There was a pause, “where’s the wow factor” someone asked. All of management was sitting around the big table. It took me sending a 2am email to the studio head and a “lets go for a coffee and a chat” the next morning to get that stopped.īut the biggest gut punch came a week and a half in – combat was working, it was all on track! I was called for a meeting in the big room, so I put the latest build on the network and went to see what was up. He took to inventing arbitrary challenges like “management want to see an attack animation playing in game by the end of the day or they’ll think the project is in trouble” while I was busy coding enemy ai and the soft lock combo system simultaneously.Ī week or so in, the lead campaigned for branching the prototype and making a Streets of Rage pitch concurrently because to him they were the same game. Much less luckily we also had the lead designer who thought he was designing it, and sometimes would have to physically block him from reaching my workstation or he’d start explaining insights he’d received playing the mobile port on the train on the way to work. So we made do, just really attacked the design knowing we wouldn’t be able to course correct much, but luckily we had a talented team of artists, animators and sound designers. This would have been a difficult line to walk at any time but we had two weeks and no time to iterate. So we tried to combine all that with the spirit of the original game. We agreed because we were assured management wanted us to develop it ‘our way’ (ie another miracle please) but did mandate a darker, bloodier Golden Axe, with splatter and decapitations and two button combat. It exists because and I had delivered the Castle of Illusion prototype that was maintaining the studio.Ī producer we trusted asked us if we could make a ‘polished gameplay prototype’ for an internal Golden Axe pitch in about two weeks to land a second project.

This project was my personal nexus of nightmare hours, inept management, industry realisations and heroics achieved with a small team under unreasonable conditions, so it’s an odd feeling to see it surface eight years later without context, credits and with a joke title sequence.

“Woke up to the surprising news that Sega is releasing the Golden Axe prototype I coded in 2012 under crunch conditions.Īt least I’m not alone – this appears to be a surprise to everyone I know who actually worked on it Here is Tim Dawson’s not-so-fond recollection of making it: The prototype was created by a few developers, Tim Dawson, Sanatana Mishra, some animators like and Dean‘s art team. While it’s awesome Sega pulled this prototype (originally titled Golden Axe: Reborn) out of their vault and released it to the public, it’s sad that this 4-player 1 level prototype was created back in 2012 in 2 weeks under crunch conditions by the in 2013 gone defunct Sega Studios Australia. Golden Axed: A Cancelled Prototype – Full Demo Gameplay (Golden Axe: Reborn)

Prototype remastered pc