Retro Inspired
BATTLE AXE
New games that wish they were old
The colourful and expressive pixels in Battle Axe are a love letter to the arcade classics of the Nineties. We talk to veteran pixel artist Henk Nieborg and Bitmap Bureau’s Mike Tucker about how they brought this passion project to life frame by frame
WORDS BY ALAN WEN
» Veteran pixel artist Henk Nieborg, who can make 16-bit graphics just like it was yesterday.
“These days there’s not many veteran pixel artists around, especially those that worked on the Mega Drive”
MIKE TUCKER
IN THE KNOW
» PUBLISHER: NUMSKULL GAMES
» DEVELOPER: BITMAP BUREAU
» RELEASE: OUT NOW
» PLATFORM: PC, PS4, SWITCH
» GENRE: ARCADE BRAWLER
It’sfair to say that there’s still a love and appreciation of pixel art in contemporary games, many which are rightly considered classics. However, most of these are from developers emulating the 8-bit and 16-bit games they grew up with. What we don’t get as much are works from pixel artists from those eras still active and committed to that aesthetic.
Henk Nieborg is one such veteran, with a career spanning decades from the Amiga to the Mega Drive. After dabbling in 3D graphics, working on titles like Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets and Spyro: A Hero’s Tail, he was fed up with working in huge teams and went freelance, where his 2D talents could still contribute to mobile and handheld titles.
While those years led to dozens more credits, including Contra 4, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge and Shakedown Hawaii, these were often as small contributions. Henk was pining for a project he could call his own, not done since Lomax on PlayStation in 1996. This was when Battle Axe, originally known as Battle Bash, began to take shape, as a 16-bit fantasy arcade brawler, harking back to Golden Axe, Gauntlet and Capcom’s arcade titles from the Nineties. Fortunately, the prototypes got the attention of Bitmap Bureau’s design director and programmer Mike Tucker, who had his own idea for a 16-bit game, Mega Drive arena shooter Xeno Crisis.
“I’ve known Henk from many, many years ago, but it was actually his mockups of Battle Bash that convinced us to work with him on Xeno Crisis,” explains Mike. “These days there’s not many veteran pixel artists around, especially those that worked on the Mega Drive so we were keen to find someone with that skill set, and still had that enthusiasm as well.”