SEGA’s 60th anniversary celebration is underway on Steam, with discounts on their in-house franchises and Creative Assembly’s library of Total War games. Most unusually, SEGA has also announced the publication of three new games that include a Yakuza/Streets of Rage mash-up and a playable canceled Golden Axe game.
The Yakuza/Streets of Rage mash-up, appropriately titled “Streets of Kamurocho,” features Yakuza protagonists Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima in traditional 2D pixel form brawling their way through waves of street thugs and enemy Yakuza.
The trailer shows a brief glimpse of Kiryu’s adoptive brother Akira Nishikiyama, and with the Steam description mentioning the death of the Tojo Clan’s third chairman, it seems Streets of Kamurocho will follow the events of the first game at least loosely. The Yakuza franchise is already pretty close to a traditional brawler, with its long-running focus on physical combat, so it’s got a lot of familiar brawler trappings, including using traffic cones to whack enemies with.
Streets of Kamurocho is being developed by Empty Clip Studios, which has previously made 2D “demakes” of popular franchises like Dead Island and Final Fantasy 15.
Streets of Kamurocho is free on Steam starting on October 17, and will become unavailable after 10 am PST on October 19.
SEGA also plans to release “Golden Axed,” a canceled prototype of a new Golden Axe game from the defunct SEGA Studios Australia, which closed in 2013. Golden Axed was originally meant to be one part of a compilation of 2.5D reboots of Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Streets of Rage, and an endless runner version of Shinobi.
Golden Axed, or what remains of it, is just a single level created as a proof of concept, and at times throughout its trailer, it can certainly look it. SEGA and porting studio Eccentric Ape are clearly running with it as a tongue-in-cheek bit of humor.
“Golden Axed may be janky, may be buggy, may be an artifact of its time, but it offers a unique glimpse into the prospect of a project that could have been, and a rare peek behind the curtain at the sometimes tumultuous world of video game development,” the Golden Axed Steam page reads. “We reached out to some of the original development team to bring this dusty gem to light, and they are proud that this project could be revived in some form to be shared with you, the fans.”
SEGA is releasing Golden Axed for free on Steam on October 18, but you only have until 10 am PST on October 19 to grab it.
Finally, SEGA is working with Eccentric Ape again to release Armor of Heroes, a retro tank battle game based on the Company of Heroes RTS franchise. If you ever played those browser-based tank battle games in high school, you probably have a good idea of what to expect, albeit with a modern day coat of paint. In a top-down view, up to four players can drive their tanks around and try to bounce shots around or through destructible environments to eliminate enemies across nine game modes and couch PVP co-op. If your friends aren’t up for tank warfare, it also has a single-player mode with AI opponents.
Armor of Heroes is available from October 15 to 10 a.m. PST on October 19.
SEGA fans in the west are also eagerly awaiting Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the seventh core installment of the franchise which finally introduces a new cast of characters and features a much more turn-based RPG style of combat. You can read our latest preview of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which we played on the Xbox Series X.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/brawler for IGN. Hit him with a bicycle on Twitter.Source