Science Dude, you're talking to Captain Emulation over here. I've been a huge fan of emulators since I first discovered NESticle in the '90s. MAME is probably my favorite emulator, as it's the only way to play most old arcade games.
But yeah, Golden Axe rules. I'm a mega-fan of the '80s barbarian trend of movies and video games. Some other rad '80s barbarian arcade games were Rastan and The Astyanax. The Astyanax was originaly released as Lord of Kings in Japan, and the flyer for it is pretty fucking amazing: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/legendaryaxe/lordofkingflyer.jpg
And by amazing, I mean absolutely retarded. They should have called the game "Lord of Arms." Jessica actually had that flyer as her desktop for the better part of the past year.
Haha was she just taking the piss I hopehen? Those arms are ridiculous indeed and his face makes me think of Modern Talking.
It made her laugh, so she made it her desktop. That video you linked to can't be viewed from the US, but we found another version of it. Good stuff. I love the "meowing" guitar. I think I'll have to add it to my massive "ultimate '80s playlist."
Is the game itself any good?
Hmm. Jessica and I played through it a long time ago, so I don't remember it all that well. But I'd say it's pretty comparable to
Golden Axe.
Seems to me this barbarian image was copied straight from Conan the Barbarian. Speaking of which, has anyone seen the 2011 version?
Oh, boy. You've just struck on a sore spot. You see, I'm a huge fan of the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories that were written in the nineteen-thirties. The Arnold Conan films strayed pretty far from the source material (although I love the first movie in spite of the that, and
Conan the Destroyer is entertainingly stupid--but
fuck that thief character). When the 2011 Conan movie was first announced, it was heralded as a Conan movie that would stay true to the original stories. That got me super pumped and I followed its production really closely for years.
But things really went downhill during the production. For some reason they chose a director known for semi-descent horror movie remakes, and they hired a writing duo that produced a shitty script that wasn't at all true to the original Conan stories. At the last second, they brought in a more hardcore Conan fan to re-write the script. But by that point they'd already been building the sets and had the locations all scouted and the costumes made and such so there wasn't much that the new writer was allowed to change as far as the general plot was concerned.
I actually really liked Jason Momoa as Conan. It's just too bad he wasn't presented with a very good movie to act in.
When I finally saw it in the theater, I'd been so pumped about it for years, and I really wanted it to be rad as hell in spite of all the red flags during the production, but it was ultimately disappointing. It makes me pissed off when I think about what that movie
could have been.