On Thursday, developer Tim Dawson called Golden Axe: Reborn “my personal nexus of nightmare hours, inept management, industry realisations and heroics achieved with a small team under unreasonable conditions.”
Game giveaway dredges up unpleasant memories for original devs Sega has apologized for characterizing its forthcoming free Golden Axe demo as possibly “janky” or “buggy,” and titling it Golden Axed.
Golden Axed is a single-level proof-of-concept Sega will offer free on Oct. 18 in celebration of the company’s 60th anniversary. It was a “vertical slice” worked up by Sega Studios Australia in 2012, for a 2.5D side-scrolling brawler called Golden Axe: Reborn.
While Sega, on the demo’s Steam page says it went back to Golden Axe: Reborn developers to prepare the work for release, Dawson said the first he’d heard about this was after news releases mentioned it on Wednesday.