Steven Ellison, the mastermind we all know as Flying Lotus, has a bit of a reputation for being a shapeshifter. He’s the guy who gave us the cosmic jazz of You're Dead! and the jagged, hallucinatory beats of Los Angeles. But for a specific subset of gamers and electronic music nerds, there’s one project that feels like a phantom limb: the soundtrack for the canceled Golden Axe reboot.
It was supposed to be a massive homecoming. Sega, the titan of the 16-bit era, was looking to revive its classic barbarian hack-and-slash for a modern audience. And they chose FlyLo to helm the audio.
Then everything went quiet.
What actually happened with the Flying Lotus Golden Axe project?
The year was 2012. Sega’s Australian studio was hard at work on a reimagining of the franchise. This wasn't just another sequel; it was meant to be a gritty, high-fidelity rebirth of Gilius Thunderhead and Tyris Flare. Flying Lotus, a notorious gamer who basically lives and breathes Sega history, was brought in to provide the atmosphere.
He didn’t just write a couple of loops. He built a world.
If you’ve ever listened to his 2012 masterpiece Until the Quiet Comes, you can hear the DNA of what he was trying to do. It’s ethereal. It’s heavy. It sounds like bones clattering in a dark forest. Sadly, Sega Studios Australia was shuttered in 2013. The game was scrapped. The music, for the most part, was locked away in a digital vault, leaving fans to wonder what a Flying Lotus-scored dungeon crawl would even feel like.
Honestly? It would have been weird. It would have been perfect.
The leaked footage and the sound of "What If"
A few years back, some prototype footage of the canceled Golden Axe remake surfaced online. It looked remarkably fluid for its time. You could see the influence of games like God of War, but with a distinct, chunky Sega aesthetic. But the music? That’s where the real tragedy lies.
The snippets we’ve heard of the Flying Lotus Golden Axe sessions are a far cry from the chiptune bops of the 1989 original. Gone were the triumphant, heroic trumpets. In their place were sagging basslines and textures that felt like they were rotting in the sun. Ellison has always been a master of "ugly-beautiful" sounds. Applying that to a world of monsters and magic was a stroke of genius that we just didn't get to see through to the finish line.
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Why the Flying Lotus Golden Axe collaboration matters now
You might be asking why we’re still talking about a canceled game from over a decade ago. It's because the "Sega-to-FlyLo" pipeline is basically the foundation of a whole subgenre of music.
Ellison has been vocal about how Phantasy Star and Shinobi shaped his ear. When he was finally given the keys to the Golden Axe kingdom, it wasn't just a gig. It was a full-circle moment. The fact that it vanished is a case study in how corporate restructuring can accidentally kill off genuine art.
Let's look at the context of 2012-2013 gaming.
- Sega was struggling to find its footing with its legacy IPs.
- The "indie" revolution hadn't yet fully convinced big publishers that "weird" music was a selling point.
- Flying Lotus was transitioning from a cult beat-maker to a global visionary.
The timing was a mess.
The 2020 surprise: "Sega-Bop" returns
Fast forward to 2020. Sega celebrated its 60th anniversary. As a part of the festivities, they released a series of "mini-games" on Steam, including a project called Golden Axed. It was essentially a single-level proof of concept from the canceled 2012 project.
People lost their minds. Not necessarily because the gameplay was revolutionary—it was a buggy prototype, after all—but because it was a tangible link to the Flying Lotus Golden Axe mystery. While the music in that specific "mini-game" release wasn't the full-blown Ellison score everyone hoped for, it reignited the conversation. It reminded everyone that there is a folder somewhere on a hard drive in Tokyo or Melbourne filled with some of the most experimental game music ever recorded.
The creative DNA of Flying Lotus
To understand the Golden Axe score, you have to look at Ellison's other work in the medium. He’s not a tourist in gaming. He had his own radio station in Grand Theft Auto V (FlyLo FM), which featured a massive amount of original material and curation.
He later worked on the score for the anime Yasuke, which felt like a spiritual successor to what he might have done for Sega. It combined traditional Japanese instrumentation with heavy, thumping synthesizers.
