A look back at all the enemies from Golden Axe

One of my earliest gaming memories is playing Golden Axe at the local arcade back in 1989. The high fantasy beat ‘em up was tough for a six-year-old but Sega and lead designer Makota Uchida were masters for immersing me in a 16-bit world filled with scantily clad barbarians, Amazons, monsters and magic.

Golden Axe’s heroes staring down their enemies/Sega

One of Golden Axe’s biggest drawing points was the variety of enemies you faced and subsequently had to thrash with your sword or axe. The following is a look back at all the enemies from Golden Axe, from the repugnant to the annoying to the downright evil and frightening.

Zuburoka

One of Golden Axe’s main protagonists is Tyris Flare, a scantily-clad, sword–wielding, Amazonian warrioress and princess of the Firewood Kingdom – until her homeland is invaded and overthrown by the game’s antagonist, Death Adder.

One of the main units in Death Adder’s invading army is Zuburoka, a chainmail-wearing Amazon who’s part of a rival group to Tyris Flare. And when I say unit, I really mean it. Look at how swole up Zuburoka is in her official art.

Zuburoka appears as four different palette swaps in the game: Storchinaya (blue), Strobaya (green, also known as Syrobaya), Lemanaya (red) and Gruziya (dark, also known as Guruziya).

I didn’t realize it as a six-year-old but the names for the majority of the enemies in Golden Axe are spoofs on alcoholic drinks, with Zuburoka in particular derived from Zubrowka, a Polish vodka. Storchinaya is named after Stolichnaya, a Russian vodka; Strobaya after Stolovaya, a grain-based Russian vodka; Lemanaya after Limonnaya, a lemon-flavored Russian vodka and Gruziya being the former name of Georgia, a country renowned for its wine.

Does that mean that Makoto Uchida and the Sega team were a bunch of raging alcoholics? Maybe. But some of history’s greatest discoveries have been accomplished under the influence, like astronauts flying into space or Ulysses S. Grant winning the US Civil War and Golden Axe is certainly no exception to that inebriated rule.

All jokes aside, now that I’m an ostensibly grown man, the running theme of enemies named after alcohol is a funny running gag from the makers of Golden Axe – and I’ll point out further examples of it as we progress through the list of enemies.

Back to Zuburoka real quick. Interestingly enough, even though Zuburoka’s official Golden Axe art has her looking jacked, in Sega Heroes (a puzzle game that features many of the characters from Golden Axe) she’s a lot more lithe and sinewy in build, like Taarna from Heavy Metal. Maybe Death Adder and crew ran out of the Yurian (Golden Axe takes place in the fictional fantasy world of Yuria) anabolic steroids became scarce and there weren’t any left for Zuburoka. Luckily there’s probably plenty of knock-off Russian vodka available for her to drown her sorrows.

Longmoan

The interestingly named Longmoan is one of the most common enemy types in Golden Axe. Longmoan is a hunched-over brute wearing a horned helmet and wielding a morningstar.

Much like Zuburoka, Longmoan’s name has a liquor-based derivation – Longmorn Distillery – which is a single malt scotch whisky distillery in Longmorn, Scotland.

Heninger

Heninger is another common enemy type in Golden Axe alongside Zuburoka and Longmoan. These bald bruisers are decked out in metal shoulder pauldrons, metal greaves and sabatons.

And grey speedos. And that’s it. Oh, a grey headband too – just in case his forehead got cold.

It’s as if Sega and lead designer Makoto Uchida foresaw the overabundance of skimpy, chainmail-bikini-clad female warriors in future fantasy video games and made sure that the fanservice Golden Axe at least went both ways.

Heninger wields a giant mace for a weapon and has a charge attack that can’t be blocked or negated by the player, suggesting he might be slightly stronger physically than Longmoan, whose charge attacks can be negated by players.

Heninger’s name is based on the Henninger Brewery, a renowned brewery in Frankfurt, Germany famous for its Henninger Pils, a pilsner-style lager.

Chicken Leg

Since Golden Axe, released in 1989, predated Super Mario World and Yoshi by an entire year, Chicken Leg (AKA Cockatrice) marks the first rideable mount character ever for me in a video game; a pretty big deal, considering pilfering this featherless, Perdue chicken-skinned looking thing from the bad guys and riding it around was one of my most cherished memories when playing the game as a kid.

Until it died, that is. That dead Chicken Leg sprite hit 6-year-old me with the same level of trauma-inducing heartache as the horse sinking into the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story.

Just look at it. Slumped and moribund-looking after it just dedicated its final moments of life to you, a mere tool in a war it never asked to be a part of.

Let’s just move on to the next Golden Axe enemy entry before we all start bursting into tears, shall we?

Bad Brothers

The Bad Brothers are giants, much like Death Adder himself and high-ranking members of his army.

The Bad Brothers are interesting enemies in that they look like a conflation of so many different characters from different video games and movies. The first thought that comes to mind when I see the Bad Brothers: they look like Bald Bull from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out wearing the same body thong that Sean Connery wore in the movie Zardoz. It looks just as ridiculous as it sounds.

Interestingly enough, the sculpted figurine of the Bad Brothers from Storm Collectibles, makes them look like overweight versions of Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon. Or like Ming the Merciless ate E. Honda from Street Fighter.

You might be wondering why the Bad Brothers aren’t named after alcohol like the rest of the enemies not named Death Adder in Golden Axe. Surprise: they are. That’s because their names in Japanese are バドワイザ, which roughly translates to “Budweiser,” or Bud for short (Bud Brothers).

