Retronauts - 671: Golden Axe, Second Swing

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

The screen scrolls ever onward to the end of the stage, as the second part of Retronauts’ Golden Axe-tion is upon us. Linneman, Nickel, Feit, Gipp! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This week in Retronauts, the revenge of Retro equals Nauts. second dose of golden axing. You thought we were done, but we just got right back on the chicken leg. That's a very funny joke, if you know what a chicken leg is. Here we are again. I don't think there's any point in doing a preamble. You know what we're talking about. So let's just introduce everyone who's here. What would be the best way to do this? Let's go over to Japan first. Who's here from Japan? Hello, everyone. This is Diamond Fight, and for today I am a genderless horse person. Is that, is that, is horse person the correct term there, do you think?

Oh, I'm saying, we'll get to it later. We'll get to it later. Oh, okay. Apparently, Centaur is apparently a gendered term, so. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, that's interesting. We'll learn more about this later.

Now, I was about to say, let's, I was about to say the next place we're going to go over, but I don't actually know where everyone is right now. So let's just go an alphabetical order from that one. So, who else is with us today? It would be me, John Lindeman, from Digital. Foundry, the official death subtractor for this episode. Oh, wow. Wow.

So who will you be bringing back to life today? We're going to find out, won't we? Oh, I'm excited. And who else is joining us today to bring, not, that's actually bring up the rear, but that sounds so rude, doesn't it? To ride the beast. It's a bit. So it's finally, it's finally Thomas Nicol, and I am ready to use this gold opportunity

to ask some serious questions. That's really good. That's really good. Well done. You know, everyone's jokes were fantastic today. Well done, everyone. That's a big applause. Thank you.

You say that, yet mine didn't confuse you, so I don't know. Well, that's just a stupid problem, though. It's challenging comedy. That's what comedy's supposed to do. It's supposed to challenge you. I'm punching up at the Horse People Society. Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. It's spooksome.

Now, last time, I believe, we ended up covering the Mega Drive and Master System and Game Gear games, and today we're going somewhat off the beaten track, although there is also another Mega Drive game, so I don't know why I said that. But chronologically, we begin in 1992 when we're heading back to the old coin-ops, to the old arcade now. And 92, what a year that was for games, right?

92 pastimes. Hell of a year. Yeah. Sonic spinball. Oh, that might be 93, actually. That would have been 93. It was Sonic 2 that year. No, this was like... Oh, in that case, just to put it into perspective here,

1992 at games like, you know, Street Fighter 2 on consoles and such. You had The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Assault Suits, Vulcan, Street Fighter 2. There's Thunder Force 4. Thunder Force 4, of course. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, as we noted. This was kind of just the year, like, I feel like the Mega Drive is really coming into its own. I think Dragon Quest 5 came out that year.

That's a good one. Japan was also the first year of Kirby. So the first Kirby's Dreamland came out that year, which is quite something. They're both of a legend. Right? So. Mortal Kombat as well. And there's just a ton of other stuff happening as well.

Yeah. I think that that was the year that Chuck Rock was released on the Mega Drive, which is huge, obviously. Big game, yeah. I mean, I want to put all those other games into perspective because, you know, they're all fine. No, you're right. I mean, that was also the year we got, I think, Ernest Evans, you know? Oh, hell yeah. I know everybody.

Whip, how do you prep? Deep into that. But what can you come out this year that we're all extremely excited about, which was Golden Axe, the Revenge of Death Adder. Adder, Adder, Adder, Adder, Adder. Thank you for that. Real banger, this one. Oh, it's crazy good.

Yes, and yet you cannot play it. Well, you can, but you cannot play it very easily by comparison to many of these other games. Yeah, and I think part of the problem there, is that, you know, what we just said, like, fighting games are exploding. Like, Street Fighter 2 has been out for a solid year. So at this point, you're starting to see the Street Fighter 2 wannabes are coming up. And, of course, Mortal Kombat, not a wannabe, but definitely its own thing.

Right. But that's also exploding. So I feel like beatem-ups, you know, like the original Golden X, are not out yet. Like, certainly there's still plenty of fine beat-ups coming in the early 90s. But certainly the moment of the beat-em-up has passed a little bit. and everyone was excited about fighting games, which is why I don't remember seeing this one in many arcades, if at all. And maybe that's also why I got no home port.

So for many years, it was arcade only, you know? Yeah. You can, it is on the Astro City mini, but I'm not sure if that's even still a thing you can get, like, new. I don't know if they've stopped producing it or. I'm sure you can still find it, but yeah, it was on there. And I think that was the only time it actually came home, right? Every single week, I cry.

my fingers, and I'm like, this is the week that Hamster are going to release this on arcade archives, but it's never happened. Hamster does not do Sega, right? It sucks. They really need to do Sega. I do think it's fair to point out that this period of time was so interesting, because like Diamond said, like fighting games were becoming, they were just starting to take off, thanks to Street Fighter, right?

This was the year Street Fighter came home, obviously, Mortal Kombat and all that starting to take off, but there were a ton of brawlers hitting the arcades and home consoles, right? This was the year of Streets of Rage 2. Like I said, you know, he had Iram doing stuff like undercover cops, which is awesome. Konami's Asterix game, which basically does for Asterix, what, you know, they did for the Simpsons, right? They did the big X-Men arcade game with the six players and everything in there. You had the amazing Bucky O'Hare game. I think that was the arcade game.

Oh, hell, yes. Which is so freaking good. Oh, I love it to death. Fuck your hair episode in the future, count on it. So, like, you can see all these. And there's a ton more. All the brawlers that were hitting this time were, like, really, like, both gameplay and visually, like, kind of technically advanced.

Like, the genre had been advanced in this point. It's just that it was no longer as popular as it had been prior, thanks to the rise of one-on-one fighters. But I think, John, what you're on is something there in that most of the games from this year that we remember, you know, that made an impact, had some kind of hook. Yes, exactly. Graphically, that would say, obviously that'd be graphically impressive, which I would say, I would say this is. Golden Act, Golden Axis, Revenge of Death Adder is very visually impressive. But it is still, at the end of the day, a two-player game, whereas, you know, X-Men, depending on the size of the cabinet, was four, six players. You know, Konami already had several four-player games out there, and they would have four-player games coming. You know, Capcom, I don't think they ever had the four-player, but they were doing other games that were just, very big, very loud. I'm sorry, did you ever see Taito's riding fight?

Writing fight? Yeah. Is that like, are you riding horses? So it's, okay, imagine it's F0, except for you're a dude riding a hoverboard and you're like zipping around like 3D mode 7 style like stages while beating up dudes. Like it's, it's extremely cool. And it's way over the top. And again, it has a hook for it, right? Because it's like it's 3D into the screen, riding around on hoverboards.

It's like beating up dudes on hoverbores baseball vets. I think I've played this. Can you get this on the Egret? I don't know. I think it's on one of the add-on cards. It might be. John, is that the one where the first boss is a huge guy with two chainsaws, and it's like neon crap all over the place?

Because if it is, it's the... It's the one where at the end, there's that big crash, and there's the big wrestling-looking dude. It's like the flame-looking vest, and he hops all around. Yeah, I think I know the one you mean. It looks a little bit like neon night riders from the title of time. The second one starts out on the water. Yeah.

This game is dope. See, we're digging the hole here because, exactly, there are zero, there's zero hoverboards in Golden Axe or Revenge of Death Adder. You can ride several different animals, including a skeleton and skeleton monster, but there's no hoverboards. You know what I mean? Children of the 90s demanded hoverboards, and Golden Axe is not out for this. So that's one strike against it. That's what killed its console part, probably. That's what killed it.

This one has your branching paths, right? Unlike the preview. So it's possible there is a hoverboard that we haven't found, but I don't think there is. It's been 34 years, too. I think we would have found it by now. I really like your point on this time, and you're absolutely right. Golden Axe the Revenge of Death Adder, unlike many of the other brawlers that year, really just didn't do anything new.

And I think it just did classic brawling really well. And I actually think this could have been a real star if it had released instead on, like, the Genesis slash Megadrive. But in the arcade, it was too late. Then I want to ask one question about that. How can you part this to the Megadrive back in 92 or 93? You would have to water it down a lot. It would really lose a lot in the parting process. If they weren't willing to shell out for a really big package.

So what I'm saying more is, like, rather than making this an arcade game, they should have just focused maybe on making it and Mega. drive game from the beginning. Yeah. But that's not what we got. They had another project for that. We'll get to that. That's true. Yeah.

Now, this, I mean, if we're not familiar with this, as we've said, it's a brawler, much like one and two, but every, I don't know how to describe it, I don't like using this, because it's quite cliche, but it's kind of like that up to 11, it's kind of on Roids, it's like everything's crazily, the exact moment I knew I loved this game was first time I played it, and I have to admit it was on maim, and yes, I did delete the rum, but, once you get to I think the first enemy is I thought I'm going to do the magic and see what this looks like holy shit there's a close up of a guy getting his face incinerated off it's one of the most metal things I've ever seen in my entire life

I couldn't believe it I was like not expecting that in the slightest and I was immediately just like okay golden acts of revenge of death other okay they simplified the system they simplified the system which I think was smart because the original game

the more potions you collected the bigger the spell you could cast and that also meant a lot different sprites. You're like, oh, what is this going to do? What is this going to do? In this game, it's much simpler in that everyone has one spell. You only cast one spell, but you can stock up a lot more potions, so you can build up

a stock of, you might have enough potions to cast the same spell two or even three times if you're really a big hoarder. And so it just means you get one effect, but that one effect, like you mentioned, is really goddamn cool. So it's like, okay, this is my move. I'm going to whip it out at the right moment. and if I store my potions I'll whip it out again on the same boss

and they will be toasty and I will love it. I felt like the previous games, the magic, did have some sort of cool effects, but never felt too strong because the enemies would usually get back up again but in this it's like, now your face is off, mate. Forget it. Crazy. Well, everything's so big here. Everything

is so big. The characters are very large. The variety within the enemies, I think, is much larger than Golden X-1. I feel like Golden X-1 especially late in the game, it basically became, oh, here are those guys you fought a dozen times, but now they're all black, or now they're all gold, or now they're like, they have dark eyes, where it's like, this one, you've got like regular soldiers, you've got tree people, you've got like mudman, Polynesian people with giant masks on, you know, like I said, we've got lots of different creatures you can ride, you've siege equipment that you can carry, like on the side, like a weapon you could fire in addition to your other weapons. Everything is just, is just massive. and big and very, very in your face. It's really like, it's an eye grabber.

