A crunchy experience.
So as it turns out, when Sega represented Golden Axed on Steam as “janky” and that they had consulted with the original devs, that was kind of not true. Like, at all. Because one of the original devs has come forward and stated that none of the original team was contacted.
More than that, the original team worked rather hard on it, under crunch conditions. And that this prototype was the fruit of a little under two weeks of blood, sweat and tears.
The full thread sees Dawson lay out the heady mixture of crunch, lunatic project managers, and indifferent suits that were nonplussed with all that hard work. Notably, at one point the executives compared it unfavorably with God of War; this is telling, as that’s the direction they went with Golden Axe: Beast Rider, and that game fucking blew.
For their part in all of this, Sega has apologized for the description, and since amended the Steam store page. Their statement:
We certainly didn’t mean to dredge up painful memories for Mr. Dawson and his former colleagues or appear disrespectful. We’ve removed the line from the Steam copy that could have been taken as a slur on the development and would like to reassure everyone that it was intended as a comment on the build we had ported to PC, not the quality of the original work.
Dawson and Mishra (alongside Jeff van Dyck) went on to found their independent studio, Witch Beam, after leaving the nightmare that was the development of Golden Axe: Reborn. Notably, they’re behind Assault Android Cactus, with an upcoming game in Unpacking, planned for release in 2021.
Source: Polygon
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