When the Mega Drive / Genesis first arrived on the market, it was bolstered by ports of some of Sega's greatest arcade titles. Golden Axe was one of them, and proved to be something of a system-seller thanks to the fact that it was incredibly close to the coin-op original.
While the console would get two more exclusive Golden Axe sequels, it missed out on the game every fan wanted to play at home: the 1992 arcade exclusive Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder.
Powered by Sega's System 32 arcade hardware, the game was sadly too advanced for the Mega Drive / Genesis to replicate accurately at the time, and to this day has never been ported to any home console; the only domestic release so far has been for an Arcade1Up cabinet.
While Sega clearly didn't feel a port was possible back in the '90s, coder @ray_castello has given fans hope that an unofficial conversion could be on the horizon.
Before you get too excited, the image above is a "quick test", but Castello says that "with enough time and dedication, a simplified adaptation would definitely be possible."
The scaling effects in the original version would naturally have to be removed, along with other features that might be beyond the 16-bit system – but we'd like to think that any fan-made port could be faithful to the spirit of the arcade version, at the very least.