gaming In the gaming vault 1: Sonic Xtreme

[OkBuddy 586]

(This will be a new series of articles covering cancelled games, urban-myths, beta games, much more!)

For those of you who don't know, Sonic Xtreme was about to be a 3-D platformer for the Sega Saturn. Unfortunately, the game was a development nightmare and soon became cancelled.

How did this begin? It began with the Sega Genesis. (The Sega Genesis was called Mega Drive outside of the U.S)

The Sonic Xtreme project were about to be pitched with 3 completely different pitches. The first was Sonic-16, which the demo was released on November 1993. The game would be much different than normal sonic games at the time. First of all, the game would follow the Sonic the hedgehog cartoon in 1993. Second, sonic would move much slower than his usual games. Third, this game would have used stealth. (If you want to see what the game looked like, Watch the video bellow:

The second pitch was an untitled isometric game. All that is known is the image in the link bellow:

http://www.mobianlegends.com/media/movies/Sxc_isometric0.jpg

The two pitches above were rejected by Sega, but the third one, which was called Sonic Mars, was accepted. Like Sonic-16, this was based off the 1993 cartoon. This pitch included sonic being in a 3-D world, which inspired Sonic Xtreme to become a 3-D platformer. (To see what the game is like, click the link bellow:)

Sonic mars was lead by Michael Kosaka,and featured work by Chris Senn. The game was going to be released on the Sega 32X. When the game was shown to Yuji Naka,(The leader of Sonic Team)He could only shake his head and say two very important words: "Good Luck".

In 1995, Kosaka left Sega, because of internal disputes with Dean Lestler. Once the Sega Saturn was announced, The Sonic Xtreme team moved over to the Saturn because of much needed power and the Sega 32X was a commercial failure.

On the Saturn, the game used multiple engines, but the engine used for NiGHTS into dreams was going to be the final engine. The staff for Sonic Xtreme made the levels of the game had an almost tube-like fashion, The camera pointing ahead to encourage the player to run forward to the finishing point of the zone. Since 3D was still new and Xtreme was experimenting with how to correctly put sonic in a 3D world, the "Fish-eye" lens was used to let the player see more of sonic's surroundings. What it looks like:

The boss fights didn't use the same engine as the levels used though. In 1996, The game was shown off to Sega of Japan representatives to see how the game was going along and the reaction was a "mixed bag". The representatives were impressed by the boss engine and requested the Sonic Xtreme team to re-do the entire game again.

 

This is where the project went downhill. The main issue: the deadline was going to be before Christmas so the game can compete with the upcoming Crash Bandicoot. The team didn't want the game to be delayed, so everyone had to work for extremely long hours with little sleep. Many of them left because of ether illness from working long hours or they couldn't take it anymore. So the game was delayed from the deadline and this was the point when the game was cancelled. Instead of Sonic Xtreme, Sega released a port of the Poorly received game: Sonic 3D blast, because Sega needed a sonic game on the Saturn. The closest that the Saturn got to a 3D sonic game was in Sonic Jam, where there was a little part of the game that featured sonic running around in a 3D environment. The first true 3D sonic game was in 1999, when Sonic Adventure was released for the Dreamcast.

 

Even though the game is cancelled, Sonic Xtreme will always have a huge legacy for The sonic series and the community. There are plenty of sonic xtreme websites available for you to see more information about this game, and you could even play a remake of Sonic Xtreme.

[Acoustic Cloud 2,202]

aaaah yes the good old days... reminds me of sonic cd for my sega genesis v1

(check out my profile for a list of my collection)

 

Yeah i actually own a beta game

and a super rare starwars game for game gear

and they will not be sold unless i'm dead.

[Discordian 6,021]

As a ginormous Sonic fan I am pleased to learn of this. I knew of Sonic Xtreme, of course, but I wasn't aware of the details.

 

Sega and Sonic Team really should work on their deadline crap though. Sonic 06 never finished development partially because of the same reason: Half the team left mid-development and they were trying to keep a deadline so they never finished the game as much as they could. The two combined made the game come out rather shoddily.

 

Good information to know though, I thank you for this.