A long period of time ago, in a far away country, a team of Sega designers started work on a collection of 2.5 D remakes of a few of the businesss classic series. The project was cancelled and never released, however Sega this week just decided fuck it, and launched the Golden Axe one on Steam anyhow.
Odd because this doesnt occur very often, yes, however likewise due to the fact that only a handful of people dealt with the game, and neither of the 2 crucial– initial programmer Tim Dawson and designer Sanatana Mishra– informed Kotaku that they were ever called by Sega, and the first they heard of the demonstration being released was seeing it on Steam the other day.
Whats even odder is that while Sega at first believed it was funny to describe the demonstration as “janky” and an “artifact of its time”, Dawson states the jobs short life-span was essentially his “individual nexus of headache hours, inept management, market realisations and heroics attained with a little group under unreasonable conditions, so its an odd feeling to see it appear eight years later on without context, credits and with a joke title series.”
Called Golden Axed: A Cancelled Prototype, it drags up the long-lost work of Sega Studios Australia, a developer that was closed back in 2013. Segas main description of the video game at the time they listed it the other day is … odd.
On the event of SEGAs 60th Anniversary, as an unique reward to state “Thank You!” to our fans, SEGA is launching a working prototype of Golden Axe Reborn, a single level developed as proof-of-concept, or whats known in the market as a “vertical piece.” Weve called it, tongue in cheek, as “Golden Axed.”
Golden Axed may be janky, may be buggy, may be an artifact of its time, but it uses a distinct glimpse into the possibility of a task that might have been, and an uncommon peek behind the curtain at the often troubled world of computer game advancement.
We reached out to a few of the initial development team to bring this dirty gem to light, and they are proud that this task could be revived in some kind to be shown you, the fans.
Screenshot: Sega
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If after all this you still desire to inspect it out– now equipped with the knowledge of what it was supposed to be and how it came about– Golden Axed is readily available on Steam for a minimal time from October 18.
As a result, Sega have actually released a statement to RPS stating “We certainly didnt imply to dredge up uncomfortable memories for Mr. Dawson and his former coworkers or appear ill-mannered”, and as an outcome in the video games Steam listing has “eliminated the line from the Steam copy that might have been taken as a slur on the advancement and wish to assure everybody that it was intended as a discuss the develop we had ported to PC, not the quality of the original work.”
