Golden Axe

Story & Legacy:

An evil entity known as Death Adder has captured the King and his daughter, and holds them captive in their castle. He also finds the Golden Axe, the magical emblem of Yuria, and threatens to destroy both the axe and the royal family unless the people of Yuria accept him as their ruler. Three Warriors set out on a quest to rescue Yuria and avenge their losses at the hands of Death Adder. The first is a battle axe-wielding dwarf, Gilius Thunderhead, from the mines of Wolud, whose twin brother was killed by the soldiers of Death Adder. Another is a male barbarian, Ax Battler, wielding a two handed broadsword looking for revenge for the murder of his mother. The last is a long-sword-wielding Tyris Flare, an amazon, whose parents were both killed by Death Adder.

All three characters reprise their roles in the console sequel, Golden Axe II. However, by the time of the Revenge of Death Adder arcade game only Gilius Thunderhead is still living due to the magical longevity of his race. By the time of Golden Axe: The Duel, the descendants of the main cast have taken up the mantle to defeat a reincarnated Death Adder. The Golden Axe arcade game also had two RPG follow-ups released for the Master System and Game Gear (Golden Axe Warrior & Ax Battler).

Hardware & Development:

The main developer of Golden Axe and Altered Beast was Makoto Uchida, who had initially been interested in developing a role playing game. As such, some enemy characters overlap between games, such as the Chicken Leg. He drew inspiration from Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' and Robert E. Howard's 'Conan the Barbarian'. Though Golden Axe is a side scrolling fighting games, it does incorporate some limited RPG elements such as character classes and magic use.

The Game ran on a 68000 CPU clocked at about 12 MHz on a custom System 16B board requiring a dedicated cabinet and proprietary wiring harness as the 56 pin JAMMA standard was not yet in wide use. The hardware was nearly identical to that used by ESWAT, Toryumon, and MVP.