SEGA are celebrating their 60th anniversary at the moment with the GO SEGA campaign, which the company has been celebrating with new products that celebrate their history like the Astro City Mini and Game Gear Micro, special goods and, right now for a limited time, a sale of their games on Steam. A number of new and classic SEGA titles are on sale on Steam via PC for a limited time, but that’s not all the company plans to offer. Over the next few days, SEGA plan to offer free mini-games as part of their GO SEGA Steam sale, including an axed Golden Axe prototype the company have titled Golden Axed.
These mini-game offerings are on offer starting today, with all of them available until the 19th October. First up and available today is Armor of Heroes by Relic Entertainment, a retro-inspired 4-player tank mini-game with both versus and co-op gameplay. Endless Zone by Amplitude Studios combines the world of Endless and Fantasy Zone for a side-scrolling shooter, and that title will be made available tomorrow.
The final two titles are perhaps most exciting, however. Streets of Kamurocho combines Streets of Rage 2 with the world of Yakuza, re-skinning the game with Kiryu and Majima taking the place of the main characters. Finally, on October 18th, and perhaps the coolest from a preservationist perspective, a canned prototype for a rebooted Golden Axe game has been renamed as Golden Axed and will be released to the public. In an incomplete state as just a single level before it was cancelled, this is still a cool freebie from a preservationist perspective.
woke up to the surprising news that Sega is releasing the Golden Axe prototype I coded in 2012 under crunch conditions
At least I'm not alone – this appears to be a surprise to everyone I know who actually worked on it https://t.co/MRmuSFgMlA
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
That’s not to say this is free from controversy. The release of Golden Axed has been met by surprise even by those who originally worked on the prototype, with one publicly commenting on Twitter about issues with crunch during the prototype’s development. Crunch is a major issue the industry is currently reckoning with, and celebrating such conditions while adding a comment that the game is buggy could be seen as problematic for those that worked on it.
All 4 SEGA mini-games will be available for free on Steam as part of the GO SEGA campaign.