Golden Axe II

Description

Golden Axe II is a side-scrolling fighting game (or side-scrolling beat'em up) released for the Sega Mega Drive. It was released on December 26, 1991. It is the home console sequel to the popular game Golden Axe, marking the second game in the series, though the arcade did see a sequel of its own called Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder a few years later. Golden Axe II was only released on the Mega Drive, whilst the original was released on many other platforms. The game has most recently appeared in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The three playable characters from the first Golden Axe, Ax Battler, Tyris Flare, and Gillius Thunderhead, return in Golden Axe II to fight the new evil forces led by Dark Guld. The game features a total of seven levels: six scrolling levels and a final end of game boss battle against Dark Guld.

Though the characters and gameplay were virtually unchanged from the first game, there were a few improvements. The "back attack" (performed by pressing the Jump and Attack buttons simultaneously) for each character was changed to a more useful attack that hit enemies on all sides. Enemies could now be thrown in either direction by pressing right or left on the D-pad immediately after picking them up, allowing you to hit other enemies with them. Most importantly, the magic system was overhauled. Whereas in the first game, pressing the magic button used all of a player's magic pots, one could now use part or all of one's magic by holding the button and releasing it when the meter had reached the desired level. The magic was also changed - Ax Battler's exploding magic from the first game was replaced with wind magic, and Gillius Thunderhead now used rock magic instead of lightning. Tyris Flare retained her fire magic, but was still given entirely new animations for it. Finally, there were small cosmetic changes in the form of a shoulder guard for Ax Battler and black gauntlets for Gillius Thunderhead.