Sonic X-treme

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Sonic X-treme

Developer(s)	Sega Technical Institute
Publisher(s)	Unpublished
Designer(s)	Chris Senn (director)
Engine	NiGHTS into Dreams… engine for some of the project, later changed
Release date(s)	Unreleased
Genre(s)	Platformer
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: RP
Platform(s)	Saturn, PC
Media	CD-ROM
Input	Control pad

Sonic X-treme is an unreleased platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. It was originally developed by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis but was moved to the Sega 32X and eventually to the Sega Saturn and intended to be released around Christmas of 1996, but after many problems and a long hiatus of development hell, it was finally dropped in 1997. It would have been the first fully 3D Sonic game and the first original Sonic title developed for the Sega Saturn.

1 Storyline
2 Gameplay
3 Development history
4 Present day
- 4.1 Project S
5 Trivia
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Storyline

As rumored, the storyline involved Professor Gazebo Boobowski and his daughter, Tiara, who are the keepers of the six magical Rings of Order, as well as the ancient art of Ring smithing. Gazebo and Tiara fear that Doctor Eggman is after the six Rings of Order, and call on Sonic to get the Rings before Doctor Eggman can. Doctor Eggman has already made one previous attempt at stealing the Rings.

As of January 2006, artwork of Tiara and her father have been released by Chris Senn along with various other details based on the game.

[edit] Gameplay

Jade Gully Zone.

To further the traditional Sonic "go-anywhere-or-run-through" formula, every level was designed in a tube-like fashion; Sonic would be able to walk onto walls, thus changing the direction of gravity and the rotation of the level itself, much like the special stages in Knuckles' Chaotix. In addition, an unusual, fish-eye lens-styled camera was put into place so players could see more of their surroundings at any given time.

It is now known that at one point in the development process, there was a possibility for 4 playable characters.[1] The characters planned were Knuckles the Echidna, Tiara Boobowski, Miles "Tails" Prower and Sonic the Hedgehog. Each character would also have had a unique gameplay style. Knuckles and Tiara would've had traditional-style play, having top-down and side-scrolling views respectively. Sonic had the fish-eye style levels, and Tails would play in first person flight mode.

There were four planned Zones: Jade Gully (as pictured above), Crystal Frost, Red Sands, and Galaxy Fortress. Sonic himself was to be equipped with a large set of new moves, including a spin slash, a ring throwing ability and a downward dash.

Other characters intended to be included in the game were Fang the Sniper and Metal Sonic, who would have been bosses in the final game and whose design and programming was actually finished by the time Sonic X-treme was axed.

[edit] Development history

Galaxy Fortress Zone.

Sonic X-treme was originally intended to be developed for several other game systems prior to the Sega Saturn. In its earliest conception, the game was set to be released on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and later on the 32X, under the name Sonic Mars (based upon the codename for the 32X). However, it was quickly decided that the game would require much more powerful hardware to cope with the new engine, and for commercial reasons, the release of a Sonic game on the new Sega Saturn console was a necessity. Sonic Mars would also have featured Sally Acorn and the other Freedom Fighters^[1].

Sonic X-treme was eventually cancelled because of many internal problems. The game was being developed by Sega Technical Institute (STI), a U.S.-based developer that had worked on such games as Sonic 2, Sonic Spinball and Comix Zone.

Chris Coffin was hired by Sega and tasked with creating the separate "boss level" portions of the game that was suggested to use a different viewpoint from the main game. Ofer Alon and Chris Senn continued their work on the main game in parallel with Coffin's Sonic X-treme boss engine. Coffin developed all "boss engine" work on the "Sonic Mars" hardware prototype initially before it was decided that Sega needed to make a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn.

For the boss level engine, several modes such as top-down and side scrolling views were prototyped to create a more interesting view of the boss battle areas while still using the prerendered Sonic sprite assets used in the main game engine developed by Ofer. Ofer continued developing the main game editor tools and engine code on the Mac and PC. Development picked up again and it seemed the game's deadline for release would be met after all. From a code standpoint the boss engine and main game were basically 2 games developing at the same time that shared some global memory to remember game state and use a process called executable chaining to switch from the main game to boss levels and back.

The boss engine never used the NiGHTS engine, never saw any code, tools or assistance from Sonic Team. Even one of AM1's own arcade teams from Japan that was transplanted to the offices of STI and developed Dynamite Deka (known as Die Hard Arcade) was not privileged with any such knowledge or special support. Teams had to pretty much fend for themselves which was evidenced by almost nonexistent third-party tools and support network for Saturn at that time. A few months into Coffin's involvement in Sonic X-treme, the studio director Roger Hector showed Coffin a playable pre release level of NiGHTS. Coffin fell in love with the game's look and feel of NiGHTS for Sonic X-treme's boss levels, which may be why Yuji Naka himself threatened to quit Sega several months later because he assumed the Sonic X-treme team had been given access to his game's source code and art which was not the case. The boss level engine began to evolve into a game of its own using this new source of inspiration, trying to stay closer to its 2D roots by adopting a 3D but side-scrolling viewpoint seen in games like Klonoa, Pandemonium, and NiGHTS which was more fluid and lent itself to the fast moving gameplay of previous Sonic titles. The new boss engine gameplay prototype adopted a more pastel color scheme and organic flow of the inspirational NiGHTS game causing some divided opinions amongst team members that felt originality was being sacrificed.

However, Sega of Japan meddled once again, as representatives came over to check on the game's progress, and were so impressed by the boss engine they requested the entire game be made on that instead. By now the team was running short on men, and it all had fallen on the Sonic Xtreme Project Team to finish it up before the Christmas deadline so as to go up against Super Mario 64 alongside NiGHTS. Chris Senn, who had been working non-stop to get this project out, came down with pneumonia. Since Senn was leading the technology end and creating the engine, the loss caused the project to be indefinitely delayed and Mike Wallis informed management that the team could not continue and the game would not be released in time for Christmas. The project was officially cancelled. Sega of America decided to pull the plug and switched to an alternative project: a Saturn port of Sonic 3D Blast.

[edit] Present day

A disc of a test engine of X-treme exists. A copy was sold at auction to an anonymous collector in September 2005, and a high-quality gameplay video was expected to be released by the end of the year. As of now, only an animated GIF image of the gameplay has been released to the community.

In early January 2006, Chris Senn opened a forum based on the game on his own message board, and began revealing large amounts of the game's development history to the public, including videos of early attempts, a playable Tiara, concept art of Tiara, and more. Furthermore, he posted a large amount of previously unreleased concept music related to the title, and was given permission by Hirokazu Yasuhara (the level designer for the majority of the original 16-bit Sonic titles, including the first one) to post level designs that were going to be put in the game. Most of this information is to be posted on the Sonic X-treme Compendium (SXC), which officially went online April 5, 2006.

[edit] Project S

Currently, Senn is leading an effort to complete Sonic X-treme as a homebrew game, under the name Project S.[2] It is uncertain if there could be any legal conflict with Sega; other fan-made Sonic games have been released without a problem.

[edit] Trivia

The 1996 Christmas television special Sonic Christmas Blast was originally titled An X-Tremely Sonic Christmas, apparently with the intention of promoting Sonic X-Treme. The delay of X-Treme forced the special to be given a new title similar to Sonic 3D Blast, which came out on time.