Golden Axe - Segredos e mitos

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Produzido por: Rafael Fernandes
http://www.twitter.com/rafael00agent

Música de Abertura - Kevin Macleod/The Gothsicle

>>Rafael Fernandes: Golden Axe is an indisputable classic.

The game produced by Sega for the arcades in 1988 made a huge success

and was ported to a lot of consoles at the time.

But the Mega Drive was the only video game console that decently reproduced the arcade version,

and for this reason many people knew the game through it.

Sega even made some sequels,

but none of them was able to repeat the success of the original –

that is, many of the games in the series that followed it were garbage.

The company recently launched a remake for the PlayStation 2

and soon after tried to do a reboot,

in an entirely new game for the Xbox 360, but…

Guess what, eh.

[Spitting and fart sounds]

But let's talk about good things:

the first Golden Axe has a number of secrets and curiosities around the whole game,

and it about is them that we'll speak now.

Hold on then. Play the vignette!

If you are a meticulous person,

you'll realize that the whole game seems to occur in a village sponsored by Sega.

Do you know why? Look here:

the houses are from Sega, the bar is from Sega, even the map is from Sega, forgod'ssake.

But beyond that, the development team also got a way to put their names in the game,

or at least what we think is the nickname,

because it is not possible that someone is called Doydoy, for example.

In the ending, let's say, "epic" of the arcade version,

where all the characters leave the arcade and invade the city,

more names appear on the screen, including that of Uchida,

Makoto Uchida, the director of the game.

There's also a strange sign written Hokari Sweat, can you see?

What's that there?

It's actually a satire to a Japanese drink called Pocari Sweat,

which is like a Gatorade from there, a sports drink.

And it also seems to be very good, right?

>>Girl: …dream. Always.

Pocari Sweat. Go Ion!

>>Rafael Fernandes: Well, but before starting to develop this game,

Uchida and his team known as Team Shinobi had worked

in one of the greatest classics of the arcades and the Mega Drive: Altered Beast.

This explains a great artistic similarity between the two games,

both the drawings and in the sounds.

There is also the presence in the two games of a very peculiar creature:

known as Chicken Leg,

this animal that was a pretty boring enemy in Altered Beast

became one of the mount options in Golden Axe.

And it was not even that good, eh.

Another game developed by the same team is Alien Storm,

that in addition to throw in the face of the people that is a title developed by the Team Shinobi,

it also has the participation of the old Gilius Thunderhead.

Other games of Uchida's career include Die Hard Arcade, Dynamite Cop,

and the Altered Beast remake for the PlayStation 2, uh…

not exactly the best moment of his career.

A principal feature of all these games directed by Uchida

is that they always seem to draw inspiration from some Hollywood production.

Want to see?

Alien Storm, for example, looks a lot like the Ghostbusters;

Die Hard Arcade, is obviously inspired by Die Hard.

And in the case of Altered Beast? Look!

Amazingly, he took inspiration from Michael Jackson!

That famous short film Thriller (I spat here),

that video where the singer turns into a werewolf,

made Uchida think about how to make a game

that could portray these metamorphoses using graphic animation.

The director also took inspiration from a film called The Howling,

but it is much cooler to talk about Michael Jackson!

>>Michael Jackson: OWW!

>>Rafael Fernandes: Golden Axe, obviously,

took references from the film Conan the Barbarian, from 1982,

starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The similarities do not end there,

Golden Axe still took a lot from Hollywood… Look!

And the most interesting curiosity of Golden Axe

is about a controversy that has drawn attention in the recent months:

in one of those curiosities pages that kind of turned into a plague on Facebook,

has the following information.

I'll ask first to remove the children and sensitive people of the room,

because the following text is very strong.

"All the voices of Golden Axe were made by American prisoners on the death row."

>>Carlos Massa: STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!

>>Rafael Fernandes: Wait, is this true?

Do the voices really are from innocent and poor prisoners

about to go through the worst pain of their lives?

Is Golden Axe a narrative metaphor

protesting against the American prison system?

>>Luiz Carlos Alborghetti: NO! NO!

>>Rafael Fernandes: Of course not!

And go figure why someone would invent an absurd like that.

Stop to think:

imagine the guy about to be executed,

and some Japanese with a microphone on the side

ready to record the last gasp of the condemned?

C'mon.

The truth is that the voices of Golden Axe were not recorded on the death row and not in the studios of Sega:

the screams were taken from the film Rambo.

That's right, the first Rambo.

Look at this scene in the film.

And in the game…

Don't you get it? Le-Let's see it again then.

>>Heninger: Oh, God!

>>Shingleton: Uh?

>>Mitch: Oh, God!

Oh…

>>Rafael Fernandes: Before you think that is just a case of coincidence,

or that the Sega sound engineer only

used the same voices database of the sound technician of Rambo,

pay close attention.

There is a helicopter sound in the background of the guy scream, right?

Now, listen carefully to the same scream in the game

and notice that it's possible to hear the sound of the helicopter here too.

[Amplified audio]

And it not stopped there.

The direct sequence of Golden Axe, released only in arcades in 1992,

copied the sound effects from the film Conan itself, take a look.

Now, after this story of prisoners, let's stop to think:

why and for what they invented a nonsense like these, huh?

Go figure.

That's why it is not good to believe in everything we see on the Web.

But one thing is certain:

if the screams are from prisoners or not, it does not matter.

Golden Axe is still a classic,

impossible to get bored with it, and still arouses a lot of nostalgia.

It's a shame that Sega spat, stepped and rolled over the series,

and now it worth less than a piece of dung.

The way then is to remember the old days.