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SEGA Australia’s crazy pitch for remaking SEGA classics

Posted by George on Aug 27th, 2013

[Above is SEGA Australia's pre-alpha prototype pitch for Golden Axe remake under their label 'SEGA Reborn']

SEGA Australia isn’t known as the type of studio that had too many hits, but it seemed that the team was finally hitting their stride with the Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse remake that is coming out in early September. Sadly that will be the studio’s last game, since it was announced that they will be closing by the end of the year.

Seems that the studio pitched for a series of remakes, most notably ‘Golden Axe’ and all to be in a new label called ‘SEGA Reborn’. That’s not all though, the company thought that all these classics should take place in the same universe. Yes, we are talking about Marvel movie treatment with retro games. That would mean that a game like Out Run takes place hundreds of years after Golden Axe.

Much like its remake of Castle of Illusion, they where open to going in and adding new content and fixing issues the originals had. Some of the other games they talked about remaking included Streets of Rage and Shinobi. Hit the jump to see video of the ‘Golden Axe’ remake that the studio pitched to SEGA. 

The above footage is pre-alpha and was intended only to demonstrate what the actual game could look like.

Would you want to see classic SEGA games remade and share the same universe?

Looks terrible. They should really use a art direction more faithful to the original..something like Street Fighter 4. They actually kept the bare bones combat from the original games. Update the mechanics.Such a misguidance on projects like.

I wonder if any of the developers would be proud after making that.. like they went to their friends and said: this is the game I made...

That has nothing to do with God of War, expect that it's muscular men fighting with melee weapons.

That looked like a very true remake of the original Golden Axe. Almost too similar even in my taste. Plays exactly the same.

Would have been cool.

On a side note, I never understood how developer pitch demos could be so ambitious and polished like this one. I always wondered how can they put up something so solid in short time.

True but not every gamer was around back then and many will look to games they do know in order to give an example. To me for some reason it reminds me of Diablo mixed with Golden Axe. I cant really explain why Diablo comes to mind though. maybe its the setting and 4 player co-op

OT I would have really enjoyed this and a new altered Beast

You are right. I forgot how old Golden Axe was. And how old I am.

Altered Beast, heh. It was a copy of Golden Axe, only with weird monsters instead of fantasy characters. (and obviously Golden Axe is a copy of Street Fighter).

SEGA was so lazy. But I liked Altered Beast.

I have no idea what that means.  It's a fighting game, how do you have a fighting game with no combat?  If you're talking about something specific, no, SFIV didn't.  SFI special moves were hard to do, and dealt about 70% damage.  SFII introduced combos unintentially, but, since people liked it so much, they worked it in.

SFIII introduced target combos and parrying, and parrying was replaced with focus attacks in SFIV, and the focus attacks with no parrying changes up the entire game.  The only thing SFIV actually did do (initially) was bring back SFII characters.  Also, Ultra combos were introduced, and you only had one super in SFIV.  I think in Super, you got 2 ultras and were able to select them, unlike SFIII which gave you 3 supers, and your ability to select one after selecting your character.

You can't knock these sega games for something SFIV actually did  The mechanics were updated.  If SFII is your main game, you can't play SFIII or IV without adjusting to the new/different systems and vice-versa.

That looks terrible and it looks like it plays terrible. Looks nothing like a God of War, looks more like Robot Chicken using He-Man figures.

huh?..... I was taking about that fact the Golden Ax had a very barebones fighting system in comparison with other beat em ups during sams time period. Streets of Rage and Final Fight just to name a few had deeper fighter mechanics.

Altered Beast came out before Golden Ax. Golden Ax is a spiritual successor to Altered Beast.