As previously mentioned, I always chose to be the Axe wielding dwarf, who I have discovered is called 'Gilius-Thunderhead', I had tried playing with the other characters but found that their fighting ability was nowhere near as good as the dwarf. After revisiting the game on the Wii platform I realise that it is also important to think about the magic abilities of each character. Although the man and woman are not as good at one-to-one battle there is compensation in the magic that they possess:
click on the image for larger, clearer version of magic levels
the man (Axe-Battler) could collect 7 bottles with a possible 4 applications
the woman (Tyris-Flare) could collect 12 bottles with a possible 6 applications
the dwarf (Gilius-Thunderhead) could collect 5 bottles with a possible 3 applications
The woman was able to achieve a more powerful level of magic if all bottles had been collected - something that I was not aware of as we didn't own the manual and didn't ever want to play as the woman. We did consider when magic should be used, and who should collect magic but it was not a consideration that affected character choices. Why is the woman chosen as the character with least physical powers but the ability to play the most magic? A question that could lead to some interesting work, especially when compared to the inclusion of female characters in other games from the same period.
It is interesting to notice that the official names of the characters were of no interest to us, this may have been because we were playing a 'borrowed' version at the time and did not have access to the manual. We referred to the characters (on the few occasions that we needed to as the dwarf, the man and the woman).
Playing Golden Axe on the Wii has also reminded me of the lengths of time that play was necessary for when playing the game on an old PC. There was no save function so we had to either leave the computer on during play intervals (something that had to be negotiated with out parents, who wanted to limit duration of computer play as well as the cost of their electricity bill) or just play for hours on end. We were reluctant to leave the computer on for too long as even when paused Golden Axe would frequently 'lock up'. I remember leaving the game on over Sunday lunch once and rushing back to find that the computer had locked up - and we had paused the game at a point never previously reached before. I seem to remember that the frustration experienced through this event led to Golden Axe being relegated to the disk box, not to be played again for a few weeks, if not months.
The Wii allows the game to be saved and returned to at any point (as shown in image above). The console does not have to be left on, waiting for the players to return to play. It would be interesting to find out when the save capability of computer games first occurred, or became a mainstream feature. There were obvious implications for gamers who were glued to their television/computer screens - I remember that one of my friends used to suffer from severe migraine as a child as a result of playing PS1 in a darkened room for hours on end. Another used to induce epileptic fits through prolonged play, something that she was well aware could happen but couldn't resist the lure of her Commodore 16. The ability to save progress must have had some kind of impact on players, I suppose that since most of the games that were were playing came out of arcade originals there was no need to write in a save command. But prolonged play must have been set as a standard method of, or approach to, play and I wonder to what extent the save command did make much difference to how long children would play games for.
I remember that in an attempt to limit the pirating of disc based PC games their used to be a simple password/image entry system. Within the manual there was an image, or word, at the top, bottom, left and right of each page. When you started the game up you were prompted to enter an image/word from a specific location - something that was very difficult to achieve without access to the manual. I remember phoning the friend that I had borrowed the game from to try and tie up the image requested on screen at my house with the game manual situated at my friends' house.
There were ways around this copyright system: photocopying the manual or just making a note/sketch of images/words contained within the manual and their associated page numbers. I remember that my brother and I successfully remembered which images were situated on which page of the manual as we continuously entered page numbers as guesses. I think that after three wrong guesses the game had to be restarted but this did not deter us. I find this mental ability to beat the copyright attempts interesting - it was our determination to play the game that fueled the problem solving task that felt like a game in itself (although quite a frustrating one at times).
My brother, sister and I were pretty safe from the dangers of prolonged computer game play as we were always using borrowed copies and never owned a TV console (apart from the Binatone IV which was brought into the house by my Mum - probably due to the novelty factor and in her words: "our ability to play the computer game rather than the computer game playing us"). Our Dad was even stricter when it came to computer game play as he worked in the IT industry and was well aware that we were breaking copyright laws coupled with the ever increasing risk of infecting his computer with disc borne viruses. Our Mum was quite strict on the amount of computer game play we engaged in on a daily basis, probably through stories about the consequences of playing too much, as well as her fear that we might stop participating in more physical and traditional forms of play - the general thought was that you get no educational value out of playing computer games, something that has changed with the advent of the DS and Wii (amongst other consoles). When we got older we were able to buy PC games but I was 16 before I owned a mainstream games console (the face lift PS1) which was, by then, a pretty old console to be purchasing.
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