Ah, Golden Axe……. it has been too long, hasn’t it, old friend? How I miss those old days, when I would try out your games, end up becoming absolutely numb to them, and then I would proceed to go onto the internet and talk about how lackluster you are and how much I hated you….. gooooooooood times. I wouldn’t say my experience with the series wasn’t completely terrible though, because after all, there was The Revenge of Death Adder, and that game was fantastic, what with it’s wonderful sprite work and animations, fast paced gameplay, and how the controls actually felt good to handle, so it is clear that this series has the potential to be something great……. they just usually fumble the bag most of the time. But anyway, since it has been a while, I figured it was about time I get back to this series, maybe to even get through the games I have been skipping out on for the longest time, but first, I wanted to take a look at one of the more… odd games in the series, Golden Axe: The Duel.

For those that are unaware, this is an arcade spin-off of the Golden Axe series that takes all of the series characters, along with some new ones, and puts them in a fighting game, working pretty much like your average Street Fighter or Samurai Shodown game. Why was this done at all? I have no idea, but I mean hey, it does seem like it could potentially work. After all, Double Dragon was able to make a fighting game spin-off that was actually fun to play (eventually), and there is potential for a series like Golden Axe to fit in the genre, so I was excited to give this game a shot for myself to see how it was. As to be expected though, what I ended up getting out of this was…… another generic arcade fighting game. It is fun enough for what it is, and I bet huge fans of Golden Axe would be able to have a great time with it, but it is so generic to the point where it completely fades away into obscurity, as there are MANY better options that you could resort to over this.

The story is about as generic as you would expect from a fighting game, where after a whole 80 years since Death Adder’s defeat in the previous Golden Axe games, the mystical Golden Axe is once again discovered, with its wielder being able to bring about another era of death and destruction, so ten different fighters, including faces both old and new, now must face off against each other to see who can claim the mystical item for themselves, which is a fine enough premise, even though it doesn’t make me give any more shits about what goes on in this series then before. The graphics are pretty good, with the environments, characters, and animations looking about as good as they should for a fighter of this era, but it does come off as pretty generic when placed beside any other fighter released around this time, the music is alright, having plenty of decent themes that fit well with the medieval theme and the stages themselves, but none of it really comes off as too exciting or memorable, and the gameplay/control is exactly what you think it is, and while there are some changes to the formula here or there, it doesn’t really change all that much and still comes off just as generic as before.

The game is your typical one-on-one fighting game, where you take control of one of ten different characters, each one being just as generic or weird as the last, take on many different opponents in many different settings that you would see in Golden Axe, such as Generic Town, Generic Castle, and Generic Cave, throw out many different sword swings, deadly projectiles, or what have you depending on what weapon you are wielding, managing to deal plenty of damage to your opponent, make sure to dodge and block properly to take as little damage as possible while gathering plenty of potions along the way, and reign supreme as you prove to the world that you are the most skillful warrior in all the land who deserves to wield the Golden Axe…….. or get your ass kicked by everyone else. It is a song and dance all too familiar with fighting game fanatics and enthusiasts, and for Golden Axe fans, it could even be seen as their perfect wet dream, but for most of us, it can just be seen as something you could play for a bit, have enough fun with, and move onto something else.

Like with Samurai Shodown, instead of having the characters deal out damage with their feet and fists, each character wields a different type of weapon that they use on the battlefield, such as swords, spikes, magic, and so on, and while this could be seen as the thing that inevitably pulls me in, especially with how much I do love what I have played of Samurai Shodown, this one just barely falls short of that mark. Why that is all boils down to not just to the impact of your own attacks, which is somewhat lacking, but also to the speed of fights, with them definitely not feeling as fast or smooth as that of Samurai Shodown, feeling more heavy in comparison, not to the point where I would say it feels as stiff as, say, the original Street Fighter, but just enough to where it makes me long for games like SSFIIT.

There aren’t that many other unique elements that can be seen with the game either when you take that out of the equation, except for how Super Moves are handled. Like with the main Golden Axe games, there will be an elf that sometimes runs into the battlefield, and if you hit him, you will be able to gain potions from him that will power up your super meter, until you are able to unleash the super move that would be able to turn the tides of a match. This is a neat idea and all, and it definitely makes it feel like it is a Golden Axe game, but this mechanic could’ve been done a whole lot better, what with how often these elves can come out, how much potions you can get from them, and how your opponent can swipe them from you, to the point where I didn’t feel like trying to get supers a lot of the time……… even though I probably wouldn’t be able to do most of them, let’s be real.

Aside from all that though, there really isn’t anything more I can say about The Duel that you haven’t already heard about a million other fighting games. It’s a simple enough arcade fighter where you fight a bunch of people, pull off some super moves, battle an end-game boss, and that’s all she wrote. There are different endings for each character, but I wouldn’t say they would be worth playing through the game over and over again just to get them all. Not to mention, we got a case of fighting game syndrome here, where the fights will get much harder as you keep going, to where unless you know how to abuse the fuck out of your character’s moves and techniques, then you aren’t gonna stand a chance against what is coming up in later fights. Of course, it is still perfectly do-able, but much like with a lot of these old-school fighting games, you better be ready to get knocked down a million separate times before you are able to come out on top as the victor.

Overall, despite some neat ideas for mechanics that are sprinkled in here or there, there isn’t that much more I can say about Golden Axe: The Duel’s quality, as it is just a very average fighting game from the arcades, one that has all of the mechanics, quirks, and fun moments you could get from a game like this, but there isn’t enough here to make me want to play it over the many other choices that had come out beforehand, especially not the fact that it is a Golden Axe fighter either. I guess I could recommend it for those who are huge fighting game fanatics, as well as those who are huge Golden Axe fans, but just don’t go into it expecting a masterpiece or anything like that, because really, it is aaaaaaaanything but. Oh well, at least they learned their lesson after this game, with there being no other Golden Axe fighting games after this, and now that I finally got this game over and done with, I can move onto those other, obscure Golden Axe titles that I skipped out on………….. in, like, 8 years, when I feel like it.

Game #614