Retro fantasy hack and slash ’em up

Golden Axe Myths is a fan-made tribute to the classic 16-bit era series.

The original Sega game was best known for its two player cooperative mode, seeing you and a friend battling through hordes of fantasy monsters in a pseudo 3D sideways scrolling beat ’em up. Golden Axe Myths continues this action, using the Open BOR engine developed for a fan made version of Streets of Rage.

The action in Golden Axe Myths is just as it always has. You use the cursor keys to move left or right, and into and out of the screen. Each level is a series of battles against groups of enemies, like skeletons, lizardmen and harpies. Everything looks as it should, with blocky but well drawn character sprites.

The gameplay is as basic as ever – Golden Axe Myths is about timing your button mashing attacks. The various enemies do have slightly different attack patterns, but not really enough to provide much variety. Bosses are tougher, but again don’t really require any tactics to beat. The Open BOR engine seems a little unstable, and we found it was sometimes necessary to use the task manager to quit the game. The game folder includes a PDF manual of artwork and instructions.

Criticisms of Golden Axe Myths stem from the original game. If you loved that, there’s plenty to enjoy with this game, and it was obviously created with a lot of love.