Vault 1541 is now in its 9th year and I'm trying to post here twice a month as the YouTube channel continues to dwindle. One of my goals last year was to finally put together a video for Golden Axe but I failed yet again, sorry! However, it's very close to being done now. I started playing it in December and although it's a short and easy game, it still took me a while to relearn it and adjust to playing with a gamepad rather than an arcade stick. I played a fair amount even though I only completed it a dozen times or less, I just kept hitting the reset button when I'd mess up. Not that a few mistakes would prevent a game completion, I just wanted to reach the highest ranking of A+++, and most of the time I was only receiving A++ grades. There will be a blog post to go with the video so you can read more about it in about two weeks.
There has been some significant video game news since I last posted an update which was in October. Nintendo finally confirmed the Switch 2. It looks similar to the Switch and should be backwards compatible with most Switch games. More details are coming in an April 2nd Nintendo Direct. Microsoft is actually going to publish Forza Horizon 5 on the PlayStation 5 in the spring. This surprised me quite a bit. I understand publishing games from Activision and Bethesda on PlayStation but Forza has been a flagship Xbox franchise for 20 years. The Forza Horizon series is my favorite Xbox exclusive, or I should say former exclusive, and I expect it will do quite well on PlayStation. While Forza Motorsport is the main competitor to Sony's Gran Turismo, the Horizon series is much less serious when it comes to racing. The most comparable PlayStation game to Forza Horizon would be Ubisoft's multi-platform title The Crew Motorfest. There are rumors of Halo making the jump to PlayStation as well. Financially it's a good move, though one has to wonder if there will ever be another Xbox console, at least one that plays physical media, as Microsoft has been pushing other devices as Xbox, such at PC, smart TVs, and phones, that can stream Xbox games.
A Care Bears video game hit Steam back in October and will release for Switch on February 13th. There are also plans to bring it to PlayStation and Xbox platforms. If you're interested in my magazine posts, you'd probably like to browse the Video Game History Foundation's digital library, which launched in early access recently and is free for all. In video game and toy news, LEGO will release a Game Boy set in October. A brief video was posted on social media by Nintendo, however, no images or price point has been announced. Something I completely missed last year was a collaboration between the Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises. There is a comic book from Dark Horse featuring the crossover, plus action figures from Mattel. There is also a deal between Hasbro and Super7 to revive the Micronauts toy line this year.
One other note about Golden Axe is that the cartridge started acting funny last week and to make sure it wasn't the Genesis having issues, I put in Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf to test it. I'd not played that game in 30 years and certainly didn't remember much about the swing meter or what the maximum distances were for each club. I played the first hole which is a par five and the first shot was fine, second shot went into the rough, and the third shot dropped in the cup for an eagle! It's probably not too difficult to pull that off in this game but I was still pleased with myself, and here is a clip of it:
I did fail to stop the cursor before it hit the top of the meter a couple times, and then it just resets itself. If you're waiting to see the ball in motion, the game doesn't change the viewpoint until it hits the green, though you can see it moving on the overhead view along the left-hand side of the screen.
2/5/25 UPDATE: It turns out the Golden Axe cartridge is okay. Unfortunately, my Sega Genesis is the problem. I did some more testing and games freeze frequently. Zombies Ate My Neighbors even provided the message "Unexpected 68000 error!" so it's probably the processor which is a Motorola 68000.
Thanks for visiting,
Jonathan
Jonathan