SEGA apology over Golden Axed, PS5’s UI revealed

Who led production on Golden Axe?

a) Rikiya Nakagawa
b) Kazuhiko Nagai
c) Makoto Uchida
d) Noriyuki Tabata

The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today's issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.

Sticky characters and exploding roofs

During the development of 2012’s RPG Rune Factory 4 from Neverland there was a rather peculiar problem that was caused during the game’s localisation into English for a western release.

The QA team was seeing NPCs sticking to roofs of buildings, and exploding. The issue started immediately after the team implemented the translated game text.

Join our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today's fact.

Sega apologises after Golden Axed developer tells his story on Twitter

Sega is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion they have put a huge bundle of their games on sale and also teased a game called Golden Axed.

Originally named Golden Axe: Reborn, Sega cancelled it before it got too far into development – but decided to fix it up a bit and release it as a curiosity. Not everyone were happy about this, especially a programmer who worked on the game and apparently “lived through hell” during the development.

Death march: “This project was my personal nexus of nightmare hours, inept management, industry realisations and heroics achieved with a small team under unreasonable conditions, so it’s an odd feeling to see it surface eight years later without context, credits and with a joke title sequence,” said Tim Dawson.

Apology: Sega apologized, changed some of the wording on the store page, and added that they “certainly didn’t mean to dredge up painful memories” for Dawson or his co-workers. Dawson was pretty upset by the whole affair, and tweeted a thread about the troubled development.

First look at PlayStation 5 user experience

Sony has posted a video preview of the PlayStation 5 user experience, including the hint system and game streaming features.

“Watch our new video walkthrough to see new features designed to make your gaming experiences more fun, engaging, personalized and social on the PS5 console.” The video was captured in an early version of the system software, so there might be minor changes in the final product.

Sleek & slim: Most of the video focuses on the PlayStation 5 user interface, and reveals that multiple games can be started and suspended at once. There are also new trophy progress tracking features, as well as much snappier transitions between for example a game and the PlayStation Store.

Get active: There is also a new feature called PlayStation Activities that act as bookmarks to game content you have not completed, such as levels where you have not found all the secrets yet.

• Gearbox is ready to launch the world's first next-gen game since copies of Godfall are printed and ready to be sent to stores
• See how NBA 2K21 takes advantage of PlayStation 5 and particularly the DualSense in a blog post by the game director
• Paul Ehreth leaves Remedy Entertainment to join Smilegate and work on their next-gen AAA open world game in Barcelona
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition rated in South Korea confirming that the trilogy is being re-released
• Spider-Man: Miles Morales features Spider-Cat, a feline companion who lives in Miles' backpack and helps out in battle

To celebrate the start of a new generation of console gaming we are giving away a new PlayStation 5 to one lucky DailyBits reader. You can find out more about this giveaway on our dedicated page.

Here's the Giveaway Code for Week 42: 1224

Who led production on Golden Axe?

ANSWER: Makoto Uchida!

Makoto Uchida may not be as famous as Shigeru Miyamoto or Yuji Naka, but you know his games if you're a Sega fan. He worked on hits like Altered Beast and Alien Storm, but the most famous game he worked on is probably Golden Axe.

Uchida wanted to capture the spirit of 80s fantasy movies like Conan the Barbarian in a game, and decided to make a brawler like Double Dragon. Uchida still works at Sega, but doesn't direct games any more. Instead, he has been the head of Sega's Shanghai R&D division since 2002, mostly working with Sega's other studios to help out on games or developing ports.

Today's issue of DailyBits was written by Gavin Herman, Erlend Grefsrud, Simon Priest, and Jamie Davey.

We hope you've enjoyed today's issue DailyBits! Please feel free to send any feedback over to team@dailybits.news. Thank You!