Ok, so here's the conclusion of my Golden Axe saga.
Figured out that the reason the tracks quit while playing the 32+ version of Golden Axe is not that the emulator failed to loop the CD track, it's that the wav files included with the games have been truncated. I assume this was done to make those versions run on the actual hardware. I mean the other alternative is that the guy who did those versions is a mongoloid, so.
So while i was replacing the audio tracks i stumbled upon this direct port of the arcade original for the NeoGeo CD:
https://h0ffman.itch.io/golden-axe
This one comes with some fancy soundtrack but out of all of them the best one i found was the version for the PS2:
Apparently the game itself was a pile of shit, with dreadful 3D graphics, messed up hitboxes and generally a complete vandalization of the original. The only good thing about it is the soundtrack, which is actually a very good "high quality" remaster of the original score. Props to the guy who did this, the only one in this team that knew wtf he was doing apparently.
So because of this i decided to replace this Richard Douglas soundtrack with the one from the PS2. The only issue is that the title track was a little short, plus there was one extra track that wasn't part of the original, i think for some extra level the PS2 version had. So what i did is i merged the title track with this extra track to create some extended cinematic intro.
And here's the fruits of my labours, with the intro played in full which i think came out pretty nicely:
Managed to pull off a 1CC despite being rusty from not playing arcade games in ages. I shit the bed at the last boss because i lost the dragon first thing so the whole fight was in total panic mode, but i managed lol. Since i wanted to include the full intro in the video i didn't feel like redoing it as that would have gotten annoying.
If you guys wanna try it here's the files:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_oi9tb0rEJq7OXXHn_UkpzUrCPbpGT5j/view?usp=drive_link
The reason there's two sets is that i couldn't find a way to lower the CD audio so i just used Audacity to amply the volume down to minus -15db. In case you wanna try a different value i included the originals.
