Golden Axe II

About This Game

Gameplay

Golden Axe II is a side-scrolling hack and slash game. The gameplay is identical to its predecessor Golden Axe. The player is given a choice of three fighters: an axe-handling dwarf named Gilius Thunderhead, a barbarian named Ax Battler who wields a two-handed sword and longsword-brandishing amazon named Tyris Flare. Each of the fighters has a unique elemental form of magic which can be used at any time to inflict damage upon enemies. Each fighter is given a set of life bars, which are depleted if the player is hit. Though the characters and gameplay were mostly unaltered from the first game, there were a few improvements. The "back attack" (performed by pressing the Jump and Attack buttons simultaneously) for each character was changed to a more useful attack that hit enemies on all sides. Enemies could now be thrown in either direction by pressing left or right on the D-pad immediately after picking them up, making it easier to hit other enemies with them or throw them off cliffs. The magic system was also overhauled. In the first game, pressing the magic button used all the player's magic pots.

History

The game was released for the Sega Mega-Tech arcade cabinet, that can play a handful of Sega Genesis titles. The game was made available on the compilation for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, known in the U.S. as Sega Genesis Collection and in Europe as Sega Mega Drive Collection, along with the first game and Golden Axe III and other Genesis/Mega Drive titles. On June 11, 2007, the title was added to the Wii Virtual Console. It is also available on GameTap and iTunes. On June 1, 2010, Sega Mega Drive and Genesis Classics was released on Steam and the Golden Axe trilogy became available for PC. On June 29, 2018, the collection Sega Genesis Classics was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, with a Nintendo Switch version following in December that same year.