Golden Axe - 2/20 hours

I wrote some pretty venomous things about arcade games, and after playing two hours of Golden Axe . . .

Well, I regret the tone of my comments, but not the substance. I honestly don't know how I am going to finish this one. It's just moving from left to right, mashing buttons, until you are inevitably killed by some overpowered bullshit. After about an hour and a half of practice, I was able to get to level five from my limited stock of lives and continues, so there must be some skill involved, but the controls are so stiff, and the moves are so limited, that practice doesn't even feel worth it.

Because I was curious as to how long the game was, I downloaded a mod that would give me infinite lives. With that, I was able to beat the entire game in less than 40 minutes, losing 59 lives in the process (the game helpfully keeps track). Assuming that each continue cost $0.25, those 19 continues would have been $9.75 in 1989 dollars, and about $19.50 in today's money. Not as terrible as it could have been, but seeing as how once I committed to infinite lives, victory was inevitable, the thought of just standing in front of a machine and shoveling in nearly 20 dollars worth of quarters as the final boss lays me out yet again with his bullshit full-screen attacks fills me with this profound melancholy. We are so much luckier now than we were back then. That same 20 dollars could today buy me, well, 17 star wars games ranging from the serviceable to the sublime. I wonder how little kid me would have reacted to that news.

Adult me is over Golden Axe, however. There are 8 levels total, and two of those are bosses. That means that after just 90 minutes of practice, I was able to finish about 75% of the game. Since the final boss is, in my opinion, unbeatable by someone of my skill level, it's likely that I've already plateaued. Maybe, with luck and hours of practice, I could get to level 7, but that's going to involve running up against a wall time and time again.

I guess there's no choice, though. What's the alternative? Keep the infinite lives on and just replay the game 27 more times? If I'm going to do that, I might as well practice honestly. Who knows, maybe after a few hours I'll start sympathizing with my captor and I'll start to take pride in my side-scrolling brawler skills.

Nonetheless, prepare for my brain to turn to mush over the next few days.