Unlike the previous game, it’s not surprising I didn’t know Golden Axe III existed, as it was never released here in the UK. Hell, it wasn’t really released in the US either! Rumour has it the localisation team thought the game wasn’t worth porting because it was ugly looking and didn’t play very well… Can’t say they were wrong either, at least not graphically…
When it comes to lost Doctor Who stories that were actually made, Marco Polo is often held in high regard, and it’s fair to say that Farewell, Great Macedon shares a lot with it. Not just as a historical story, as many Hartnell stories were, but as a longer story with lots of political intrigue, murder (of which our leads are often falsely accused) and a knowledge of history that must not be changed. With just three cast members and six episodes of mostly talking, does Macedon manage to hold your attention? Read on!
The Red Ribbon Army arc is certainly the longest in the original series, though it can be easily split into narrative chunks that make up the whole, as I have done here! (and as FUNimation did, using their weird individually titled “saga” method) That being said, to keep the Muscle Tower part of the story self-contained I’ve had to separate these six episodes on their own, which is a bit… odd. Oh well, let’s take a look at a mostly filler-filled prologue!
Within the first few minutes of this film you start to think “Oh, hang on, they’ve nailed the look and feel of the game at least!” and then it all goes away. Well, actually, the look is the one good thing that stays consistent, but everything else vanishes into an ether of dullness. …Hooray! Let’s take a look at yet another film that had a really good base to go on, but decided not to use it…
When I was planning out this marathon and realised this was going to turn up due to the often forgotten film I was really happy. Max Payne was the coolest game ever when it came out, the bullet time system was frankly “awesome” and I really enjoyed the noir graphic novel style story telling. Does it hold up in 2020? Let’s find out!
It’s funny how I’ve only been running this blog for five years, and for a good chunk of those years I wasn’t even covering games, and yet here we are once again covering a PS4 remake of a PS1 game I’ve already covered on the site! Admittedly, this is less a complete remake and more of a partial remake… that’s also a sequel? Sort of? Well, either way it really fun to play, and that’s the main thing! Let’s take a closer look!
Next up on our look at the Lost Stories is the very oddly named “The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance”, and is actually quite the oddity. It was completely scripted and pitched as a single-episode story (the serial format hadn’t been set in stone at the time of writing) but the pitch was shot down. Really it was only adapted here because the original script still existed and Big Finish was adapting writer Moris Farhi’s other story (Farewell, Great Macedon) so why not? Well… why not indeed, I guess! It’s an odd story, but is it a good story? Let’s find out!
The two Golden Axe sequels have the same story attached to them as the two Final Fight sequels did: me and my friends had no idea they existed until the early 2000s when we saw them on a list of ROMs, though this time a Mega Drive list rather than SNES. Still, 2001-ish is nearly two decades ago now (?!) so I can still take two separate looks at them, even if the first one isn’t contemporary. Golden Axe II is as a sequel plays it extremely safe, but does it improve enough to overcome the lack of nostalgia?
I actually wrote this review back in February for its early March release, then a certain pandemic happened and here we are at the end of June and it finally sees its release. My review of Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 can be viewed HERE. It’s a really good space opera with a very high budget! I hope the sequel can live up to it… though I hear otherwise…
Time to kick off my look at the whole of Big Finish’s Lost Stories range. Although after the First Doctor I’ll be looking at them in the order they were released (per Doctor) I wanted to start off with Luxor, even though this story contains references to two other Lost Stories, because it was originally going to be the 2nd ever story before it was replaced with a little known story called “The Daleks”! That makes it extremely interesting and technically the earliest Lost Story to be recreated … It’s a shame it’s a bit crap, really…
Hogan Reviews 