It really is, and it's just, you know, we go speculate that's why it didn't make a bigger impression. There's one more thing. It's also new because it doesn't just a rehash of Golden X-1. You have four new characters, all of whom haven't appeared before. I mean, yeah, the main barbarian is the same archetype, but it's another guy, and the rest is really, really new in this case. You're absolutely right. But I kind of want to at least sort of explain. explain the state of, like, the hardware and its place in the arcade, right?

Because this is Sega. This is 1992. This game was created for what's called the System 32 board. This is Sega's final 2D-focused arcade board. And it was quite capable. This is the same board that the Jurassic Park, the first Jurassic Park arcade game ran on. If you guys ever played that, which is like a pseudo 3D sprite-based, like, rail shooter. Yeah, that's a hell of a look at that one.

Right. So this thing is extremely capable. And it's even, it's a 32 bit system. And I feel like the system 32 kind of sets the stage for what Sega Saturn would be able to do from a 2D perspective. And I kind of feel like this is the target they were looking at when building the Saturn. But that same year, Sega unleashed the Sega, wasn't called this at first, but it's the Model 1 board, the C.G board with Virture Racing. And the success of Virture Racing sent the,

industry and Sega down the road of 3D Polygon graphics, and they really never looked back after this. And so Death Adder was kind of like one of the last, not the last, but they still did a few more games on the System 32, but it was like their last big splash at doing a 2D pixel art sort of arcade game like this. That doesn't do any, it's not trying to be weird or 3D or isometric or do anything like that. It's just straight up.

This is 2D pixel art, and now we can throw around a huge number. of sprites. There's tons of frames of animation. There's just so much detail in the background, the characters, everything. It's like Sega and 2D basically at its best. Jonathan, I just want to point out, John, I think this is, this is significant. Looking at the list of System 32 games, most of these games, by my memory, were arcade only, you know? Correct. Like Spider-Man, that weird Spider-Man brawler, that never got a home port. Arabian fight with those giant anime-style Arabian

Knights characters. Oh, wow. That was that as well. Okay. Yeah, these are very good-looking arcade games, but also clearly Sagan either didn't know or didn't figure it was worth the budget it would take to bring them to home in some fashion of this. So, like, a lot of these games just remained in arcades. Yeah, you know, again, it's the timing, I think, just.

Consuls aren't ready for that. Console can't do that. When the consoles came out to do that, the Saturn and so on, the games were old already, and out of people's minds, and people wanted watch a fight and more of that. So I think the timing did them a disservice. Was it the same board that did Sega Sonic, the Hed Shock? It was the same board.

It was also the same board that did hard dunk. Oh, hard dunk, yeah. Which, you know, everybody's into. Oh, yeah, we're all like, we all have a hard dunk. Hard dunk, aren't we? No, this board was awesome. The games that ran on it, I think most would agree largely looking. Like, when you look at something like Outrunners from 19.

92. That is just, it's still beautiful to this day. Just the amount of sprites and the 3D effect that it pulls off. And then that actually did get a port to the second mega drive Genesis and it's horrible comparison. It is on 3Ds, isn't it? Outrunners. There was like a 3D version of it? Oh, that's a turbo outrun on 3Ds. Oh my third. Sorry. Outrunners is the one that was like the always like the two player one. And yeah, unfortunately, we didn't really get that at home at in a good quality i would say yeah but um so that that's kind of the nature like this was like the year where 2d was starting to fade out and yeah there are still fighting games were taking off and capcom would embrace 2d for many many years to come but this is kind of like

where 3d polygon games really started picking up steam and sega was like yeah this is what we can do now that's what the that's what the mass is wanted which brings me to this next question then before we get into more details about the game who here played golden axe The Revenge of Death Hatter in an arcade at the time of release. Oh, God, no. I don't think I ever saw one. I never even saw it, no. I never saw an arcade back in the day.

Oh, well, okay. All the arcades in Britain, all the arcades in Britain were still full of 80s machines. We had a ton of arcade games around us, like huge arcades. So some of the biggest around, this is a game I never saw. This is just not what arcade operators wanted in 1992. And I really think that kind of killed, that really kind of made it feel like the series was kind of on the way out. It's like you didn't know what to do with it at this point. Nobody was that interested in it.

I think a lot of us, not everyone, but a lot of us just kind of discovered it much later. Yes, I certainly did. Yeah, I think it was through Harkle Gaming 101 that I found out about this. Or it may have just been random main browsing. I was like, what is this? It must be the, it must be gold next two. Oh, no, it's amazing. Yeah, I was like.

And it bums me out because, like, I, I want to get all like into it, but like Golden Axe, I think people have nostalgia for, but it's one of those things where it's often couched with, yeah, but it's treated rage is better. And like, nobody's played this. And if they had, that would be very different. Like, this is an amazing, I mean, look, I'm going to, I think this is the best one of the lot. I don't know if anybody agrees about that. I could agree.

I mean, my, it's not my favorite. My favorite's still one because of the sheer nostalgia for it, but this is the best playing game in the series for me. And I wish it was more well known. I wish it was available some of it. on a collection or something outside of the Astro City Mini which is, I think it's on like an arcade one-up as well

but who has, I can't afford that. No, I didn't want to afford that. Well, I figured by owning the Astro City Mini that opens me up to being able to play this freely unmaim without any guilt. Oh, absolutely, yeah. I'm not a lawyer, but yes. I was a former owner of the Astro City Mini.

Yeah, as of, I used to have an Astro City Mini, so I guess that still kind of counts a bit. But, yeah, if they're not going to make it like available for me to buy over here, think it's fine. But I urge all of you to go and play this because you will go, hey, this is really good. You will agree.

I had one of my favorite gaming memories is playing this on multiplayer with a friend and us both just kind of yelling at the screen at all the crazy shit that happens at the end. Not that I really want to spoil it, but that's got a hell of an ending this game, I'll tell you. It's one of the

dopest things I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, and I really enjoy that, you know, you have four characters used from this time. And yeah, sure, the first two are basically the same. You know, you got a barbarian guy and you have like this lady who might be an elf. I'm not sure what her exact deal is. But then you have Goa. You're mixing that up. Sorry. The elf isn't a lady, right? It's just a little boy guy. Yeah, Tricks is a kid. With a spiky hair. Oh, I'm sorry. It's not a lady. My apologies. But you have Goa, who is a giant with a dwarf riding on his back, you know, like Technmonite or whatever. Right. And then you have Dora,

who I'm going to call Lady Centaur. I looked it up. Again, Centaur is a gender term. There's actually a different term for a feminine horse person, but I'm not going to bother saying it, because let's be honest, Lady Centaur makes more sense. So, yeah, and what's really funny is if she rides a creature, somehow she loses two legs and just rides it normally, I don't know how she does this, but that's, we are on, we're not, we're, we're ignorant to the ways of the Lady Centaur. I really wish we could have seen that. It's a Centaur thing. They don't talk about it. I want to see the full, the full four legs riding another creature, though. I'm Say I didn't get that. The technology wasn't there. We needed the system 64.

John, there's websites for that, really. I mean, I got to, is Goa the giant, though, with the dwarf on his back? Is that Gileas, or is that... It is, yeah. That is actually Gileas on his back. It's Gileas, yeah. Oh, that's done. Just gotten a bit old. I think the new one plays a couple, a long, long time after the first one. Gillius is around. The rest is dead. I got to tell you, though, even if you don't play this, please watch a long play of it or look up the ending, because it's so fucking cool.

It's just like, oh, it's this, that was so good. It's funny, Thomas. You mentioned the Tricks character, sort of that. And I always kind of like equated them to Eddie Hunter or skate from Streets of Rage to as just like, they got the young kid who's kind of like with cool or something. You know, it's either spiky hair, the baseball cap. And it's just like, it feels like that was like the move to make in these like second entries for these types of games. But he also has a very cool special move because he is the guy who can't represent. punish your health. Right. That is a good point. So he's a pretty strong ally if you got him along

with you. Oh man. What a game. Actually, I'm, this would have been so cool if this has been four player at least. And I feel like that may have made a big difference in terms of like, I think it would have. Yeah. Because people, X-Men came out that year like I said, right? And like people remember that, even though it's not the best roller, arguably. Well, it's the site. I mean, that was everywhere over here as well, X-Man. It was popular. It was huge. Like, You'd never get a go on it because it was always busy. I guess it's the whole thing of bringing in different demographics with the different characters bringing from different sort of types.

Did you ever see, from 1991, Taito also put out Warrior Blade, Rastan Saga episode 3, which was also a brawler, but that used their super ultra-wide format, you know, like they did for like Darias. Oh, yes, for that. So it's like an ultra-wide brawler for 1991. How freaking sick. You know, John, I realize we've brought up more than once, but I think we should point out, there was a four-person version of this game.

So, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There was a four-player version of this game? You can find pictures of it online. Again, we've never seen that in my life. What the heck? Yeah, we don't know what the, I mean, I guess it makes sense because if he was a conversion kit from, say, like, Spider-Man, because Spider-Man was also four players. But, again, I never saw this machine in person, so.

That's neat. Yeah, I had no idea that existed whatsoever. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Look at that. If I was a millionaire, I'd be off to one of those, I'll tell you. Well, then I stand corrected. That would have, man, so that kind of brings up the question.

What the heck happened with the distribution around this game? Was it just like nobody wanted it or Sega wasn't really selling it that much? I do wonder if maybe the fact that it is golden axe and everyone was just like, now that's old stuff, you know? I really, really wonder. Well, that's new hotness. I mean, again, you have fighting games where people are fighting

each other, it's two players, it's a lot more coins coming in and out and by this point like I said, if you're using the same board using the same hardware from other games like did Spider-Man how many Spider- Machines were still active? You know, it could have been

there's a million reasons it could have happened, but I just... That Diamond, that Spider-Man game I've got to mention this because this is the only chance I'm going to get. I love the way he walks in that game. Like he's just chill Like he's just like, yeah, it's cool I'm Spider-Man, whatever.

It's a wonderful game. What a weird game. It's such an odd game, but I really like it a lot, yeah. Yeah, you fight like Venom like four times in the first ten minutes. When you put a coin in it goes, Spider-Man. Which is great. It's just there's something about how chilly is in that game. I always think of him as doing like a Todd McFarlane pose, but in that he's just standing there slightly slashed over.

He's like super tall and lanky. He's just going for a bagel. He's like, oh, I'm just going to. I'm just going to go for a little stroll around the block. Oh, it's the hobgoblin. Hey, buddy. I just, I don't know. I think it's great. I would love to see those games get a little bit of a renaissance, you know. But it seems like almost a lost...

If we need a System 32 collection, you know? It almost seems like a lost, like, world of Sega because they're so... I want to say prolific putting all their stuff out. Of course, they, at the time of talking, they have taken all their things away again and then put them back in the box, but who knows why they're doing that. I suppose some people probably do know. What else we have to say about Golden X revenge of death matter other than it rules

and everyone should play it? Well, I mean, one thing, of course, it's got some good FM music. It also has some amazing riding animals, I think. I really like that mantis that bites into the animals have this. Oh, yes. That's great. With a chomping effect and everything, good stuff.

I mean, I think fundamentally, you know, if you've played Golden X X 1 and 2, this just feels so drastically different. Like, those games are very, very rigid. right for better for worse it's how they are they're very rigid this one is not it just feels like a much more modern take like golden axe one and two feel like a creation of saga from the eight bit era like i know that those aren't eight bit it's like master system area like it's 80s Sega this feels like 90s Sega if you know what i mean would it be fair to say there's a sort of when it comes to

brawlers there's kind of pre-final fight and then post-final fight i don't know if that's yeah i've always kind of felt that's similar I mean, yeah, because, like, obviously this is post-final fight, and it's got influence from that, as does everything. But for me, it's just so much more organic to play it. You don't, as you say, it's not rigid as much as no stiffness. It's just a real, it's just beautiful, beautiful, coherent, like, graphics. The music is good, the power of everything.

Like I say, it all goes up to 11. It's just so much more intense than Golden X one or two, as much as I do love those games for nostalgic reasons. But, you know, there's another big difference between one and two and this one, I think, because this one isn't like a copy of Conan the Barbarian anymore. This is its own thing now. Yeah. It's a good point.

One and two, basically, they were Conan, right? The music is Conan. Axebatler is Conan. Sonia is Red Sonia and, no, Terry's Red Sonia and so on, you know. The new one is its own thing, finally. I mean, there's a bit of more anime in there, I guess. But it has a new identity at this

point. Yeah, I can agree with that, but maybe that's part of the problem. And it's just a huge... It's a goddamn shame that it's a real shame that it's not more accessible, you know. It's not even on the Yakuza game, you know? Yeah, that's a point. They could put it in one of those, couldn't they? Yeah, but I don't think they put any System 32 game in one of these, right?

Not to my knowledge. Yeah. They'll put a bunch of Mark 3 games in there, but they won't, and Sonic the Fighters, but they wouldn't put in a range of death at it. It's a shame. I'd like to see a new Golden Axe collection with a bunch, like maybe from M. two or something. They did one day

they did one, didn't they? On the Xbox. They could do Golden X Revenge of Death Adder 2. Oh, that would be dope, yeah. The revenge year. The revenge year. So I think,

I feel like we're done with singing the praises of that one, that brilliant game. I think we might mention one more point maybe quickly because we noted down there in the notes that the Western version is again a bit different from the Japanese original

because you have to play through every stage and you can't really choose the past there. Oh, right. That doesn't sound as good. Yeah, I mean, that sounds a bit annoying. Why must they do these things? I think it's for money. But that might be just my...

It might be a hunch. Interesting stuff, but all right. So that was, I guess, it's not the last time that Golden Axe would grace the arcade. But it is the last time we'd see a proper Golden X brawler in the arcade. That's for sure. Yeah. So next up, in 1990. That's going to be controversial now.

Oh, man. Well, vaguely, I would say. Now, in 1993 on the Mega Drive, we saw, well, I say we saw. I'm not sure this ever hit Europe, did it? I'm not sure. Only in Japan on cartridge, we had Golden X3, you know, numbered sequel, the follow-up to Golden X2, which also did see a brief release on the Sega Channel. Was it translated or was it never in Japanese in the first place?

I'm not sure. I remember playing this in English. There's English text in there. It's like you're supposed to go get the Golden X, so. Yeah, it's not that necessary, I suppose. But yes, Golden X-3, pretty hard to get originally. You can get it now. It's on, well, I was about to say you can get it now.

Again, they've withdrawn it, but the Sega Mega Drive classics or Sega Genesis classics. I'm not sure if you can still buy it now or by the time this goes out, you probably can't. But they'll probably have got a new collection out of some sort, because it's Sega. It's accessible, is the point. And this is a more fairly traditional sort of follow-up to Golden X-2 with some knobs on. I have to admit, I don't particularly love this one, but I feel like I might be alone in that, so how do we feel about this one, folks?

I think it's the best one on the Mega Drive, and it's not even close, which is the controversial statement. No, I think I'd be hard pressed to disagree with that, but because my love for those old games, as I've mentioned a couple of times, really is based on nostalgia. I think at times of gameplay,

this is pretty easily the most effective one. So, fundamentally, I don't have nostalgia for this game, really. I did actually have a friend named Chris who had the Sega channel. So I knew that this kind of thing existed, but I really don't have nostalgia for it. I didn't play until much, much later. And I finally got a cartridge version and spent a good amount of time with it. And I was always, I can so, I can understand why people may have been down on it. It has issues in some limitations. But I think the core nugget of gameplay here is so strong. This is essentially, like an upgrade on par with like Streets of Rage 3 or Bear Nuckle 3, I guess I would rather say,

in terms of like improving the core mechanics over prior games. So fundamentally it is a similar model to the last two on the Mega Drive. You know, there's multiple paths that you can chew through between different levels. You've got four characters, a little different this time as well, such as the, what was it, the Panther guy, Kronos. Yeah, that's chronos evil right. It's finally someone for the ferries. I love it.

So, but the main difference this time is that I feel like the overall move set is more nuanced and complex, but also in a way, like Streets for H. There's like double tap moves and different types of jumps, and there's just more you can do with each character. And it also feels more just snappier in a way that kind of like the arcade game did, the previous one. Revenge of Death Hatter, we're just moving around, engaging with enemies feels better. It also feels more classic, I think. It feels more like a normal brawler because the weapons have less range in this one. They do. So you have to get in closer to the enemy. And connecting feels really good, I think, too. Like the actual, the hit stutters, everything

about it feels great. Yeah. Now, some have pointed out that the graphics can be a bit grainy at points, and they were limited to a four megabit cartridge. But I do think there's still a fair few number of stages that look excellent. And unlike the earlier two games, there's actually a lot of parallax scrolling, including line scrolling. Yeah, I think that is what saves the look of the game. Right? So the

parallax scrolling is just the trade of we got for the sort of grainy, tiley graphics. So if you're fond of it looks really great. Exactly. And I think that... Like the cornfields and stuff like that. Yeah, because like Golden Axe 1 and 2 on the Mega Drive really don't do that. Like, they're just like

these static screens that it just never felt alive. This has so much more going on in the backgrounds. And they're able to throw a fair amount of enemies around the screen and the game just runs smoothly throughout it. And on top of all that, I think the soundtrack here is underrated and one of its best on the system. I agree completely. I played it this morning. I played it this morning and what struck me was the quality of the music over everything else. It was such standing. Dude, when that first stage kicks in, you're just like, oh man, let's go. Or that like, that jungle level, where it's just like,

yeah, man, it's, it's so good. It's the same, I'm blanking on his name, but the composer that did work on Sonic CD and also the hybrid front. So he knows what's on. Yeah, name escapes me. I, um, I know I'm a bit down on it. I do agree with everything you're saying.

My, my issue with this game is more, on one hand, I think the sprites aren't as good as they are in one. And two, I, the quote looks fantasy quality of it. I just think the sprites. right work isn't there. The backgrounds are fantastic. I don't like the sprites, personally, but it's just me. And I also think that it's a bit repetitive, and it scrolls very slowly, and it doesn't feel very dynamic for me. That said, you know, it made one of those games where one day I

figure out some inputs I don't know about or something, and I go, oh, wait, this is great, but I didn't love it. I just thought it was kind of good, you know. I thought it was kind of fun, but not fun enough for me. I wasn't crazy about it. I mean... It's in the note, sorry. Sorry, please go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say,

we have it here that, you know, it compares unfavorably against Streets of Rage 2, which I think it does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a little bit, that's a little bit, like, I don't want to say apples and oranges, but nothing compares favorably with Streets of Rage 2. Right.

