A great classic game.
The AMIGA 500 version of Golden Axe is better than the SMS and SEGA GENESIS versions.
It plays like a hack n slash type game.You can select a Barbarian,female warrior or dwarf and you'll travel through the world(represented by straight forward levels)and you'll need to kill every enemy in sight and make it to the castle where the main villain named Death Adder is because Death Adder has taken the King and princess hostage and Death Adder sent his army to conquer the world? and you'll even see village people running away from Death Adder's army.You will see an emotional event at the start of the game caused by Death Adder's army invading everywhere and attacking people.
Besides just hack n slash,you can also use magic but you will need to find magic pots to use magic and you can store magic pots you find to cast some powerful spells that will kill or heavily damage every enemy on the screen.Or you can choose to use magic pots more excessively instead of storing them to do many weaker spells.There's also some minor platforming segments.You can also ride beasts and when you press the attack button they might breath flames or fireballs across the screen or swipe at enemies with it's tail.The enemies will be riding these beasts too but you can knock the enemies off the beasts and use these beasts,but these beasts will run away if they are attacked a certain number of times.Your health is represented by 3 health bars and you have 3 lives.When you character is knocked to the ground by enemy attacks,you'll lose a health bar.It's possible to absorb enemy attacks without losing a health bar,but if you get knocked to the ground by an enemy attack you'll lose a health bar.If you miss a platform jump,you'll lose 3 health bars(an entire set of health bars).You can find food to add more health bars but if you lose a life,you cannot regain it,even if your current life has 3 health bars and you find more food.
The dwarf character is my favorite character because his axe weapon can hit enemies over a wide radius.The female warrior has the strongest magic.I'm not sure what advantages the barbarian has.
Sometimes enemies will come charging at you and you'll need to time your attacks on them.Enemies will try to surround you and attack you from an angle which allows them to hit you without you being able to hit them.
Many of the enemies are slow and easy to dispose of,but they will try to surround you or come charging at you.But eventually tougher enemies will turn up such as skeletons who have curved bladed weapons and can attack you from awkard angles and they attack very fast.There's also ogres who can pound you to the ground with giant hammers or knee you to the ground and make you lose a life bar.There's some giant paladin looking enemies who are very tall and carry long swords who are very tough to kill without powerful spells or beasts.
The game is challenging but beatable.If you're really desperate you can do the trick of selecting a new character right before your character is about to die.
The graphics were great for their time.This version of Golden Axe looks much better than the Master System and Genesis versions.For their time the graphics were colorful and detailed.There's nice medieval towns with log cabins and homes and pubs and barrels and stone paved areas and the castle floor had nice looking stone floor for it's time.There dead tries in the forest made you feel like you were travelling through an area where battles have raged and you'll travel across mountains and on the back of a giant eagle.The enemies near the ocean wear bright blue to match the ocean and the ocean is bright blue.
The spells look powerful or creative.The volcano magic,dragon magic,and lightning magic have different scenes for different levels of their magic(the level of the magic spell depends on how many magic pots you've created).
The game isn't totally serious and dramatic because there's humor in the game too.
The music suited the emotional feeling of despair that the world was going through.
Overall,it's a great version of the great classic game and was an enjoyable experience for me when I was growing up.