The famous beat'em all Golden Axe, originally released as an arcade game in 1989 on the Sega System 16 and then on Mega Drive, had never been officially ported to Neo Geo... until now. Homebrew developer Hoffman, already behind the porting of Shinobi to Neo Geo, has just released its adaptation of the game, the result of painstaking reverse-engineering and development work.

Hoffman explains that the port was created using a combination of analysis of the original code and new development to ensure that the gameplay and visuals were as faithful as possible to the arcade version.

This version includes the original arcade difficulty settings, the ability to select game region (Japan or World), as well as an exclusive soundtrack for the Neo Geo CD version, composed by Richard Douglas.

The developer has also fine-tuned certain technical aspects. He has improved his graphics tools to bring them even closer to the arcade version, and has paid particular attention to sound quality. The soundtrack comes directly from the original System 16 PCB. Some audio files have even been replaced by higher quality versions after extensive research into the original samples.

This homebrew port runs on the original consoles, most flash cartridge solutions and emulators. We haven't tested it on Recalbox yet, but if you'd like to give it a go and give us some feedback on Discord, the game is available now as a free download from Hoffman's itch.io page.