So you've got to take it as it comes. I do agree that it isn't a bad game. It's just I got a little bit like, oh, I'm still in this jungle. I'm still in this bit. This is really going on. a long, long time. So I did get a bit bored with it. It's also often, it's a quite brown game in many levels. You have to admit that. But yeah, it is cool. There's some blue skies and there's some

other colors in there and some green. And the thing I like about this, though, is I always felt like in the original, you just have to like take out enemies kind of like one after the other. And there's not really much you can do to speed it up where I feel like here, there's enough moves now. Like a skilled player can actually progress through the state is faster than an unskilled one. So it actually kind of rewards you understanding the game in a way that good brawlers offer which I found really

engaging. I'd say that because it has a reputation and I would say that's probably unfair and probably from people who didn't really give it much of a chance because it was positioned as a throwaway, because it didn't have a sort of solo release it's positioned on a list

of games you can play on a compilation and with those sort of instances it's very easy to play it for minute, not really get it and go, now this sucks next game. And I feel like that may have been a sort of a casualty of that in the modern sort of day. It's worth playing for the music and the visuals, I would say, even if nothing else. But I recall back then when it came as an import, the press pretty much hated it in Germany at least. Yeah. Got bad reviews all over the place. And of course, also, let's keep in mind, if you want the card today, it's really

expensive. Not one of the really big hitters, but I think you will pay something in the above 100 or so. Yeah, it's well above 100 down. You want to compete copy nowadays. I would call it a victim of bad timing. You know, it's, it's, the original Japanese release is 1983. It didn't show up overseas until 1995, which is definitely late for a game of this type.

You know, I think at first glance, someone might look at this and say, oh, yeah, yeah, I played Golden X, I played Golden X2, oh, it's Golden X3, okay, great. But I would say that if you actually sit down and play it and spend time with it, I think it's better. in Golden X 2 for sure, at least like Mega Drive-wise, but again, today, 30 years later, if you look at Golden X games as a whole, like this doesn't compare with Revenge of Death Adder, so it's like

in that regard, today it's kind of a harder sell, but it's like if you can put your mindset of okay, let's look at the Golden X games that you could play at home in the early 90s, this was pretty good. But yeah, it's just I want to note real quick Though I didn't like, as I mentioned

I wasn't crazy about the sprite work But I want to say I have only ever played this On an HD TV, not a CRT And I met this looks way better I mean everything looks better But you know how it is So I don't want to criticise it for that Without seeing the way it was intended to actually look

You know, I tried to get a cartridge of this But I really couldn't afford it So that was really out of my price range unfortunately So another thing I want to add though Is I feel like this game has a few cool set pieces and some level variety that the other ones didn't necessarily have on Genesis. Like, first stage alone, right? After that

initial part, you drop down into that cart. You're being pulled by those creatures, the ones you could ride originally, right? The bone cart, right? And that's like, okay, that's cool. But then there's other levels, like there's the one where you end up climbing sort of this mountain. And so it's got these vertical sections where you're going up these slopes and then eventually you jump on the back of a giant griffin and it's like you're fighting dudes on a feathered griffin while flying towards the

tower in the distance in which you finally make your way there uh and i i just feel like they do enough of these like moments where like the the structure of the level the direction the camera moves the things happening are just kind of cool where it's like oh yeah this is this is a neat idea i'm wondering as well if it was a bit of a victim as was revention of death at some extent that swords and sorcery high fantasy was not really in fashion at the time.

Well, I mean, okay, since we are blaming now, let me pose a theory. Let's just do it easily and let's just blame Sega USA. Because, I mean, it's 93, right? That is when they went completely off the rails, went all in with their stupid crap like

chakhan and so on, and try to keep the Japanese stuff out of the States, you know, all the fight about gunster heroes. And I think that's also a victim of that time. and that mentality. I think you're probably right, actually. I'm detecting some hostility towards the Forever Man here. Forever Man can, well, I don't want to say that on this podcast, but you just read between the lines.

How long can he do it? How long can he do it, John? I think we all know the answer to that. He can do it at 30 frames per second, maybe. Forever? I beg to differ. Fair play. Fair play.

Well, you know, will they give it another good old goal on the Dreamcast and they had this good sense to go, hang on a minute, no. No, let's not do this. Yeah, no. Thomas, to add to that, I actually really kind of have some resentment for the Sega channel itself because that meant that a number of games ultimately didn't get cartridge releases. Yeah. It was like... And we've only just got the Garfield one.

Thank you, Frank. Thank you. It was like a preview of what's to come with our digital future. But Sega was doing it way back then. And it's not cool. Man, I'm glad we didn't have that in Europe here. Yeah, but you still didn't... Well, you didn't get this, but you did get other stuff like Alien Soldier and...

the Wiley Wars. And we got Garfield. Yeah, you're lucky us. It's good, though. I mean, it's flawed, but I think it's cool. Yeah, it's fine. Although the sequel Wars, Mega Man 4 remake is incredible. If you haven't played that.

I haven't played that. I'll give it a go. That's like one of the best Mega Man-related things I've ever played. I love it so much. I'll definitely give that a go. That sounds awesome. Okay, but maybe to get back to Goldnex 3, maybe one or more two more points I would like to mention.

So one of the thing is, of course, about the game. it's one of the first games made by a certain Takashi Isuka. Right. We might know from Sonic Team nowadays. Ah, so that's where he came from. One of the games he came from, yeah. So he worked on that, for example. And of course, also one thing important,

it has this amazing four-armed goat man. And, I mean, that's one reason to love the game itself. Good point. I'm a big fan of the name Proud Cragher as well. That's very cool. and I got a stress again, I think having a Panther guy is really, really cool.

Like, it's what Goldneck has been missing, a big beast man. Like, that's awesome. And, you know, four characters is a pretty good, pretty good going right there for a brawler, I think. I do like that the characters,

they have like a split, like the two big sort of burly guys play all differently than the lady and the panther guy who are more faster and have, like, more jumps. They can actually double jump, which is like, okay,

Right, right. They have like a triangle jump kind of thing going on. Right. But all the characters have a fighting game style move where they can, like, pull off a projectile. Oh, wow. It's a little complicated, and I don't know, again, I didn't have this at the time, so I don't know how well you could pull it off with a Genesis controller, but it's there, you know? Yeah, I checked if this supported the six buttons that didn't seem to,

but I wondered if there's shades of Streets of Rage 3 there with the, with the inputs and such which is which is cool um it definitely feels like an evolution in that in that regard it's just i mean i'm going to have to go back to this and really try and get my head around it because i feel bad that i don't like it as much as as as other folks i should like things the same way as others i believe it would be great if i wanted the same opinion in general yeah and i think it's next book all games are same yeah i actually think you had a really good point earlier there diamond just mentioning that there was death adder out there So, like, hardcore Golden Axe fans that the types that might have imported a game like this back in the day probably would have played Death Adder in the arcade at that point, then they were the ones that would set the early Internet tone and opinions for a game like this, right?

Yeah. They're out there on a BBS, like, oh, man, I imported this, and it's not Death Adder, it sucks kind of thing, you know? So a Curate's Egg, a Curate's Egg, I love saying that. God, I love saying that. Would you say it was a curate's egg? we can say that excellent I'm so glad thank you Um, have we got any more to say about Golden X-3, or are we good to go with?

I think we're good to move on. Let's do it. Okay. I think we are. Let's move on to the duel in the crown. It's, um, 1995. You have bought a Saturn. You have made a grave mistake. Only kidding. Don't get mad. Um, Golden Axe, the duel named after the dual mode from, um, the original Goldmax, fascinatingly enough, rocks up to both arcade and the Saturn. And what we've got here is some trend chasing in the best possible way. I'm being very negative. I'm sorry, I don't mean to.

This is an arcade, beat them up. No, not a beat-em-up. God damn, it was a fighting game. In the UK, it was always a beat-em-up until recently. It's very confusing. This is a fighting game. A one-on-one fighting game starring a bunch of guys who are

distant relatives or somehow involved with the characters from Golden Axe these are all, I believe these are all new characters There is a Gileas in there but it's a different name

He's Gileas Rockhead He's not Gileas Thunderhead I don't know what the story is there I mean the only one returning Gileas must be the family name Is death adder, he's around Heck yeah But he hasn't been playable before so there you go

But he's not the final boss this time He's just a guy He's playable, yeah Yeah So this is Golden Axe the Jewel. I would say a fairly rare and not that well-known game in general, which is weird because it's got quite a lot going for it, I would argue. Especially visually, I think it looks lovely.

I really like the graphics in this. It's like a nice halfway house, I think, between like not super anime and not super western. It's just got a nice look to it that isn't maybe a little bit dated even at the time, I would say, but it animates well enough. I think that's its problem, yeah. Yeah, it seems pretty decent. I mean, I played the Saturn version. The thing that I was surprised by the most is how bare bones it is. It's literally just one player or versus.

There's no other modes I could see, and I look to see if I was missing something, or if there is on unlockables. But nope, it's just that. Which is cool, but it's not an easy sell, you know, to the home audience. Yeah, especially in 95, of course. Yeah.

I mean, we're surrounded by things like, Well, I must like Marvel superheroes or, like, many myriad street fighters. Three for the Zero, of course. That was amazing. Yes. So what do we think of this Golden Ax the Jewel, then? What do we think of this business? So, John, we played that a while ago together.

