#42: Golden Axe (Sega, Mega Drive, 1989/1990)

In the latest of her “Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games” series, Anita Sarkeesian examined what she refers to as “strategic butt covering” – the tendency for games to emphasise the buttocks of female characters as if they are the most important aspect of the character, while going to absurd lengths to avoid doing the same with male characters – and concluded that the solution is not for games to pay more attention to the essential, Male Ass, but in fact to try avoiding the objectification of their women as well as their men. Golden Axe provides a vision of a world that takes the alternative view.

You can, if you wish, play as TYRIS=FLARE, the amazon (her father and mother were killed by Death=adder), who wears a stellar example of the much derided chain-mail bikini into battle. But her male counterpart, AX=BATTLER, the barbarian (his mother was killed by Death=adder), is just as scantily clad, if not more-so. And the story in the villains’ camp is much the same; as you progress through the game, you will hack and slash your way through men and women alike, with at least as much 16-bit male flesh on display as female. Huge hulking brutes in tight briefs and shoulder pads and thigh-high boots. It’s positively 300 up in here.

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Golden Axe distills the idea of the epic into its most basic elements; a journey through a fantastical realm in a quest for revenge against an enemy that absolutely, undoubtedly deserves it. It is an intensely simplistic plot, in an intensely simplistic game. Move to the right, beat up some bad guys, move to the right. And I love it. I love Golden Axe because I yearn for such simplicity, for a time when the world seemed to exist in black and white. When friendships could be sustained by nothing more than a shared interest in video games. When putting male characters into revealing outfits too would feel like equality. I want to be able to press a button to cast a magic spell that makes the bad guys go away. And also to ride around on a dragon that can shoot fireballs.