on to carve a niche composing for seemingly every
Bomberman ever. The rest of the staff were like dust in the wind.
When Makyou Densetsu landed in September 1988 the PC Engine had been out in Japan just shy of a year and its portfolio was shockingly anaemic. Less than 20 games were available and we’d challenge any reader to claim much more than R-type or Alien Crush as being especially good. Despite filling an urgent void the reception at Japanese magazines was mixed: Famitsu scored it 7/7/7/5 (26/40), with one of the reviewers clearly displeased; though they did give it a two-page preview in the earlier issue
54. PC Engine Fan scored it 21/30, which is reasonable but nowhere near the acclaim it would find in America. Japan’s reaction might seem surprising until you realise 1988 was still the era of Famicom – Dragon Quest III captured the nation’s heart that year while rival systems were only just starting to shake Nintendo’s hegemony. Though in fairness,
Famitsu also only gave the Famicom port of
Bionic Commando 26/40 in a preceding issue.
Roughly a year later TLA would be localised and enjoying much praise amidst the Turbografx-16 launch. Electronic Gaming Monthly scored it a spectacular 9/8/8/8, with both Ed Semrad and Jim Allee stating TLA is how Rastan should have been; EGM scored the Sega Master System port of Rastan a meagre 6/6/6/6 on the preceding page. TLA was the highest scored game that issue. In December EGM voted TLA the Best Game Of The Year on Turbografx-16; Ninja Gaiden was the Nintendo category winner, Wonder Boy III was Sega’s, while the overall agnostic winner was the Sega Genesis conversion of
GIANT TARANTULA
This optional mini-boss graces the cover on both the Japanese and US versions of the game, and relinquishes the first Power Supply – do not skip it!
Just jump and attack. The webbing it shoots can be dispatched with your axe. Every few strikes some legs go flying – awesome!
CAVE MEN
It’s just two recycled Cave Men in an enclosed arena. The game technically classes it as a mini-stage on its own calling it: Zone 4A.
You fought one of these guys in the previous level’s waterfall area (or maybe two if you ran past). Now it’s a pincer attack!
DEMON GIANT
In Japan these were called ‘Maneki Guma’ meaning bear – we’re guessing the US manual calls them demons due to conflating with ‘akuma’.
You fight two! You might win without the Tarantula power-up, but you really want those charged strikes. Try to manoeuvre both to one side.
PUNJABBI
We’re not being racist here – shockingly, the US manual calls these two javelin-throwing bosses Punjabbi. The Japanese manual calls them Gous.
Immediately move left and attack with full charge. The right-side boss stays in his area unless you’re in the middle. Never fight both together.
GIANT BOULDER
This is different to the regular brown boulder that directly precedes it. This one is glowing green, is seemingly possessed and follows you!
Don’t strike as it approaches. Use the vine and try to attack as it moves away. After it turns into a regular boulder keep on hitting it until it crumbles!
JAGU (FIRST FORM)
Online guides refer to him as ‘Panda’ but both manuals clearly name this three-eyed chubby loincloth-wearing weirdo as Jagu.
His fireballs will never disappear on their own, so strike them all. Allow your axe to charge and hit him right after he teleports for good damage.
AQUA LUNG
The first really challenging boss, until you’ve worked out the pattern. Annoyingly this battle starts with a Nomad following you.
It’s very unlikely to hit you while ducking – keep low! Observe its pattern. Stay at the screen edge to avoid fireballs, or strike them.
JAGU (COMBINED FORM)
Right before the fight you can see the chubby boss run across the screen then assimilate himself by absorbing other enemies and morphing into this.
Thankfully, he only has one attack: jumping in an arc with his leg lowered! Move only when he jumps high, attack only when fully charged.
Ghouls ’N Ghosts. Issue 13 of Videogames & Computer Entertainment, also awarded it 1989 Game Of The Year. On page 45 it took pride and place, VG&CE editors were enamoured with its “next-generation” quality and stating it “surpassed all other comers to win”. This isn’t hyperbole when you consider most of the other winners that year were for the NES, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, A Boy And His Blob, Mega Man 2, and Zelda II
taking genre specific categories. Ghouls ’N Ghosts on Genesis took the best arcade conversion award.
Three times so far we’ve mentioned Rastan
– the 1987 Taito arcade action platforming epic which riffed heavily on Robert Howard’s
Conan creation. It’s worth addressing that while TLA uses the established barbarians and steel theme, it is no more derivative of Rastan than it is of Rygar, Black Tiger, or innumerable other similar games. Importantly,
TLA does enough to stand apart from its contemporaries. It’s no surprise it scored highly and won GOTY accolades.
If we’ve taken this long to describe the game itself, it’s because TLA is best savoured in contemplation of the contextual framework that formed it. Today the game is almost forgotten, never re-released on digital platforms such as the Wii, passed over for the PC Engine Mini collection, and inaccessible unless you own the original Hucard or emulate it. Sad irony then that emulation is a poor way to experience TLA – this is a thinking man’s action-platformer, and brute-forcing your way through with save-states and hexediting will neuter the genius of its design.
There’s a surprising level of depth and nuance, especially compared to similar games launched alongside it. The core mechanic revolves around collecting Power Supply icons, lighting four slots at the top of the screen to facilitate five levels of attack strength. Without collecting any your power remains at minimum; each one collected expands the bar by a quarter. The gauge rapidly recharges, but swinging your weapon depletes its entirety (the exact system later
found in Seiken Densetsu on Game Boy and then Secret Of Mana).
Newcomers find TLA difficult because the urge is to thrash madly – but resist this, calm down, let the power gauge charge, and use slow deliberate movements. An enemy needing multiple strikes at zero power might need only one at half-bar. If you panic and die your gauge is reduced by one-quarter (it’s a bit like Gradius – you want to collect powerups then play carefully).
Often progress is restricted by combat barriers which are almost like lock-andkey puzzles requiring patience and enemy observation. You can imagine it benefitting strategy guides (one was released in Japan) and playground banter. Zone 5 even has a side-scrolling maze to navigate – it’s not too complicated, but it’s a lot more than went into other Turbografx-16 games back then. Remember that ‘launch’ list at the start?
China Warrior, Keith Courage and Vigilante are all similar but shallower experiences, even if they looked and sounded impressive for the time. TLA might not have the open-world RPG mechanics of Battle Of Olympus, but the tightly refined combat and light exploration elevated it above its peers, at least for a time (about eight months after TLA’S Japan release
Golden Axe hit arcades).
While TLA would be superseded by more ambitious games on stronger hardware, it still remains as an alluring historical landmark in gaming and, for a certain group of Americans, the title that defined their 1989.