We did, yeah. And I think we had a great time, didn't we? Yeah, I think it's what I would say, one of those B-tier fighting games, where there's nothing essentially wrong with it. It plays well enough. The controls are good. There's an interesting move set. The graphics are attractive.

but there's nothing about it that really keeps you wanting to keep going for too long. And it's difficult to explain why, right? Well, what I found when we played that game is it looks a lot like samurai spirits. Yeah, it kind of does. Some of the backgrounds are very close. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It plays more like a street fighter game, I think, in terms of damage values and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think one problem it had is it never just made any sort of dent in the competitive scene. And, of course, the competitive scene is the scene that made third strikes popular until today. Yeah, but like for us back in the day, like the competitive scene was like not a thing. It didn't exist, right? Yeah, I mean, from today's view now. Right. But even still, like, whether a game is played competitively doesn't really make it more or less fun for me because, like, I don't play at that level. So.

But it makes the game invisible nowadays. That's true. It does make the game invisible, essentially. And we've got... Here's a question I'd like to ask. Oh, yeah, sorry, go ahead, yeah. I have a question, and maybe it will prove me... Maybe it'll be mine doing.

Maybe everyone will turn and laugh at me. But has there ever been a case where you had a beat-em-up franchise like Golden Axe or Double Dragon, just a name two of the top of my head, where because of the trends of the arcade industry, they went from Beat Up to Fighting Game, and it worked. Because I feel like Double Dragon tried for... fighting games and no one really cared. Yeah, that was the one I was going to mention it. Golden Axe tried this fighting game, and I feel like market-wise, no one seemed to really care.

Like, I don't think it's a bad game, but also like, again, never saw it in the arcades myself. I'm sure I saw it on the shelf, because I was definitely, I was a Saturn owner, but I'm sure I picked it up, like, okay, I could get this, but I could also get Night Warriors, and I'd rather much of them play Night Warriors. I wouldn't want to say that isn't one, because there are so many goddamn games out there, but I can't think of one. I mean, Sagan was moderately successful with Fighters, Megan.

mix and bringing the Daytona USA car to fighting games, right? They made the transition from racing game to fighting game. I was going to say bringing in the final fight characters into Street Fighter Alpha 3, but that's a long way. Oh, dude, another example of a complete failure

is fight and fight revenge. Oh, gosh, yes. Oh, dear. See, but again, like the Saturn Saturn owners really weren't suffering for choices of fighting games. No, not at all. Especially if you invested in like a cartridge, you know,

the memory cartridge, which, you know, for some of the flashier titles, like, say, Marvel Cat, not Marvel Capcom, Street Fighter, X-Men versus Street Fighter. Yeah, or Street Fighter Zero-3 as well, I think, yeah. Right. I mean, I definitely had, I had Street Fighter Alpha 2, which didn't require a cartridge, it just looked fantastic, you know what I mean? Yeah, great game, yeah. Even some of these games didn't even need the port, but if you had the extra memory,

you could get some of the, you know, the bigger games that had, like, lots of character swapping, and that was like, whoa. And, you know, this is just, this is just an all-round solid enough fighter with weapons, but it's also like, you know, the characters, yeah, the characters seem similar, but they're not actually the characters from the other games, they're just kind of like like those characters. Like, here's a barbarian guy, here's a lady fighter, here's a dwarf, here's, like, another sword fighter guy, here's a big green guy named green. Like, come on thing. Yeah. Wait, what color is he? He's green.

He's just green. I thought he was dark brownish. Okay. Like, I thought, when I looked at Jam, I'm like, that looks like Cham Cham. Are you, like, it was literally, you know, a samurai show on character. So, I don't know. It's real. So I guess.

I wondered. Sorry, go on. I was going to say one other element that might be hurting it in terms of memories and going back to it, the music ain't great. Like, it's completely fine. But I think, like, even like the mid-tier fighting games, like, it's hard to call it mid-tier because it plays so well, but like the Street Fighter EX games from Adika are incredibly awesome to play. I mean, they play Street Fighter in 3D, but what really sells them, the soundtrack is so

freaking good that every time you put it in, you're like, oh, man, like this game owns. I kind of feel similarly to with like Aska 120%. Those games, not super well-known, not big in the competitive scene at all, but the music is so freaking good from KC. Yonao now that like, you're just like, heck yeah, I'm to play it, but you put in Golden Axe, it just feels muted somehow. Like, there's nothing about the presentation of the sound really makes you go, heck yeah, you don't feel that emotion, which then, without the competitive scene then, also keeps you from really having any desire to pop it in.

This was the same year as, um, this was the same year as ultimate MK3, wasn't it? So that was obviously huge in the arcade around this time. So that can't have helped when you'd have, uh, the 3D fighters were big. But I think John just put the finger on. it. Everything in the game is nice and fine and okay, but nothing stands out. Nothing elevated above all the rest.

Also, the Saturn port, right? The Saturn port, not the Saturn was huge at the time, but it's the most bare bones thing you can imagine. Like, it's a great port, but it's just the arcade game with like basically nothing else, except for loading times, which are fine,

but it's like, there's nothing, there's nothing here to pull you in and make you say, yeah, as a home console game. One little console, I know I have to, I have to be, I I haven't seen this running. My understanding is that you can switch characters for multiplayer before the game loads, so you can save time there. But it's very bare bones, as we said.

You will be amazed by how bare bones it is. I'm not convinced there's even an options menu. There might be an option's menu. But it is like one player or two player versus. There's no, I don't know, training. There's no survival. There's no, I mean, anything you'd expect, really. You can't even change the button configuration.

Right. That is possible. And frankly, if you're on the Saturn, I think, you know, you've either got access to imports and Capcom stuff or you're into the 3D world and you're playing, like, amazing ports of Virtue Fighter 2 and stuff like that, right? This just doesn't stand out amongst the sea of other fighting games in the Saturn. If you're a Sega fan, it's worth a look for the novelty value, for sure, and you won't have a bad time with it, but you may find yourself thinking, why am I playing, why am I not playing something else? I will, there is, the one interesting quirk about this, though it's worth pointing out, is that this game did run on Sega's Saturn Titan video board,

the STV, right? Which was, like Sony did, with their own boards, an attempt to essentially bring the Saturn to the arcade so that you could put a game in the arcade and then easily port it to Saturn. And it got a ton of games on this board over the years, including... Yeah, lots of great schmups.

Yeah, Radiant Silver Guns on there, of course. Yep. But there's tons of stuff on there as well. Also that... Thunkeyhead boxers. Did you all ever play that Batman Forever arcade game? Oh, Jesus. You don't play that game.

You just let it wash over here. It's one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced. It's banana. Also, if you look up, I have a copy somehow, and I randomly looked it up and realized, oh, this game now goes for hundreds of dollars for some reason, and I don't know why. Really? Dude, it's, it's extremely expensive. I can't, I can't explain it.

It's so strange. But that game will melt your brain. It's just strange, but... Yeah, you won't have a clue what's going on, I promise you. It's like Batman crossed with something like Smash TV almost at times the amount of insane shit that's happening on the script or knock or something. Exactly. Also, STV was home to the very interesting Astra superstars from Sunsoft, which was kind of like, what if we did like Dragon Ball Z style flying in the sky, just like kicking each other's butt up in the air kind of thing? I guess a little bit like psychic force from Taito where it's like not like a normal on the ground fighting game.

But so there was a fair amount of stuff on there. But I think Golden X, the dual just ultimately didn't make much of an impact. I think what we're saying all we're saying more than once in different kinds of ways. We're all thinking about different games from 1995 and how much we wish we were playing those games from 1995. And it's like this game just doesn't compare to like a dozen other games we've already mentioned. which is like, that's kind of like this is the damning reality. It's like, this game is fine, but boy,

it's not as good as this or this or this or this, or this. And like, the list is just getting longer and longer and Golden Axis just falling down and down and down and down. It's just like, sorry. It would have been, you know, great in 93 maybe. Then I think it would have made a splash, but not in 95. So, Golden Axe now Disappears now disappears for well over a decade.

it disappears for what 13 years outside of re-releases we mentioned the terrible Sega Hs game didn't we? Oh yeah we did We talked about that yeah That's oh dear Yeah let's not talk about that again Yeah so let's go to 2008

2008 Did Golden X have any other Like Could I know Sega started doing like the smash pack And stuff like that Yeah and there was the backbone port On the Xbox 360 But that may have been timed in with this

I don't know There were a few releases of this game in, like, the Smashback. Yeah, so, like, Golden Axe. Yeah, Golden Axe one, I guess, showed up in some of that. It was on the GBA as well. Yeah. So, yeah, my understanding is that was very bad. So it's not like Golden Axe completely disappeared, but it kind of went into nothing. And there, I don't even recall rumors about, like, a Dreamcast Golden Ax.

Do you? It became, it became like a, um, a nostalgia property, basically. It just became compilation funner. This was the case for so many arcade hits, though. It's not unique to Golden X, not unique to Sega, but like so many games that, you know, made a name for themselves in the arcades and then got home ports that made a name that also increased their, you know, recognition. And then all of a sudden, come the 21st century, arcades, you know,

especially in America, are almost dead. You know, they're still around in Japan, but, like, you don't have the reputation that they used to have. So a lot of franchises just are like, you know, a lot of companies are like, what do we do with this? What do we do with this? And in the PlayStation 2 era and then later on PlayStation 3 era, everyone's like, okay, well, what if we take this brand and do this? What if we take this brand and do this? Which is like, you know, sometimes you get creative things. Sometimes you get messes. And I think Golden X Beast Rider falls more on the mess department because like almost all the stories about it are people coming after and saying, boy, that didn't work. Yeah, I'm afraid you're right. I mean, I did buy this very late, very secondhand because I had to know. And, I mean, there is an... I mean, quite a lot of the game seems to be sort of focused around

the main characters, like, bottom, I found. And whenever that happens, it raises questions. And looking into this, this was a bit of a... This was something of a troubled development, wasn't it? This was a very... Yeah. The character is just stupidly ugly looking like just like it's just that era of like where these guys don't know how to heck to do character models that are decent. Yeah.

