The Legendary Axe (TurboGrafx-16) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of NEC's 1989 action-platformer for the TurboGrafx-16, The Legendary Axe.

The Legendary Axe, released as a launch title for the TurboGrafx-16 in August of 1989, was the system's first critical success, and it ran away with several game-of-the-year awards thanks to its excellent arcade-style playability and its [then] cutting edge graphics and sound. Even today, just a few months shy of its thirtieth birthday, The Legendary Axe rarely receives anything but praise. But is it truly deserving of all the love people have heaped upon it?

Why yes, it most certainly is.

In 1989, The Legendary Axe was well beyond any other console game that we had seen released to that point. The graphics were absolutely superb and did a fantastic job at showing off the shiny, new TurboGrafx hardware. The characters were huge, well animated, and colorful, the backgrounds were superbly detailed, and the diversity in level themes kept the game feeling fresh for its entire duration. The music was also excellent. Rendered in the classic PSG tones of the TG16's capable sound hardware, the memorable tunes are all fitting complements to the on-screen action. It was composed by Jun Chikuma, who wrote or contributed to the soundtracks of many of Hudson's most iconic classics (many of the Bomberman games, Faxanadu, Adventure Island), and the quality of the music certainly reflects her talent.

The presentation would mean little, however, if the game play wasn't up to snuff. Remember how many people hated China Warrior (   • Видео   )? Thankfully The Legendary Axe doesn't fall into that same trap.

The game plays like a well-balanced combination of Rastan and Astyanax (   • Astyanax (NES) Playthrough - Nintendo...   ) dressed up in caveman clothes. You fight through six stages, some of which are broken up into smaller areas, cutting your way through with the titular axe. The axe works just like it does in Astyanax - your weapon's power is directly tied to the bar at the top of the screen. Everytime you swing the axe, the gauge will empty, and it takes a few seconds to fill itself back up. This means that you have to be very carefully when deciding to swing your weapon. If an enemy is closing fast and you swing and miss, you aren't likely to kill it before it wipes out a chunk of your life bar: mistiming your attack often comes with fatal consequences. As you gather the axe's power-ups, the power gauge lengthens allowing for stronger attacks at the cost of a longer wait between swings. It's a clever way of balancing your weapon upgrades - sure, a fully powered attack might make your enemy explode like a renegade Jiffy-Pop, but it won't help you if you are being swarmed and quickly losing life. You have to learn how powerful your attacks need to be to effectively take down each enemy, making the game a fair amount more nuanced than many other platformers of the time.

In typical platformer tradition, each of the different types of enemies follow specific patterns that you have to familiarize yourself with if you hope to get very far at all - it becomes extremely demanding by the fourth stage, and it doesn't let up until you've put down the (really cool and grotesque) last boss. Things can become very frustrating at certain points, but this is one of those titles that can be mastered with patience, and it feels very satisfying to do so. The controls are sharp and responsive, and levels do a good job of steadily ramping up the (steep) challenge in preparation for the sadistic gauntlet that is the last couple of levels.

Overall, it's an excellent game that really begs the question - when you have a game like The Legendary Axe in your launch line-up, why on Earth would you use Keith Courage in Alpha Zones as the system's pack-in title?
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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