1989 arcade game Golden Axe is getting a comedy-first TV show next month
Swords and slapstick
Millennials and Gen X’ers will surely raise an eyebrow at this one: a Golden Axe show is coming to streaming next month.
And yes, it’s based on the arcade game — or its countless console conversions — which you can tell from just the swiftest glance at Golden Axe’s promo poster. It was a coin-munching hack and slash game in which you played as either a muscle-clad warrior-barbarian, an Amazonian woman or a dwarf. A fun diversion from simpler times.
Golden Axe the show is a 10-part animated series, and all ten episodes will be released on Paramount+ on 16th September. Hungry for more of a taste? Here’s the just-released trailer:
If the approach the team has taken has left you a little unsure on this one, you’re not alone. The current sentiment from the YouTube commentariat is the show may have leant a little too much on the potential for laughs — and folks are none too sure the trailer proves they’ve hit the comedy bullseye.
We’ll wait to see the real thing, as 90 seconds or so doesn’t seem enough to enough to judge a series.
Golden Axe features chunkily animated versions of the player characters you can pick in the original 1989 game, plus an inexperienced “adventurer” called Hampton Squib, who is a stand-in for the player character.
Whatever you think of the tenor of the show, you can’t deny a quality voice cast is involved. Matthew Rhys plays the warrior class character Gilius Thunderhead, while Danny Pudi is Squib.
Golden Axe is the brainchild of Joe Chandler, its showrunner. His previous roles include writer on American Dad! And Napoleon Dynamite’s TV series. There are those comedy roots, clear to see.
Want to give it a shot? A Paramount+ subscription starts at £5.99, for its ad-supported plan, and there’s a 7-day trial available to those who haven’t subscribed before.
What about the Golden Axe games? Sega teased a remake of Golden Axe was coming at the 2023 Game Awards, a 3D version rather than a classic side-scroller, but we have heard little of it since. And with the games industry basically on fire at the moment — and not in a good way — who knows if it will ever actually come out.
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