It's really not. I think this is a hideously ugly game. I, um, I didn't think much to it. I didn't really understand why, why, why, how it got to this point and how it got this bad. It's, it seemed like a very, very, very. I think the monsters are nice. The beasts. The beasts.

Human characters, not so much. Yeah, the beast. So my first thought here, though, is like, you come into this, 2008, it's the HD generation. This is one of those games that, along with many others, really showcases what was wrong with that generation in terms of, like, the game side of things. Just, it runs poorly. The frame rate is extremely unstable. It feels jenkees, heck, there's screen tearing everywhere. It's all just, it feels half broken.

After coming from, like, the PS2 era where there was so much more fluid. 60 frames per second was the norm. You know, you play a brawler. This should have been 60 FPS or at least a smooth 30, and it's none of that. It's just a complete technical mess. I think that era, the PS3 and 360, I was talking about this on social media recently.

I think for me it's probably the hardest era to revisit. Yeah, like using the original hardware, it's like you go back and you're like the, even down to like the UI and everything about using those systems is just painful for me. I'm not saying they have loads of, I mean, there's loads of great games on PS3 and 360, obviously. And the ones that hold up, too.

Yeah, they do, but I'd still rather play them on any other system if it's available, like I'm on modern poor or even on a lot of cases. Yeah, yeah, it's a shame. We're never going to get never dead again, are we? It's awful, awful. But, I mean, Thomas, you claim to like this game, and I respect that. Like might be a bit much. I played back in the day, and I had a, not a bad,

bad time with it, I have to admit. Better or worse than Project Altered Beasts. Certainly. But, I mean, it has a bit of appeal every now and then. I mean, the fighting can feel nice if you get the parrying and the evading down in terms of timing. It is nice and bloody. I do enjoy a nice heroic fantasy barbarian-style game every now and then. So it has a few things going for it. And, of course, I do like golden eggs.

So I went with it into it, and, you know, I also tend to, I like to go against the mainstream opinions. And as everybody hated this game back in the day, I thought, no, it's a schedule to go. It might not be that bad. Might be okay. Let's give it a good. Let's see. Yeah, the more people are done on a game, the more I want to play it usually. Oh, yeah.

Exactly. I know that feeling. But I have to admit, I haven't revisited this one because I haven't got my 360 hooked up and my copy of it is probably buried somewhere, never to be seen again. I haven't gone back to it because my memory of it was just so completely like as you're playing it you're forgetting it like it's so whatever

and coming off of I hate to say it but after games like God of War I know it was a bit earlier but they were still doing them at this time it just kind of find myself thinking like I wish they'd copied God of War I mean this was like

I mean they did that Conan game that was just a complete copy of God of War right and that was slightly better wasn't this within a year year of God of War III. I'm pretty sure God of War III was like 2009, so like, and that's a massive... God, I hated that game. That's so much better than

this, though. I think God of War III was 2010, but yeah, it's... I think so, but still, it's in an era where, you know, again, much like Golden X's a duel, like if you want a third person character action game, you've already got a lot of choices, you know, you've got, frankly,

you've got better choices on PS2, but even by this point, PS3, like, people are trying different things people are trying new things, and here's something that's basically wearing the name of an arcade game from a decade earlier. It's like, oh, yeah, it's Golden Axe, and, like, half the audience is like, what's Golden Ax? The other half is like, that doesn't look like Golden Axe, because it doesn't look like goldenax.

It just looks like, you know, it's very much an elmatic of the era. Like, it's very brown, you know, it's the gritty HD reboot that we all joke about these days, but that's literally what it is. Yeah. And, in fact, it's so gritty. that Sega didn't even bother release it in Japan because it's got too much dismemberment in it.

Was that the case with, I mean, you mentioned it earlier, John, but the altered beast game on PS2, that was Europe and Japan. Yeah, I never came out in the US.

I sort of bracket this in the same area as that, although I have to admit, because that's on PS2, I slightly preferred it. Oh, yeah. I didn't,

we never got that of, that weird, gritty vector man rebukes. Oh, yeah. Good Lord. would have been something. I actually think the Altered Beast game is more fun and interesting on PS2 than this generic, dare I say, slop on the PS3? No, I think it's okay to call slop, slop, I think it's okay.

In this case, I think we have slop, and I feel bad for the developers because they obviously had a friggin difficult time making it, and it's probably it turned out in the form that it was never intended to be. I have a fun story about that, by the way. A couple of years ago, I was at an... event where they showed that Splatterhouse reboot. Remember that, right? Oh, yeah. Reaching up enemy's arse and pulling the guts, are amazing. I talked to the director of that game.

I forgot his name, I'm afraid, and talked a bit about the legacy and how, what do you do to avoid a situation like Old Next Beast Rider? Which is a perfect fine question, right? What I did not know is that this guy also worked on Beast Rider before. Oof. And now I came across like that generic Hater guy. Well, I even, I quite don't like Beast Rider. a bit

a bit stupid oh boy oh well it happens did he cry I think he could hide it that's good you got to be good you got to be good at hiding your tears

if you work on Beast trailer you're going to you're going to Thank you. I would like to mention, of course, the other elephant in the room of that game, because I think everybody who thinks about Golden Axe thinks about two-player mode, right? Right. Oh, yeah.

Jeez, yeah. And, I mean, it can't have one. It's a genre. It's a single-player action game. But, of course, that was for most people the main criticism. Where is my multiplayer mode? Right, right. It's like Final Fight one all over again.

And, of course, the others appear, right? there is Axebatler in the game at some later point. There is Gileas as well, but they are just there. They're not playable. And stories go of course, if they had made a second game, which was, I think, at least in some they thought about, they would have been in

there, but yeah, of course, that never happened. I would say all of Sega's attempts to bring their classic 16-bit IP into 3D were largely unsuccessful at the time, except for I would say Shinobi turned out pretty well from Overworks. Yes, those were cool. Those were cool games.

some issues, but it feels real good to play, and it's just, like, got a fluidity. And they kind of, but in that case, they really reinvented what Shinobi was. And that made it good on its own terms. And that's, in terms of the, the IP, I hate saying that of Golden Axe, we had in this generation, I'm not sure what year, Sega did put out with backbone, I want to say backbone, that's Sonic's ultimate Genesis collection. It was not ultimate, I beg to differ. While it wasn't Ultimate, it was okay-ish if you're not particularly versed and that stuff.

But what is notable about that for me is because they did include Golden Axe 1, 2 and 3. They also included Golden Axe Warrior, I think, as a bonus game. So there's a lot of representation for that series out there. People would know what it was if you were into sort of retro. But then they had a chance, really, to get it really kind of back on the map here. And unfortunately, it just didn't work. And bringing these classic things into 3D for Sega, as you say, it wasn't. easy, but some people seem to make it look so easy.

And they're such good games. It's just, it's a shame they couldn't quite get it right. And things like the early Sega Asia's titles and the, and such, just very few of them worked. I would recommend people go ahead and look, I've linked to it in the notes, but go ahead out there in the internet, look it up, Variety. Variety published a deep dive into this game on its 10th anniversary in 2018, where they talked to developers. They brought, broke down what the hell happened, and it was just like, yeah, there's a huge story as to why things didn't work. It's not just like they made a bad game. It's like they tried to make one game. They couldn't get that one game the way they wanted it. And then also, they had other

projects they were supposed to work on. Don't forget, 2008 is the year of the Ironman movie? Guess what? There was an Iron Man video game made by Sega, and some of the people who were making Golden Ax had to make the Iron Man game. So it's like, whoops, now we're making two games. same time. Yeah, that wasn't very good either. It's a long, it's a long, as it off the case, when they have a finished game that just doesn't feel right, just doesn't look right, the answer is they didn't have the time or the money they needed because they were working on something else at the

same time or someone gave them conflicting instructions, like there's a huge, there's a huge mess behind the scenes, which led to a huge mess on the screen. That's the, that's the story, the short version. Yeah, and again, that is a reason why I do feel certain, uh, uh, uh, of this game Of course It's a big mess But I kind of do like the mess

You got affection for the mess Yeah I get that There are games that are not good That try their hardest But the problem is I don't think this one does I don't think there's heart in this game

And that for me Makes it register essentially as nothing And I know people worked hard on it I'm sure they did I'm not disparaging that But there are games that I think are not very good like Castlevania

Lament of Innocence, which is boring as shit, and I love it. Oh, yeah, that's pretty boring. This is boring as shit, and there's nothing there to grab you. There's no cool music.

There's no cool visuals. There's no really cool ideas. It's just a bunch of patchwork rubbish, and I don't like it. It is bad for me. And I think it was developed by secret level, and it should have remained a secret. That's my pithy comment for the end of this.

A fair comment. Unless we have more to say about it. What a take. What a take. And it was, and it was, and it was, and it was banned in Germany, so, you know, good on them. Well done. I'd like to see more countries ban more games that I don't like. I think it's even still banned today.

