SEGA Forever, SEGA’s nostalgic social media machine, has dropped another retrospective pop-up video, this time focusing on the Golden Axe series. Golden Axe has had hits in both arcade and home console, ranging from hack and slash, to RPG and action adventure. Check out the video above and be on the lookout for more SEGA Forever retrospectives!
Ad:
Wake up Barry and see the Sega Venus
Near the end of the NES’ lifecycle, puzzle games were THE craze. To capitalize on the puzzle trend, Nintendo threw its first-party hat into the ring and released Dr. Mario on the console just in time for the 1990 holiday season. An interesting take on the Tetris formula, Dr. Mario presented gamers with a new puzzle-based quandary how will you use the multi-colored pills thrown into play by a white coat-wearing Mario to eliminate the viruses plaguing your screen? The answer was simple line up the appropriate colors of pills matching the viruses, and voila, they disappear. Sound easy? Well it wasn’t. As was the case with Tetris, Dr. Mario got fast and furious the further into the game you got. Before you knew it, your screen was full of viruses with scant a place for your pills to go. Thankfully, unlike Nintendo’s release of Tetris, Dr. Mario reveled in its two-player glory, and Nintendo’s new hit proved not only to be a favorite among puzzle fans, but a game consumed by multi-player purists as well.
what about the other newer Sega stuff in the genre as well like ‘Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit’? Or is it meant to always just be the usual Golden Axe and Shinobi.
Speaking of which, can anybody explain what on earth happened to that game, I see it’s still available to buy on Xbox.com and Xbox Live but for the 360 and doesn’t appear to be Backwards compatible with Xbox One for some reason, seems strange, it can’t be a licensing issue because it’s still for sale, it’s just not made available on current gen hardware, why is that?
The only other place I see it is Steam but not Xbox One?
I thought the team that Sega hired to handle it (Arkedo) was disbanded, maybe that’s why.
Yes you’re talking about the disassembled team when it happened in 2013 which Eurogamer covered, see here > https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-23-hell-yeah-developer-arkedo-studio-disbands
But that doesn’t explain it, because it’s technically a Sega game, they own the IP and hired that team at the time as an outsourced job, but Sega funded it, oversaw it and published it, and still sell it in a number of stores today, like Xbox Live, Valve’s Steam shop platform and PSN (I think), but strangely, they are not made backward compatible, so if it had anything to do with licence or Arkedo going defunct or being bought be another company etc, then it wouldn’t still be available today under Sega, but it is, and it’s not like Castle of Illusion, that didn’t get the backward compatibility treatment because it was an expired licence, so just before it expired, Sega renewed it again, and quickly made it backward compatible on Xbox One also (though you had to buy it through the Xbox.com site instead of directly via Xbox Live on the Xbox one).
But here, you have a game, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, that is still onsale on the xbox.com site, can still be bought (it’s not a licenced game like Castle of Illusion, as Sega own the actual IP and all the assets), can still be downloaded and is still playable on the Xbox 360, but for some reason, they just haven’t bothered to make it backwards compatible on current market viable consoles like the X1, so that is what’s strange about it, what’s the point having it for sale on the 360 but the X1? Most people are not going to switch to a 360 to pay 9.99 just to play a game they can’t even buy on the Xbox One, so it’s missing potential sales as well as most players on Xbox Live will be on the X1 now, and eventually the Series X soon.
As well as that, another just came to mind, Renegade Ops – another decent Sega published game still yet to get the backward compatibility treatment, I would also include the Sega Rallys as well, but these have licence issues, so that might explain, but games like Hell Yeah! And Renegade Ops not being available on current gen? No real reason not to. Renegade Ops is in the exact same position as Hell Yeah! Still available, still on sale, but only for last gen on the X360, and if you own these games digitally but no longer have a 360 at the moment, these could have at least made them backwards compatible by now, it’s been 7 years already.
Okay but didn’t Microsoft stop working on backwards compatibility over a year ago?
I think they said they wanted to free up resources to focus on the next generation by early 2019.
It’s up to Sega to certify if they want them made backwards compatible or not, because that involves updating the firmware and that is entirely the job of the publisher, Microsoft is just the platform holder so they can only ask publishers if they want it or not, and if you don’t see Sega 360 games on the X1, chances are higher that it’s because they haven’t bothered to reassess their own back catalogue.
Take Capcom for example, there’s a good reason they didn’t bother opting for backwards compatibility for Resident Evil 4 and 5, because they intended to remaster them again for the X1, and have them run in 60fps and 4k this time, and they didn’t re-release SSFIITHDR (Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix) either, because they were going to remaster it for the next gen, but it ended up as an exclusive on the Switch instead and was called Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers, where they tweaked it further and added Violent Ken along with Evil Ryu etc.
The point being is that some companies purposely hold back on authorising their titles to be made backwards compatible for different reasons like that, but with Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit and Renegade Ops etc, they have absolutely no reason not to make them backwards compatible with the newer Xboxes when they still have them for sale on the same platform (Xbox Live), so the question still remains why on earth they were never made backwards compatible and there still doesn’t seem to be any indication yet that they made be if they do.
It’s up to Sega to certify if they want them made backwards compatible or not, because that involves updated the firmware and that is entirely the job of the publisher, Microsoft is just the platform holder so they can only ask publishers if they want it or not, and if you don’t see Sega 360 games on the X1, chances are higher that it’s because they haven’t bothered to reassess their own back catalogue.
Take Capcom for example, there’s a good reason they didn’t bother opting for backwards compatibility for Resident Evil 4 and 5, because they intended to remaster them again for the X1, and have them run in 60fps and 4k this time, and they didn’t re-release SSFIITHDR (Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix) either, because they were going to remaster it for the next gen, but it ended up as an exclusive on the Switch instead and was called Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers, where they tweaked it further and added Violent Ken along with Evil Ryu etc.
The point being is that some companies purposely hold back on authorising their titles to be made backwards compatible for different reasons like that, but with Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit and Renegade Ops etc, they have absolutely no reason not to make them backwards compatible with the newer Xboxes when they still have them for sale on the same platform (Xbox Live), so the question still remains why on earth they were never made backwards compatible and there still doesn’t seem to be any indication yet that they made be if they do.
*Excuse the second response, this was resent by mistake after a few typos.
Fair enough.
I don’t know why, does anybody else have an idea why?
Maybe there’s some other reason not thought of.
What else could it possible be?
All there is is likelyhoods, no clear answer for why.
*Possibly.
For me, Golden Axe III for the Mega Drive was the best among all.
Graphically not too good, but its excellent gameplay, advanced mechanics, and superb music are ahead of its time.
gp
After Streets of rage 4, i want same look with Golden Axe, Altered Beast and Alien Storm.