Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is the 1992 sequel to the classic 1989 arcade game, Golden Axe. It features four new playable characters, more detailed graphics and four-player simultaneous gameplay (although that was dependent on the cabinet – variations were available to arcade operators).

Revenge of Death Adder – like Golden Axe – is a side-scrolling swords and sorcery fighting game where you have to deal with a series of enemies before you’re allowed to move on to the next portion of the level. Boss battles happen fairly frequently and you have to reduce their health meter down to zero to pass them. Ultimately, though, your goal is to reach the castle of the evil ‘Death Adder‘ and defeat him.

The four playable characters are: Goah the giant; Stern the barbarian, Dora the Kentauride (a centaur-like creature), and Trix, an elf who fights with a pitchfork. Control is joystick-based with three buttons (attack/use, jump and magic power).

Gameplay-wise, The Revenge of Death Adder is considerably more detailed and expanded in relation to the original Golden Axe and features a fair number of surprises. Like previously, you can knock opponents off various beasts that they are riding and use them yourself, although this time there’s more variety, with mantises, scorpions and even skeleton dragons available as mounts. You can choose different paths through the game at junctions; fire catapults and large crossbows at enemies; pull ropes and chains to open doors and turn on lights inside caves (some doors contain potions; some contain prisoners that you can rescue, and other doors contain enemies that you have to fight – or preferably leave locked-up). Inside caves there are walls that can be smashed down to reveal hidden passages (these are indicated by light shining through cracks in the wall); sections where you walk into the screen, and occasional market stalls providing power-ups. You can knock opponents out of the screen; smash barrels and chests for goodies, and pick up piles of treasure. There are interesting animated sequences when you use magic powers; rescuing prisoners has been expanded, and there are even scenes where you are captured and must escape by mashing the attack button to break your bonds. Overall, the developers have managed to enhance the gameplay no end with many new features.

Boss battles once again feature heavily, occurring whenever you reach the end of a section, although this time bosses have a health bar on-screen that indicate how close they are to defeat.

Overall, The Revenge of Death Adder is much better than the first Golden Axe and is a lot of fun to play. It’s arguably the best game in the entire Golden Axe series.

Note that Golden Axe II on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis is a completely different game.

More: Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder on Wikipedia