How about that? Wow. Couldn't they change their blood into smoke or something? Yeah, there would have been work, and they didn't want to do that. Fair enough. Well, I mean, honestly, it's not, I mean, I don't think games should be banned, but in this case, I'm willing to make an exception. But no. It's a shame because that until now is basically the end of Golden Axe with only a very brief

and also controversial resurgence in 2020 when Sega, I don't remember the reason they did this, but they released a bunch of things on Steam on the same day. There was some like Protos and there was like the Yakuza streets of, God, what's it called again? Amurocho? Yeah, that's sort of. Which was like a structural, yeah, a scrolling beatem up starring like Kirio and Magimau and stuff. but one of them was Golden Axt 2020's Golden Axt

which was a I want to say it was not like a vertical slice I'm sure you know more about this than I do because I did play this and it was sort of a pro quo for something that was that was cancelled or just

what was this? Never went into production I think Okay so this was just a proof of concept sort of thing Yeah I actually did a stream with two of the developers on this Yeah the story behind the scenes

is probably more interesting than what you actually got to see, you know, on your screen at home. It came out of nowhere, like you said, they dropped a bunch of stuff, and I think at the time, you know, at first glance, I was like, oh, neat, they're releasing some stuff that they normally wouldn't release. That's cool. But the problem was, this thing came out

and even in releasing it, the store description was very punchy. You know, like, oh, this is an artifact of its time is janky and buggy. Like, they're putting that in the description, which got a response from one of the developers, Tim Dawson, who said that he made it in two weeks in 2012.

Like, he was asked to put something together. He worked his ass off to put it together. The executives saw it. The executives didn't like it at all. And it's like, oh, well, they don't know what they want anymore. And then he just figured that was the end of it. And then somehow, eight years later, it gets released on Steam just out of the blue and, like, basically, like, being made fun of ads being released.

And he's like, you know, he was rightfully very angry. He's like, I busted my ass to make this thing, you didn't even want it, and now you're putting it out there and dumping it on me, you know, FU, I believe is how he put it on Twitter. And it's just like, eventually they actually did. They issued an apology. Sayga of Europe actually apologized to this guy, and I don't think it's still up on Steam. I guess if you still got it, you can probably download it, but I don't think you can find it and search for it anymore. I thought it was surprising because Sega at this era, they didn't. I think one thing Sega is pretty good at is.

community, you know? So it's odd that this happened. I think this is just an unintentional. I think the people that probably got this released on Steam just weren't aware of the situation that occurred. It's quite possible. No, I don't think it was malicious. I don't think there's malice there.

I think it's just unfortunate in the end. And yeah, like I said, I had Tim and Santana, did Android Assault Cactus and unpacking, I guess, really cool dudes from which beam they actually came on with me to talk about this whole thing and we played through the demo a bunch and uh it's interesting hearing about it like what they were trying to do and but as the story suggests it's just like when you look at where games were at this point and what was going on i can see why it just it's it's tough but at the same time like this was 2012 i guess and this was around the time when the same company this

with Sega in Australia, I guess. They were working on the the Mickey reboot of Castle Volusion. Oh, got a great game. What a great game. Oh, my crap. Same guys, right? That did that. Yeah. They were, this is the one who did this.

So, like, I feel like in 2012, there was enough of a push to like bring retro style games back, but I also think maybe a straightforward side-scrolling brawler was not it. You know, like that just wasn't really necessarily going to do it. Outside of a few, unique examples.

I mean, Castle crashes. Castle Crashers was big. I think the Scott Pilgrin game was pretty, would be well received around that time. Yeah. There was... Double Dragon Neon was around the time.

Yeah, yeah. Way forward had some brawling. So I can see why they would attempt to bring it back, but it just somehow, I guess, Sega inside just didn't really, they weren't feeling it. I mean, knowing it was made in two weeks, it's downright impressive, to be honest.

I would agree. I would never have guessed that when I tried it out. It was made that quickly from scratch. That's insane. Very talented dudes. So that is a shame, but of course now, Sega at the Game Awards, 2003, they dropped that really awesome trailer, which promised five upcoming new games, I believe. Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Crazy Taxi, Sweet of Rage, and Golden Axe.

And we saw little snippets of all of them, right? Like, just tiny little snippets of those games. Right, right, right. Of course, we heard to talk about, and that was hype. That was like, holy shit, Sega's back. But we heard to talk about Goldenax, which we only saw a few seconds of, a few short seconds of, and I've looked at those few short seconds quite intensively to try and figure out what this is, then to remember, hang on a minute, this is probably not going to look anything like

this when it comes out, for all we know. But what it kind of looks like to me is that Dungeons and Dragons' Dark Alliance game that came out a couple of years ago, except with way more colours and better. And it looks like they're based solely on this brief clips of the trailer, it looks like it might be doing a sort of Arkham-style combat, like, loop thing going on there with the icons above the enemy's heads for counters and all sorts of stuff. So a real kind of more modernized take on golden acts. I wish I knew more about it, because I really want to play this. It's one of my most anticipated games, as are all five of those games.

Yep. I hope it turns out good. I hope it turns out good. I'm a Sega kid. I love Sega. I want them to do well, and I really hope that they clean up with it. But we've seen very little, so there's not a huge amount to talk about. Yeah, not much we can say about it right now, just that it's cool what they're doing.

it and I feel like in the modern times we've seen developers succeed more often than not with this kind of stuff than we did maybe 15 years ago like there's this is this they get it now

this is the Sega that gave us Streets of Rage 4 right Sonic Mania that allowed that to happen Sonic Mania Streets of Rage 4 for me as we have talked about on this very podcast

I honestly think it's the best side-scrolling brawl I've ever played I think it's absolutely incredible I agree I love too but I think I'm a game off of the year 2020, maybe. I couldn't believe ever that they would make a game that I liked more than Streets of H2, but they did it.

Yeah, it's super good. It's crazy. So I'm really hoping that this one is good, too. And, you know, we will absolutely, you'll hear about it on this month in retrospect, if nothing else. So keep an hour off of that. One more thing, though, I want to, before we start wrapping up, there was some stuff with Beast Rider that we missed

relating to Dave Halverson that I think Thomas would like to tell. Oh, good. Boy, oh, boy. right there's some stories yeah let's hear all about oh good old d h dave halverson okay so what happened basically is halverson had a magazine called play back in the day which i quite like to read because um i share many of uh of his opinions about classic games 2d and so on was a nice magazine especially for its day so what happened is um he had a big preview of golden x-beast rider where he really really was hyping it up

to no end. Then of course it came out and as we all know the general press hated the game players hated the game but instead of just saying okay I disagree I think it's good he went on this wild wild rant about how bad the press has become

nowadays these aren't players they aren't reviewers they have no idea about games he compared it to stuff like heavenly sword which I think he's quite correct in doing so in his findings but yeah, he had this gigantic rant about how stupid the rest of the gaming press basically is

because they couldn't see the genius in Beast Rider which in that respect. I mean, he was right about Heavenly Sword if you think about the frame rate. It's about the same level of performance. It's pretty bad, yeah. I think his point was, which I agree to, is riviers who compare the game to Heavenly Sword

are completely off because it's a completely different game. Yeah. Which I agree to, absolutely. It has a very different focus. My, I don't really, I'm not really that familiar with this Dave Helverson chap, but what I have heard about this Dave Helverson chap has made me go, hmm. He's a character, all right. That's an ambiguous noise that I will not elaborate on. Didn't he really enjoy the, uh, the Atari Jaguar and Cybermorph?

Uh, after. You could say that, yeah. Where do you learn to fly? In a certain way, all this guy's work, because back in the day, we all, uh, imported game fan magazine here in Germany, because we, we, we disliked the German press because, they were all, oh, 3D, so amazing, 2D, so that there's GameFan who really champion 2D, and basically that is what radicalized us back in the day,

reading GameFad. I never had GameFan, but I have seen it since. I've seen a few issues of it, and the layout, I have to say, the layouts are, I'm going to say borderline unreadable, and I mean that almost as a compliment. It's like, there is no real, like, uniformity to it. It's just crazy backgrounds,

crazy text all over the place. And the enthusiasm does shine through, but unfortunately, being from the UK, the golden, the golden world of video game magazines that gave the world CMVG, you're welcome, by the way. I find I hard game fan quite hardgoing, but I respect that it existed, you know, I respect it. But yeah, it was definitely, it was an interesting time, and especially this long art. It can be still found online somewhere, I think. It's quite interesting. And I admit I used that also in various English classes. just to analyze the text

to look at his points and also look at the game afterwards and the thing most of the students found after they read the text, both of them the preview and the long winded rant and saw the game okay so the game isn't as good as he says as it makes it out to be but it's also

not some horrible abomination from the depths of hell it's okayish that's what they came up in the end he probably had made some decent points but I wonder if he was making them in the wrong direction here, you know, if there's not the game really to die on the hill of. That is what I think. But you know what? I respect that his opinion is his opinion and he's welcome to his

Golden Axe Beast, right? He can have my copy for free, actually. If he's listening, get in touch. I'll send you my copy. You can have it, mate. Don't worry about it. Thanks for Girls of Gaming. I think that was yours. Well done. That was very cool. Very cool of you. That's where I remember the name from. Oh, boy. Yeah, that just occurred to me. Okay. That's the guy definitely, yeah.

Yeah, well, that's in real shame. That's Golden Axe. That must be a golden wrap on Golden Axe. May I? I think we have one small part to cover because there has been a few little, tiny, fun golden X guest appearances over the years. Oh, yes, they have. That's very true. Of course, we have a little bit in the Megadreth era in Alien Storm,

and we have Gillier selling weapons in shining the darkness. And he even has a little picture of the gnome thief in his shop, which is fun. Yeah, do not sell for this guy. That was pretty cool, I think. And of course, we have them coming back in games like Sega All-Star Racing Transformed, which I love the bits, by the way. It's an amazing game. It's absolutely brilliant. I wish they would port it to modern systems on 60 fps.

