The biggest hint is that the minimum system was a genuine IBM PC 5150 8088-4.77mhz

Golden Axe PC - DOSbox performance (setting up)

Up through 1990 most games would at least work on true “base pc hardware “
even in 1990 A few games still didn’t work correctly on faster hardware.

So optimal might be anything from 4.77mhz to 25mhz but usually developers didn’t expect you to have much over 10mhz at home with a few exceptions.

Pushing boundaries came later

rmay635703 wrote on 2023-10-22, 07:31:

The biggest hint is that the minimum system was a genuine IBM PC 5150 8088-4.77mhz

Technically it'll "run" on such a system but it's totally unplayable. Back when the family's turbo XT was new, I remember timing the dwarf's lightning spell- it took 14 MINUTES to complete, and that was with turbo on using the least demanding video mode (CGA). 😀

VileR wrote on 2023-10-22, 07:51:

rmay635703 wrote on 2023-10-22, 07:31:

The biggest hint is that the minimum system was a genuine IBM PC 5150 8088-4.77mhz

Technically it'll "run" on such a system but it's totally unplayable. Back when the family's turbo XT was new, I remember timing the dwarf's lightning spell- it took 14 MINUTES to complete, and that was with turbo on using the least demanding video mode (CGA). 😀

And on a 486sx25 the ai was unbeatable, so for proper speed must be inbetween turbo XT (unplayable ) and 486sx-25 unplayable for a different reason .

Maybe 286-12 ?

I think 286-12 would be too slow. The music seem to be too slow even on the 286-20 setting. I used to be playing the game on my 386sx16 thinking it was perfect, but of course I had nothing else to compare, when I upgraded to an 386dx40 I though it became way harder and, as mentioned on reference post, some fighting trick where just not working anymore. I did want to keep my original post concise but I'm not even playing the game, I'm just going to the option/sound-test and play the music. I want to do an audio recording to compare the music from the three major port of the game : Genesis, Arcade and PC. I guess now my only option would be to compare audio with the arcade version and find a SLOWDOWN.EXE settings that work.

Thank you for your input, rmay635703 and VileR ! I'll try to remember to get back and post my result if I find something conclusive.

The playable Golden Axe DOS experience I remember was on a 386SX16 (VGA and SB). A lot of old arcade ports face that ISA bottleneck so it'll never be perfect, and VGA panning wasn't a thing many bothered with.

It heavily depends on the video mode used, on VGA it lags even on a slow 386 during crowded scenes. 2-player mode also has a big effect.
Although I was playing it on an 8088/CGA back then by today's standards I consider it perfect on at least a 386DX/33 with cache.

Once again, the outcome of my observation was unexpected. It seem that everything from my Golden Axe soundtrack comparison project do not go as planned. What I realize is that the soundtrack would be affected by cpu speed up to something around an 286@90mhz or a 486@45mhz. At this point I could even run the game at full speed of the pentium@120mhz with all cache, using CGA and the music would still be capped the same.

Now what's interesting is that even at maximum capped speed, it's still a bit slower than the arcade reference. But validating other music from the game I found how much the PC music feel butchered in comparison. And that the marginal speed difference is not significant compared to the obvious alteration that where done, such as whole part of a music that where cut. I've always though that the PC version was the superior one, but the more I compare with the genesis/megadrive and Arcade version, the more I start to believe it was in fact the worst one.

So thank to everyone that chipped in my thread, all your input did help me understand more the particularity of this game timing issues. I think now I have all what is necessary to wear my music critic hat and begin my comparative analysis of the game soundtrack on the ym2151, ym2612 and ym3812.

music slowness is probably because the game runs music off system timer directly, which by default is at ~18.2ms, giving about ~56Hz update rate, compared to arcade and MD version which are almost at 60Hz.

This was one of my favourite games. I used to play it on an IBM PS/1 486 SX25 with 2mb ram. Never noticed any issues with the speed.

ElBrunzy wrote on 2023-10-25, 06:53:

Now what's interesting is that even at maximum capped speed, it's still a bit slower than the arcade reference. But validating other music from the game I found how much the PC music feel butchered in comparison. And that the marginal speed difference is not significant compared to the obvious alteration that where done, such as whole part of a music that where cut. I've always though that the PC version was the superior one, but the more I compare with the genesis/megadrive and Arcade version, the more I start to believe it was in fact the worst one.

Curiously, I only recently realized the same thing, having gone back to replay the various versions of Golden Axe these past few months.

Comparing the DOS version music to that of the Genesis/Mega Drive, I think that only two songs were butchered by means of cutting whole sections - Turtle Village 1 and, of course, The Battle (a.k.a. Battle Field) . In both cases roughly the entire second half was removed.

In case of Turtle Village - the second half is basically a variation, albeit a nice one, of the first half, so it may be forgiven. In the case of the Battle Field, though, it is an entirely new theme, perhaps the nicer part of the song, which you would never experience playing the DOS version.

Curiously, the Genesis version of 'Battle Field' is also missing a part of the song - the sequence that comes last in the DOS version, but in the Arcade original it bridges the first and second halves.

A couple of other musical curiosities: As you've noticed, even at maximum speed, the DOS music plays slower that the Arcade. The Genesis music seems even slightly slower than that. Also, in the Genesis sound test menu - the entries for Turtle Village 2 and Fiend's Path are reversed (in DOS they are correct).

I would say that between Arcade, Sega and PC, the PC is the worst for more than just the music... It also misses the most animation frames, Death Adder and Death ground projectile attacks are missing entirely, it is very sensitive to CPU speed and has some game-breaking bugs like the blue thieves sometimes getting stuck in walls.

It does have one trick up its sleeve - the ability to swap the sprite files to change characters to other characters - either to give yourself invulnerability playing as the cockatrice/dragon, or just to have some fun. The fact that such tricks do not crash the game, plus its seamless support of insufficient memory or being split across 2 floppies are testimony to some good programming practices. The quality of PC speaker music it can produce is also. Pity they didn't figure out the speed sensitivity issue.