♥Golden Axe Myth♥

I like to visit Golden Axe's grave to put down some flowers now and then and to share some stories about how great Golden Axe used to be before they fucking killed it.

Fucking...

...killed it.

People never understand why I hate everything. Why I can never just like a thing or even take something they like and shit all over it. The answer is simple: Sega. Imagine growing up with amazing games like Shining Force, Phantasy Star and, of course, Golden Axe. You probably can't, because none of that stuff was made by Nintendo. You lucky fuckers.

Let's take a more popular example: Sonic The Hedgehog. You can play any of the old 16bit Sonic games and they're still fantastic. Look at any Sonic game that came after and they're all super shit. Granted, their latest kart racer and Generations make exceptions to this rule. They were so good, people found it difficult to believe Sonic didn't suck for once. Still, "Something must be wrong, this game isn't shit" doesn't exactly speak for the quality of the series.

Now imagine the same thing happening to just about every video game you ever cared about as a kid.
With the of release Beast Rider I simply couldn't take it anymore. One of the greatest ever beat 'em up games turned into prehistoric porn. Figures - Shining Force went from tactical role playing to awful Diablo-clone. How it went from there to portable dating sim is entirely beyond me. Oh, if you read that article, make it a fun drinking game and have a shot whenever you read "the player".

How did we go from this...

...to that? What the fuck HAPPENED, Sega?

Anyhow. Let's just say I stopped following all things Sega, as I was clearly no longer part of their target audience. And with their shit off my radar, I've ignored everything, including a really cool fan project, which had been finished sometime in 2011.

It was only yesterday when I tripped upon that game. I was watching a couple let's play videos on Youtube showing off some of the world's most awful games. And in one of the videos you could see the guy's explorer and there was a file in there. GoldenAxeMyth.rar or something. Made me curious, so I googled it. Holy fuck.

It's Golden Axe and it's better than the original.

Golden Axe Myth is a fan-made prequel, which is really, insanely good. The visuals are different, it's faster-paced, more violent than what you might know from the good old days, but it's still incredibly, undeniably Golden Axe.

The game had some fun surprises in store for me, one of which was the roster of playable characters: Death Adder, the main bad guy in most other Golden Axe games, happens to be one of Myth's main heroes. You almost wouldn't recognize him without his trademark helmet and the golden axe. I didn't know Myth was set in a time before the original Golden Axe, so the whole thing was a bit confusing until explained by the story. What a fucking cool idea! Death Adder has always been that generic, faceless bad guy and Myth gives you an insight on what might have been before he turned into the archdouche of slaughter. Him starting off as a hero is plausible, not overly far-fetched and the idea was simply brilliant. Kudos!

Ooo NOW I recognize you!

Combat actually feels better in Myth than it did in the original. One problem with most fan-made remakes of old 16bit games is how they never get the controls right. Myth works really well with a controller (or four controllers in multiplayer!) adds double-jumps, a handful of special moves and makes everything a bit more fluid and modern. It's a huge improvement over Golden Axe 1 and 2 and less awkward than Golden Axe 3's slightly more complex fighting system. No more pressing multiple buttons at once to pull off certain special attacks, no more ridiculously powerful special moves, which make every other attack obsolete. And there's a block button now. Yay!

They've added plenty more dragons to ride around on, as well as golems, toads and a few other freaky mounts. Unfortunately, some of them seemed a bit broken and glitchy on my playthroughs. The red dragon would regularly freeze up and refuse to move, the toad only moves with the help of the jump button and most of them aren't really very helpful in combat - they make things more difficult, if anything. Attack and Defense power pickups are another new addition and allow you to power up your hero - at least until you die and drop your powerups again.

There are also a few secret areas in every level, which contain loot, treasure and even a hidden character:

Somewhere between Golden Axe 3 and Myth, Chronos got incredibly beefy.
The custom sprites and assets used in Myth are nothing short of amazing. All the heroes and baddies look incredible and are full of personality, with the exception of Tyris Flare's sprite.

The eyebrows, proportions, pose... it's all a bit weird.

Still, a big fuck you to all the whiners, who complain about the game's style and the characters being too cartoony and exaggerated. This:

is clearly an improvement over that:

Besides, Sega were already going there, anyway. You know, just in case you're not aware of Golden Axe - The Duel:

Unlike most other fan projects, those guys have created all the characters and sprites from scratch, instead of just ripping off existing games. There's a whole lot of fan-remakes for all kinds of beat 'em ups, from Double Dragon to Streets of Rage and many of them just use stolen artwork and character sprites from games like King of Fighters. Heck, the Golden Axe fan projects that came before Myth did the exact same thing. 

Golden Axe Myth also comes with its own soundtrack, which consists mostly of re-mixed tunes from the original games, which range from catchy to awful. My main problem with the soundtrack is that I still remember every single tune these re-mixes are based upon and unfortunately, the Myth versions rarely do the original justice. Many of them completely skip over the best parts and just endlessly repeat the first half of the original tunes.

Still, at least they didn't just rip the original Mega Drive tunes and threw them in there in horrible quality. Some other fan projects have done exactly that.

The game has a few warts here and there. All the ingame text is pretty bad and full of typos and grammatical mistakes. Enemies occasionally drop keys (which you lose upon death), but I can't for the life of me figure out what they're for - and it refuses to tell me. Same with gold. You find gold in chests, but there don't seem to be any shops. There's also a load game feature, yet high scores, unlocked characters and progress are actually never saved. 

There's also the matter of difficulty. I've beaten the entire game on my first playthrough. There's some replay value, thanks to the various playable characters and some alternative paths here and there. There's a ton of baddies and boss monsters but my biggest enemy in this game comes in the form of bottomless pits. Some levels feature a few ridiculous jumps and it doesn't help that the pits are usually surrounded by annoying flying enemies, who have the nasty habit of pushing you down there. What's worse, there is one particular level where you traverse said pits via moving platforms. If you happen to die there, it's entirely possible to respawn and instantly die again, because your character will reappear where a moving platform had been and gone a second ago.

Most of these problems went away when I got the hang of double-jumping, but I'd rather have problems defeating certain bosses than holes. And once you are joined by one or more friends, the whole thing turns into the proverbial cakewalk.

I don't want to be too harsh criticizing this game. It's made by Golden Axe fans, it costs absolutely nothing and it's simply a lot of fun to play. So, if you've actually bothered to read all this crap until all the way down here, you might as well go, download it and see for yourself.

-Cat