The classic Sega game series Golden Axe is the latest to be getting the animated series treatment, but just on the premise alone it sounds a bit off.
The original Golden Axe was released in Japanese arcades in 1989. One of the classic belt-scroll action games of the period, it dealt with what felt like a classic fantasy setup.
Set in the land of Yuria, an evil entity known as Death Adder had effectively conquered the continent and captured the king. To free the land, you and your friends would team up and take out Death Adder’s forces with an array of melee attacks, magic and friendly creatures.
The setup was very much done straight and not really for laughs, although the campfire minigame between stages was pretty cute (as was the ending). In fact, it was a pretty dark game in places and so I am somewhat confused that this new cartoon adaptation will be apparently “hilarious”.
According to Deadline, Comedy Central is making a new 10 episode series that is a “hilarious and loving homage” to the original Golden Axe game.
The production behind this seems solid enough, but without much else to go on, I am having a tough time resolving the statements of this being both “hilarious” and a “loving homage”.
Obviously, I will wait and see how this turns out, but I am not getting a good feeling about this new Golden Axe series. At least when Castlevania was picked up to be animated, it sounded like the team behind it at least knew what they were adapting. By contrast, this Golden Axe series is already setting off warning signals from its initial announcement.
If the series doesn’t turn out that great, I am at least hoping we will get some re-releases of the older Golden Axe arcade games and maybe even a remake. Although, you can currently play the Genesis version of the game on the Switch.
In the meantime time, we will just have to wait and see how this new Golden Axe animated series turns out.
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