Golden Axe/Walkthrough

Note that the home versions' Beginner Mode has some differences.

1. The damage done by your attacks is doubled.
2. All levels of magic only ever use two pots.
3. There are no maps or bonus stages, and the game ends at Stage 3.
4. The boss of Stage 3 is Death Adder Jr. rather than Lt. Bitter.

This walkthrough is intended to help a single player through the game; playing with a friend will make the game much easier, although magic pots will be more scarce.

Arcade differences

This walkthrough is primarily aimed at completing the home versions. Enemy placement in the arcade is not quite the same, and the arcade enemies have more attacks. Examples follow.

1. At the beginning of Stage 3 on the arcade, a red dragon is available. This should be used as much as possible, as it easily handles everything else in the level, including the Silver Knight at the end, who is otherwise a challenge.
2. The hammer-wielding giants can toss you up in the air if you try to cross over them on the ground, unless you are riding a Bizzarian. All other large enemies except death Adder himself can do something like this. This makes a combination of magic and tail attacks the best way to beat the first level, because while on the Chicken Leg they can't toss you, making it easy to get into position for tail swipes.
3. The jump-slash technique is by far the most effective attack on the arcade. However some smaller enemies can do this to you too when you are riding a beast to knock you off. This is more of a problem when using a chicken leg than a dragon, because the dragons have great range and the enemies are too stupid to not just run into the breath every time, except of course for those pesky skeletons, who will high jump and down thrust for major damage.
4. The large knights are much smarter on the arcade and will not let you dash attack them repeatedly. Try it and they will slash you with their swords. (On the home version only axe battler has trouble with dash attacking them) A much better plan is to save a dragon of some sort to deal with them. They also have a shield bash attack. to deal with the red ones on Stage 5, hold onto the blue dragon, they will happily walk into the firebreath which has a slightly longer range than their sword.
5. Depending on how the difficulty dip switches are set, magic attacks can be more powerful in the arcade than in the home versions.
6. Most glitches related to endless slicing do not exist on the arcade; however, the sword-wielders can take advantage of the terrain on the Fiend's Path in a few spots.