So I got the CD port yesterday.
I just thought I'd post a few comments on one of the most often-panned arcade ports on the system (alongside Altered Beast) seeing as how I played through a good majority of the game on my first try. Unlike Altered Beast, which IMHO is unjustly criticized because of it's difficulty, GA doesn't fare so well.
First, the good. The music is great. Awesome. I love it. I challenge anyone to find any shortcomings in this category. The game also has cinemas and intros unique to this port. They remind me quite a bit in style of the Valis III cinemas, and it's no small wonder seeing as how they were done by the same group. They are of good quality, I don't know, maybe even better than the Valis III cinemas. The title screen. Looks really nice, pretty much like the Genesis version. Yeah I know it's a weird thing to comment on, but I'm really grapsing at anything here. Up until this point you think the game is gonna be awesome. You've seen the intro cinema, you've seen the title screen, heard the music... What could possibly be so bad?
Well, let's get into it. Let's start with the in-game graphics. I'd heard rumors the graphics in this game looked like a Master System game. Well that's an exaggeration as they are too good to be found on the SMS. Too many colors, that kind of thing. But just barely. Believe it or not the graphics in this game have fewer colors than the Genesis port which, as runinruder put it, is inexcusable. The detail level is atrocious. The backgrounds are so bland it's not even funny. Everything is in shades of brown or tan, EVERYTHING. Except the green leaves on the trees. Sprites are small and pretty ugly for the most part. Imagine the nicely detailed and superbly shaded sprites in Keith Courage. Now, imagine the opposite of that and that's what you will find in Golden Axe. Better yet, just imagine the sprites found in the sidescrolling-view (the "distant perspective") parts of Genpei Toumaden and run with that idea. While the graphics are pretty bad, the graphics in GT are worse overall, so it's not the worst that I've seen. I might even be able to give the game a pass in this regard if the scrolling and animation didn't blow donkey nuts. This game scrolls more roughly than any other game I've ever played. They would have been better off going the Energy route and just changing the scene when you reached the edge of the screen. What the f*ck happened here? The animation is also horrendous- when you jump the animation of your character flying through the air must have a framerate of about 2 FPS.
For some reason I was expecting the gameplay to suck, which it actually didn't for the most part. All negatives aside, the game is very playable. Much more so than something like Genpei. It's not "perfect" and probably not as good as the Genesis port but once you get past the jittery scrolling and framerate from Hell you get into the groove. I played through quite a bit of the game before I got a Game Over at which point I got hungry so I turned it off and made dinner. I do, however, plan to go back today and play it some more. It's probably worse than any other console port, although I've only played the Genesis one so I can't really make that statement. If a SMS port exists, this version might actually be better. If you're a fan of classic SEGA arcade games however, then GA CD is a must-buy for the cinemas and music alone. Just be prepared for the shockingly bad graphics and scrolling. Although if you're like me, you'll probably find a small piece of yourself become attached to it.
When all is said and done though, I wish NEC Avenue had handled the reprogramming of this one.
