It’s no secret that I have a strong love for The Legend of Zelda and those sorts of games based around that general formula and mission. Back in the late-1980s and early-90s, there were several different attempts to reproduce the design, but with a different intellectual property, and I covered one of them in Series 3 of The Retro Play Show: a game called Neutopia. But, Sega’s take on the franchise is another very famous one…at least for those who follow these kinds of things!

With The Retro Play Show celebrating its 100th episode, I decided that not only did I want to play something live (it’s been months since my last stream!), I wanted to play something that I was very passionate about. After a lot of thought, I finally settled on Sega’s 1991 classic on the Master System, Golden Axe Warrior. So, on the evening of April 4-5, 2016, I did a 90-minute stream of the game, and it brought back many wonderful memories.

Golden Axe Warrior is indeed a Zelda clone, but rather than existing as a simple copy, it actually takes the formula and builds off it in many ways. For one thing, the overworld is considerably larger than the one seen in the NES classic, and the dungeons, though room-to-room, have many new mechanics to them. Also present in the game are various towns, magical spells, new and unique items (like a boat that can freely sail around), and fun upgrades for your weapons and armor. The game’s world feels a lot more alive than that of the original Zelda game, and the difficulty scales pretty quickly compared to that one as well.

In this live event, I managed to get through the first three (of nine, not including the final dungeon!) labyrinths, explored a good portion of the overworld and found a bunch of different items and upgrades (but also got terribly lost in the process!). It was a lot of fun, and I had a great time streaming it!

So, thanks for all the support, views, and subscriptions, everyone! It’s amazing to me that I’ve already done 100 episodes of this show since 2013, but I think we still have a long ways to go! I really love putting out these episodes, so I hope you all continue to enjoy them as much as I do!

Thanks, and I’ll see you very soon for episode 101!