Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Playthrough with Gilius Thunderhead. So, Golden Axe. I've never done a one credit clear of this before, mainly because I don't like it that much. The problem for me was that I played the Streets of Rage games first, and when I eventually got to Golden Axe, I thought it was nowhere near as good as those. I can specifically remember playing the Genesis/Mega Drive port of the first game and getting really pissed off at how cheap the skeletons were.
When I saw it was on the Astro City Mini I decided to give it another shot. The thing that puts me off this game is the hit detection -sometimes you'll start attacking an enemy but you won't hit them, then they immediately start hitting you, it's frustrating. If you can get used to the poor hit detection this isn't actually too hard to get through, for the most part. The first three levels are fairly easy if you use the beasts.
Level four is where things start getting harder. The skeletons here aren't as bad as I remembered them, and make frequent use of the magic attacks -this game hands out a lot of extra magic so you should be always good.
Level five is the most difficult one. You can sometimes trick the three skeletons at the start to fall straight to their deaths, I didn't manage it this time but I at least knocked them off the edge. You want to get the blue dragon as soon as possible, and keep it throughout the rest of the level -its fire attacks are really good and make it much easier to defeat the enemies than using your regular attacks. This is easier said than done though, the final battle has you facing Death=Adder, but there are also three skeletons to deal with. Try to kill them first, if you move straight down or up you can avoid Death=Adder's axe swing attack, and then attack the skeletons. The skeleton's AI can be a little erratic, they don't always move where you want to them to, but eventually you should be able to hit them.
This was not meant to be a no death run, by the way. I was consistently dying at the final boss the first few times I tried this, and constantly losing the dragon, which makes things much harder. If you manage to beat the game without dying you get a better ranking, but the rankings in this game really don't matter because you can't even enter your initials at the end! I do like the ending though.
After the game is over, I left the intros running. There is one intro exclusive to the Japanese version, which is what the Astro City Mini version uses. It features Ax Battler running on and using his sword to decapitate an enemy, the overseas versions of the game removed this. The Japanese version also has blood dripping from the select player screen, the non-Japanese versions removed this blood.
The Astro City Mini was released in Japan late on in 2020, and later got released elsewhere in 2021. I was initially really excited when it was announced, mainly because Virtua Fighter was going to be on it -I was hoping more Model 1 and maybe even some Model 2 games would be included. So it was pretty disappointing when Virtua Fighter ended up being the only Model system game on it at all.
It does include games that had never had console ports before, with Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder being the most notable. But some of these games are awful, such as Dark Edge and Arabian Fight. And did it really need to have three different Columns games, but not a single OutRun or Hang-On game?
The games also all lack option settings of any kind, which is a surprising omission. I want to say that all games are on their default settings, but I know Rad Mobile isn't -you start the race with only 45 seconds, when you're supposed to have 60.
Playthrough with Gilius Thunderhead. So, Golden Axe. I've never done a one credit clear of this before, mainly because I don't like it that much. The problem for me was that I played the Streets of Rage games first, and when I eventually got to Golden Axe, I thought it was nowhere near as good as those. I can specifically remember playing the Genesis/Mega Drive port of the first game and getting really pissed off at how cheap the skeletons were.
When I saw it was on the Astro City Mini I decided to give it another shot. The thing that puts me off this game is the hit detection -sometimes you'll start attacking an enemy but you won't hit them, then they immediately start hitting you, it's frustrating. If you can get used to the poor hit detection this isn't actually too hard to get through, for the most part. The first three levels are fairly easy if you use the beasts.
Level four is where things start getting harder. The skeletons here aren't as bad as I remembered them, and make frequent use of the magic attacks -this game hands out a lot of extra magic so you should be always good.
Level five is the most difficult one. You can sometimes trick the three skeletons at the start to fall straight to their deaths, I didn't manage it this time but I at least knocked them off the edge. You want to get the blue dragon as soon as possible, and keep it throughout the rest of the level -its fire attacks are really good and make it much easier to defeat the enemies than using your regular attacks. This is easier said than done though, the final battle has you facing Death=Adder, but there are also three skeletons to deal with. Try to kill them first, if you move straight down or up you can avoid Death=Adder's axe swing attack, and then attack the skeletons. The skeleton's AI can be a little erratic, they don't always move where you want to them to, but eventually you should be able to hit them.
This was not meant to be a no death run, by the way. I was consistently dying at the final boss the first few times I tried this, and constantly losing the dragon, which makes things much harder. If you manage to beat the game without dying you get a better ranking, but the rankings in this game really don't matter because you can't even enter your initials at the end! I do like the ending though.
After the game is over, I left the intros running. There is one intro exclusive to the Japanese version, which is what the Astro City Mini version uses. It features Ax Battler running on and using his sword to decapitate an enemy, the overseas versions of the game removed this. The Japanese version also has blood dripping from the select player screen, the non-Japanese versions removed this blood.
The Astro City Mini was released in Japan late on in 2020, and later got released elsewhere in 2021. I was initially really excited when it was announced, mainly because Virtua Fighter was going to be on it -I was hoping more Model 1 and maybe even some Model 2 games would be included. So it was pretty disappointing when Virtua Fighter ended up being the only Model system game on it at all.
It does include games that had never had console ports before, with Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder being the most notable. But some of these games are awful, such as Dark Edge and Arabian Fight. And did it really need to have three different Columns games, but not a single OutRun or Hang-On game?
The games also all lack option settings of any kind, which is a surprising omission. I want to say that all games are on their default settings, but I know Rad Mobile isn't -you start the race with only 45 seconds, when you're supposed to have 60.
