Why isn’t this game on the Wii’s Virtual Console yet?

Even though I was a huge video game freak during the 16-bit era, I never really got into the TurboGrafx-16. I had an SNES and a Genesis, and those two systems had more than enough games for me to play. Plus I was just barely coming into adolescence so I couldn’t afford to buy it all unless I went and hung out with that creepy older guy Ronald who lived a couple of houses down. (He always smelled like lemons.) On the rare occasion that I did get to play a TurboGrafx, Legendary Axe was my game of choice.

The Bonk games get all the press but Legendary Axe was where it was at. Beautiful large sprites and a half naked man wielding the… uh… legendary axe. What more could you ask for? I recently decided to go through this game for nostalgia’s sake, and I’m glad that I did.

Here’s the background story from gamefaqs:

You are the mighty warrior Gogan. Your village has been ruled by the evil Jagu cult. Your village has been required to give a human sacrifice each year. This year, your childhood friend Flare will be the sacrifice. You must go rescue Flare and destroy the Jagu and their leader, Jagu.

You have been given the Legendary Axe to perform this task. It is said this
weapon possesses tremendous power usable only by its wielder.

Gameplay was pretty simple, your basic arcade sidescroller. Along the way you fight all kinds of enemies through 6 stages. I do have to say that Legendary Axe was fucking hard. Like really hard. I was save-statin’ left and right and I still had problems with it.

Also, you usually won’t die because you lose all of your health. The majority of the time you’ll die by falling into a pit. Get hit by a monster fall into a pit. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t a pit any where close to you; you’ll automatically get transported into a god damn pit and die.

The bosses in Legendary Axe are a mixed bag. Stage 1 you’ll have to fight bears. On stage 2 you’ll fight a rock. Serious, just a big rock. I don’t know why the makers jumped the shark with this one… couldn’t that have made something better than a rock? On stage 3 you’ll battle the gay-ass-annoying-eyeball shits. They can be defeated by constantly holding the down button.

Apparently I didn’t get a picture of stage 4 because I was too busy getting raped by monkeys. I had a lot of trouble getting through stage 5 because I kept on going into the wrong damn rooms, but when I finally got to the boss I was a bit disappointed. Gamefaqs call him the panda, but he doesn’t look anything like a panda. Last, but definitely least, is Jagu. You can beat him by kneeling underneath his crotch and chopping at his feet. Beat Jagu and you will be reunited with your love Flare.

Time has been a lot kinder to Legendary Axe than I thought it would be. The game, despite being ridiculously hard, holds up very well. I think it looks a lot better than similar game and this game could have been huge if it was on the SNES or Genesis. I hope this comes out on the Wii’s Virtual Console soon because more people need to give this gem a shot.

Score: 7.5