Like, come on, let's go. I think, John, can't you play it in 60 FPS on the Series X? Yeah, I was going to say, it's already on PC, but on Series X as well, it supports 60 now. Oh, right. I mean, what I'd like them to do is make a new version of that game for everything that has all the content from the PC version and everything. Man, I would kill for that. But they did do Sonic Team Racing, or whatever it was called, and that was nowhere near as good. No, not.

Didn't care. Didn't care for that. Yeah. But, yeah, Gileas is playable in both the All-Star Racing games, right, I think. Or at least there are Gildenax races at the very least. I know that there were tracks for it, or at least A-track. Gileas is definitely in Transformed, and there is the Death-Eder track. Yeah, and he's unlockable, as you've said here, in Sega Superstars Tennis, which is a surprisingly good game, I might add.

Yeah, they had some nice spin-off games back in the day. Yeah, they did. Does he swing his axe, like a tennis racket? Oh, I wish. I wish he did. Maybe that might be his superstar move or something. I'm just saying, it's got that width, you know? It's got a racket sort of general shape.

He could just boom. Yeah, it does, but unfortunately, I know that Mario doesn't really care about this, but in Sega rules a king. This is a sport. This is a competitive sport, you know, there's honor involved, and we can't let one guy start swinging an axe around on the court because, you know, the umpire's going to take. take issue with it, you know, it's going to be a problem.

But, yeah, it's nice that they have kept sort of awareness of the series up by, with these re-releases. I mean, yes, the emulation re-releases like Sega classics, they're not anywhere near perfect, but I think they are okay. I think they are playable. They are ways to play these games if you're not down any wrongs, which, let's face it, we all are. So it's nice that the energy is up.

Part of me hopes that when this new Golden Axe comes out, they're going to find some way to get these games back in people's hands with much better emulation. much more playable. I mean, seriously, if they take away all the stuff right now, there has to be a reason for that, because it's free money having them on Steam. I'm pretty, I mean, there is, I know there is a reason based on,

I think it's based on them licensing some engine or something that they used for it. Oh, they can't use it anymore. But, I mean, it's Sega. Sega have never, to my knowledge, really had an issue with getting these games back on people's hands, so I would be amazed if they didn't turn up again quickly, really quickly, in fact.

And let's not forget that that trailer for those five, new Sega games did and with an and more. So, you know, maybe we're finally going to kick chameleon. Who knows? Oh, boy. Yeah, everyone loves to kick a chameleon. Or chameleon kid. Depending on the region. Or chameleon kid, yeah. Or chameleon twist, if we're doing that.

I'd rather take that. Yeah, same. There's a lot of classic games still in limbo that I'd like to see re-released. And, you know what, Revenge of Death Adder is one of them. So let's go. Let's go. It kind of bonds me out that when they did Sega Ages, when M2 were doing them

towards the end of the PS2 sort of era, we never did get a Golden Axe one, a proper Golden Axe one, with all of the Golden Axe games. That would have been incredible. Imagine a really nice 3Ds, 3D version of Golden Axe? 3D ages was amazing.

Was there a 3D version of Golden Axe on 3Ds? Or was there? I don't know, because if there was, I would have bought that, so I don't think there was, but that would be really cool, for sure. because the 3D version of Shooterage 2 is incredible

Yeah, they made one for Altred Beast, but not for Golden Axe. I don't know what the deal is with them and Alt of Beast. I don't know what the deal is. I mean, I got love for it, I got respect for it as nostalgia, but my God, it sucks compared to Golden Axe. But let's draw it to a close there, because we have now covered in two episodes, we have gone across the entire Golden Axe series. So I guess are there any final thoughts on this?

What would you like to see from the new game in particular? Or where do you want this to go? So, I mean, I have one very simple wish. I want them to get down that feeling of knocking the butt of your sword on the enemy's head, kicking away. If they can nail that, I think they already have a really big advantage over many competitors. So let's get the feeling right. Yeah, handle of the axe bunk on the head.

I'm going to just write this down. That's what Thomas wants. John, what would you like to see from this upcoming Golden X? I hope they tackle it from all angles. It needs to look good, sound good, play well, and just be like something satisfying. And I hope that they understand the developers fundamentally understand how to make this sort of game right. And that sounds weird to say, but a lot of times, I mean, as we've seen, they don't get those fundamentals right. Yeah, you know, I have played so many bad brawlers in the recent months.

Oh, man, there's so many. terrible. What, you didn't like the karate kick continues? No, I didn't. No, carbon. And Diamond, any wishes on your wish list for this Golden Ax redo? I feel like the time has come.

They need to pay the big bucks, pay whatever he wants. They need to get David Caruso back in the studio. They need a new scream from David Caruso because his 43-year-old scream from First Blood, it's just, you know, it's dated. You know, get him in there,

He's still working. Just get him in there. He can do it. He can do it. He still got it. I'm sure he's got it. You know, something I've just remembered that we didn't put on the notes is, aren't they doing an animated series of Golden Axe? Oh, right.

That's happening too, yeah. Yeah, and it's being made by, I'm sure I remember who made this. Mike McMahon, who did solo opposites. Huh. Interesting. I want to put myself out there. I think solar opposites is really funny. So I am looking forward to this, but I do.

wonder if it is maybe doing a bit of a disservice to make it into that kind of show because it's not really Golden Axe, but if it gets it out there and it makes people want to wear the game, and it's funny, then I'm all for it. I mean, basically, after Castlevania, I have a certain trust in these things that they might turn out good. I don't expect them to, but there's been cases now where it actually worked. So let's see how it turns out. And I think old next is open-ended enough so that it might be fun and doesn't have to see. stick too close to anything. Yeah, agreed. I mean,

I wouldn't really be into it unless I knew who was making it, and I do like solo opposites, I do like that kind of humour, and it hasn't got Justin Royalon within 300,000 feet of it, so I do think it's going to be pretty good. I expect I'll like it, regardless of whether it's actually good.

It's going to hit my buttons, but it's interesting to see Sega pushing it like this, and you know, overall, it's probably quite a good idea. It's a good way to get it to people's consciousness again. Yeah, yeah. But let's hope that all of those games turn out great

and we get a complete Sega sweep. That would be for the best. As Nintendo is forced to shut down as a result. And Sega finally wins the console war. That's what I'm hoping for. It's my ulterior motive. But seriously, thank you, everyone. This has been two episodes of Golden Axtastic Fun.

I think we've covered it rather effectively. And I'd like everyone to give themselves a little round of applause. Well, done everyone. That's good stuff. And, yeah, John, thank you for doing this. Where can our listeners find you in your work on Internet? As usual, I'm over on Digital Foundry. You'll find me at Dark 1X on places like Blue Sky and whatever.

Obviously, Eurogamer.net slash digital foundry and YouTube.com slash digital foundry. And Thomas, same question to you, but with the name change Thomas instead of John. You can find my work, of course, in print in M-Games every month on sale in Germany. You can find my stuff sometimes at maniac.maniac.de, also in German. And generally, my thoughts and rants and whatever on a blue sky now at Tapir, Fortuna, like the animal, the tapir, you know, black and white, weird nose, and Fortuna in the end. I finally, I'm about to quit Twitter now because fuck Musk and all its cronies. So, yeah, that's a nice thing.

Yeah, yeah. And Diamond, what about yourself? I'm sure our listeners are not familiar with you, so, you know. Well, I do work a lot of fortress these days, but generally speaking, you can go to my website, fightclub.me, F-E-I-T, that's my last name, C-L-U-B, that's a weapon that many creatures in golden axe wield against our heroes. Dot, M.E. And yes, I too have abandoned Twitter because Twitter abandoned all sensible humans, so I'm on blue sky.

But, and again, if I come up me, I link to everything on there, so go ahead. And, of course, I'm Stuart Jop, and I've also left Twitter because, well, I left Twitter ages ago. I left it before it was cool. And you are listening to Retronauts, and if you've enjoyed this episode or previous episodes or the idea of future episodes, you can join Retronauts at Patreon.com forward slash Retronauts. And for, there are several tiers, but the four and mere $5 per month, which you must admit is an extremely small amount of money, you will get two extra four. length episodes every month. You'll get every weekly episode a whole week early. So everyone will just be like, oh, hey,

did you hear the new Retronauts episode? You'll be like, yeah, I heard it a week ago. Come on. Come on. You'll also get weekly columns, which are also recorded by, who was it again? Who does those columns? Was it Parrish? Oh, yes, it's Diamond. It's Diamond Fight. It's Diamond Fight. Oh, right. I knew I recognized you from somewhere. And you'll also

get this month in Retronauts, which is the monthly community podcast in which I irritate Diamond for two hours relentlessly. I think that's a fair way to describe them, would you say? You're irritating me by describing the show wrong right now. That's what you're doing. Oh, no. I'm even right, even right now I'm on it.

No, it's a monthly sort of, it's a rundown of what we've been sort of playing that month, paying attention to that month and going over listeners, lovely, lovely comments and reading those out on the air alongside other things. it's a nice little packed jumble. It's a jamboree of retro fun with me and Diamond, your favourite hosts. Let's face it, the best hosts.

The best ones, let's face it. I don't mean that, please don't find me. And that's it. Thanks very much for listening to this episode of Retronaut. It's another episode that I'm very bad at ending. So anyone got ideas for a pithy way to end this episode? I can't think of one. Thank you.

Thank you. that would be a good place just to cut it who can do the golden egg scream give us a scream we could cut the scream in that might be good maybe cut four screams in to simulate us all having been killed yeah that would be great finally sleep

thanks for listening goodbye everyone