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Aaah, the Sega Channel. Home of obscure exclusive awesomeness like Mega Man: the Wily Wars and
Pulseman, as well as clunkers like Nightmare Circus. When the going was getting tough for
16-bit systems in the mid 90s, Sega made the decision to make the third installment in
their well-known Golden Axe series a Sega Channel exclusive... in the US, at least.
Unfortunately, since many regions couldn’t get the Sega Channel (including my podunk
little hometown), the vast majority of the gaming public never got to play it. But in
modern times, Sega have been trying to compensate by jamming it in every compilation, virtual
console, and retrospective they churn out. We finally have a multitude of vectors by
which to play Golden Axe III... but does the game itself stand up?
Remember that thing I said back in the Streets of Rage 3 review? About how beat-’em-ups
around this point in time were kind of a pain because you were usually a pixel too shallow
or deep in the pseudo-3D isometric view? Yeah. Golden Axe III has all of that problem, all
while feeling significantly slower than its urban cousin. After choosing your favorite
***-clad character, including what appears to be a Hill Gigas from Final Fantasy VI,
you’re set off on a quest to retrieve the Golden Axe so the game’s name can mean something.
And then you walk to the right, beat up the standard mobs of xeroxed barbarians, and occasionally
steal their... bipedal... gastropod... things. Which should be a contradiction in terms,
but nothing’s impossible in this interactive Boris Vallejo painting.
While the actual combat is significantly diversified from its predecessors - including dashing
attacks, grapples that can branch off into other attacks, a couple different jumping
strikes, and so forth - it ultimately falls into the pit-traps of the genre: Depth perception
issues, difficulty in move execution (with so many controls tied simply to movement),
a plodding pace not helped in the least by enemies having a smoke-break offscreen where
they can’t be hit, and severe balance issues. I realize that the magic takes fifteen seconds
or so to resolve, and that there’s a certain level of expectation that results from such
a pyrotechnics display, but one-shotting bosses? Really? Golden Axe III would’ve made a fantastic
arcade game, but by the time it hit, arcades were already on their way out of the picture.
So instead, we get what feels like a console port of an ambitious quarter-slurper. It doesn’t
help that it’s often found alongside a number of Streets of Rage titles, a series that took
inspiration from the arcade but was always designed for living-room play. But what Streets
of Rage could never have, of course... are weird gastropod Yoshi knockoffs. That’s
an image that’s gonna stick with me.