In addition, the blue armored variants of the Bad Brothers (the bosses of the first level in the game) are named Sgt. Malt and Sgt. Hop, malt and hops being vital components in making beer. There is also a red variant who guards Death Adder in the final level of the game named General Heartland, named after the Japanese Heartland beer.

Are the Bad Brothers how the makers of Golden Axe visualize Americans who drink Budweiser? Husky giants who suck down beers as opposed to the leaner, more muscular-looking vodka, scotch and German pilsner drinkers from the previous Golden Axe enemy entries? I hope so, because that’s hilarious.

Loot Thieves

Even if you’ve never played Golden Axe, you can see the influence its constituents have had on other games. One key example is the Loot Thieves. These sprightly, annoying, gnomic little bastards hop around the screen and drop potions and magic power-ups for players when they’re hit.

Remind you of another sprightly, annoying little bastard in a video game that hops around the screen and drops items for players when they’re hit?

If you said the Treasure Goblin from Diablo III, you’d be right. According to Nathan Lutsock, the game’s associate producer, the Loot Thieves from Golden Axe are the direct influence for the Treasure Goblins.

“A lot of the time, monsters are born out of typical game needs: a swarmer, an ambusher, an uncommon challenge, and so on. The rhythm of the game requires certain kinds of monsters. But some monsters are born out of unique requirements,” Lutsock said on a Reddit AMA.

Lutsock continued, “[The game’s lead designer] Jay Wilson specifically wanted a monster that could cut across all game content and environments, fitting in literally anywhere, and providing a unique “stop all normal gameplay and do this NOW” experience for the player.

He was really open about how we accomplish this, but he set us on a path when he said, “Kinda like those little thief bastards in Golden Axe.” Once we had that personality in our heads, we couldn’t shake it. We were making a little bastard that deserved to get his butt kicked.”

My only question: From where and whom did the Thieves, much like the Loot Goblins, pilfer all their valuable items from? If we’re to believe they stole from other people in the game, then why are we, the good guys, the only ones beating the bag out of them to get the items back? Shouldn’t all the enemies be after them as well?

Notwithstanding, the Thieves are a fun, clever addition to Golden Axe that adds some much needed levity to the core gameplay loop. The items they dropped are also indispensable to beating the game, at least for hacks like myself who always had trouble beating Golden Axe (without wasting entire stacks of quarters at the arcade). It’s easy to see why a fantasy game as revered as Diablo was inspired by Golden Axe in this regard.

Magician

These red-robed, magic–wielding enemies technically made their first appearance in Golden Axe 2 (they replace the Thieves as loot pinatas) but they also appear in the Playstation 2 remake of Golden Axe.

The Magicians look kind of like evil versions of Orko from He-Man. They carry staffs with a skull on the top and can both levitate and move around more quickly than the standard melee enemies. Much like the loot thieves, Magicians drop random potions and food when hit.

Dragon

If the Chicken Leg mounts I talked about earlier are analogous to the cockatrice in mythology, then this dragon which you can commandeer in the later levels of Golden Axe is the equivalent of a drake or a baby dragon.

There are two different variations of the Dragon mount in Golden Axe: the Blue Dragon, which emits a cone of fire-breath from its snout in front of it and the Red Dragon, which spits fireballs instead of fire in a radius in front of it like the Green one.

One of the best looking figurines for the Golden Axe Dragon is Storm Collectibles’ Blue Dragon, which comes with protagonist Tyris Flare riding atop it.

Skeleton Soldier

Skeleton Soldiers are reanimated skeletons who are summoned by Death Adder’s magic. They are one of the few enemies in the game who have all the same attacks that the player has.

Skeleton Soldiers wield a golden sword and a golden shield with a skull insignia on its front.

Lt. Bitter

Lt. Bitter is, as his name suggests, a high-ranking member in Death Adder’s army. He wears a horned helm that’s similar to Death Adder, but a full suit of armor that’s white in color as opposed to the latter’s red armor. He wields an enormous sword and shield which both match his white armor.

Lt. Bitter’s alcohol-based name derivation comes from the term “bitter,” which is an English style of pale ale. In some versions of the game, Lt. Bitter is called Heineken, a reference to the Dutch beer and brewing company.

Death Adder

The main villain Golden Axe, Death Adder is a hulking, red-armored giant and an overall bad dude. The protagonists of the game are after him because he either killed or kidnapped one of their immediate family members while razing and usurping their homeland.

According to his backstory, Death Adder is descended from a race of evil giants who survived a war with the gods. His motivations might be a bit cliched – he wants to take over the entire world and preside over it as emperor – but his appearance more than makes up for that.

Death Adder looks like a bad-ass, with his gigantic, powerful build, a menacing red, horned helm that completely shrouds his face in shadow and of course, the fact that he can heft around the eponymous Golden Axe, which looks like it’s just shy of two tons in weight.

To six-year-old me, Death Adder was that dude; the quintessential fantasy villain, like Sauron, Archaon the Everchosen and Thanos all rolled into one before I had any notion of who the latter three were.

Even though Death Adder’s face is shrouded in shadow by his helm, you can see a faint outline of facial features in his Storm Collectibles statue and some of the game’s official artwork:

One last thought: was Death Adder the inspiration for Herod, the Scarlet Champion and armorer of the Scarlet Monastery in World of Warcraft? It’d be a pretty slick derivation, considering both have red armor, a horned helm and carry a gigantic axe.

What did you think of our look back at all the enemies from Golden Axe? Which enemy was your favorite or least favorite? Which retro game’s enemies should we take a look at next?