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If you listen to the Yasuke track "Black Gold," you can almost see a barbarian swinging a battle axe. It’s got that same primal energy.
- Ellison uses polyrhythms to create a sense of unease.
- He favors "found sound" percussion—think clinking metal or rustling leaves.
- His bass is rarely clean; it’s usually distorted, mimicking the grit of a 16-bit sound chip pushed to its limit.
What we lost when Golden Axe was canceled
We didn't just lose a game. We lost a shift in how soundtracks are handled. Most "Triple-A" games play it safe with orchestral swells that sound like a discounted Hans Zimmer score. Boring.
The Flying Lotus Golden Axe approach would have forced players to experience fantasy through the lens of hip-hop production and psychedelic jazz. It would have been uncomfortable. It would have been visceral. Imagine fighting a giant turtle while a beat that sounds like it was recorded underwater thumps in your ears.
Actually, we don't have to imagine too hard.
Some of the tracks eventually found their way into Ellison’s live sets. If you’ve been to a FlyLo show in the last few years, you’ve likely heard unreleased beats that have a certain "medieval" weight to them. Those are the ghosts of Golden Axe.
The cult of the unreleased
There is a weird power in things that don't exist. The "Lost Media" community is obsessed with this project for a reason. When a creator as influential as Flying Lotus touches a franchise as legendary as Golden Axe, the expectations are sky-high.
When it gets canceled? It becomes a legend.
People have spent hours scouring old SoundCloud uploads and archived livestreams trying to piece together the tracklist. It’s basically digital archaeology. There’s a rumor—unverified, but persistent—that an entire album's worth of material was completed before the plug was pulled.
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How to find the "Golden Axe" sound today
If you’re looking to scratch that itch, you have to look at the breadcrumbs Ellison left behind. He hasn't released a formal "Golden Axe" album, and he probably never will due to licensing nightmares.
However, his work on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie and his various Brainfeeder compilations carry that same DNA. You want the dark, brooding, Sega-inspired FlyLo? Check out the Pattern+Grid World EP. It’s glitchy, it’s aggressive, and it sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would play while you’re dodging lightning bolts in a side-scrolling wasteland.
Is there still hope for a revival?
The gaming industry is currently in a "remake" fever dream. We’ve seen Dead Space, Resident Evil, and Final Fantasy get massive overhauls. Sega has recently announced they are digging back into their vault with new Jet Set Radio and Shinobi projects.
Could Golden Axe be next?
And if it is, would they call Ellison back?
Honestly, it's a long shot. The industry has changed, and FlyLo is busier than ever with film directing (Kuso) and high-concept art. But the connection remains. Sega fans don't forget, and Flying Lotus fans definitely don't let go of unreleased heat.
Actionable steps for the curious fan
If you want to dive deeper into this specific rabbit hole, don't just wait for a press release. You have to go looking.
- Search for the "Sega Studios Australia" prototype footage on YouTube. Look specifically for the 2012 build. Pay close attention to the ambient sound layers.
- Listen to "The Nightcaller" off Until the Quiet Comes. It’s widely cited by fans as having the "texture" of the canceled game project.
- Keep an eye on the Brainfeeder Twitch and Discord. Ellison is known to drop "wips" (works in progress) and unreleased demos during late-night streams.
- Support the "Golden Axed" build on Steam. It’s a messy, broken piece of history, but it’s the only official way to see what the team was building.
The Flying Lotus Golden Axe saga is a reminder that in the world of creative tech, nothing is ever truly finished until it’s released—and even then, the best stuff might still be hiding in the shadows.
Stop looking for a "Complete Edition" on Spotify. It isn't there. Instead, embrace the mystery of the fragments we do have. Sometimes the most impactful music is the stuff you have to hunt for in the wreckage of a canceled dream.
Check out the "60th Anniversary" archives on Sega's official site to see the concept art that was meant to accompany the music. It provides the visual context that makes the soundscapes finally click.