Golden Axe offers fun for the whole family. Who doesn't like mindlessly chopping up random barbarians? You can also ride dragons and throw down huge magic spells. There's a hot chick wearing next to nothing. Plus you get to kick dwarves to get power ups. Sign me up!

This is a home conversion of a popular arcade game, where you'll take one of three characters along their magical journey to kill the evil Death Adder. Armed with sharp weapons and devastating magic, no man, skeleton, or dwarf will be safe from your wrath.

When you boil down everything, this is a dead simple game. But this is the type of game that doesn't need a fancy story or complex controls. It's button-mashing beat-em-up nirvana at its' finest.

In coming to the home, the graphics and sound do take a bit of a hit -- though they are still solid for a Genesis game -- and perhaps to make up for this, Sega wisely added in two levels to the arcade mode, as well as an all-new "duel" mode, which is a simplistic form of a fighting game. When you throw in the ability to have a buddy play along with you, Golden Axe ends up being one of the best beat-em-ups available on the Virtual Console.