Golden Axe is apparently heading to the Neo Geo, but as you might expect, the Neo Geo version of Golden Axe will be a very unofficial fan port of Sega’s classic side scrolling beat ‘em up, which first hacked its way into arcades back in 1989.

The Neo Geo Golden Axe port is being worked on by the coder and game developer H0ffman, who, as we previously reported, has also ported another Sega classic to the Neo Geo, in the form of Shinobi.

H0ffman has been chronicling the development of his Golden Axe Neo Geo port on X, where he recently confirmed that he now has “most of Stage 1 now in place.” Interestingly, during his development of Neo Geo Golden Axe, H0ffman also discovered that the original Golden Axe arcade PCB employed a novel method of copy protection that meant that “when you bootleg the PCB, you can’t kill anything”.
In addition to porting classic games to Neo Geo, H0ffman is also a demoscene musician who streams on Twitch.

Here at Retro News, we love seeing coders convert games to formats that they weren’t officially released for, so we wish H0ffman luck with his Neo Geo port of Golden Axe!