SONIC X-TREME

'''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 cancelled in 1997. Had it been finished, it would have been the first fully 3D ''Sonic'' game and the first original ''Sonic'' title developed for the Sega Saturn.

Contents

Storyline

Gameplay

Development history

Present day

Project S

Trivia

External links

References

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 Robotnik is after the six Rings of Order, and call on Sonic to get the Rings before Robotnik can.
As of January 2006, artwork of Tiara and her father have been released by the game's director Chris Senn along with various other details based on the game.

Gameplay

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 have 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 canceled.

Development history

''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 Genesis and later on the 32X, under the name ''Sonic Mars'' (based on the codename for the 32X, ''Sega Mars''). 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 from Sonic the Hedgehog^[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 games such as ''Sonic 2'', ''Sonic Spinball'' and ''Comix Zone''.
Game designer 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 (Naka is very well known to have had an extreme passion toward ''NiGHTS'', one time claiming that one of the game endings had induced tears in his eyes). 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 '', ''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.
Some time after the game was changed to the Saturn platform, Ofer Alon was taken off the project, and Chris Senn left with him. According to Senn, STI management viewed Alon as a maverick who did not follow company politics and did little to direct the other programmers. Point of View was recruited to continue technical development of the game. In an attempt to demonstrate to Ofer and Senn the reason for the drastic action, technical director Robert Morgan showed them a demo created by Point of View. Senn recalled, After leaving the project, Alon and Senn continued developing ''Sonic X-treme'' as a PC game.
Sega of Japan meddled once again, as representatives came over to check on the game's progress. They were disappointed by the progress on the main game engine, but 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 as Point of View had not gotten much farther than their initial demo, it all had fallen on the Sonic Xtreme Project Team to finish it up before the Christmas deadline so as to go up against both ''Super Mario 64'' and ''Crash Bandicoot'' alongside ''NiGHTS''. Senn , who had been working non-stop to get this project out, came down with pneumonia. Since Coffin 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 discontinue both the Saturn and PC versions and switched to an alternative project: a Saturn port of ''Sonic 3D Blast''.

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. An animated GIF image of the gameplay was released to the community. The disk image was finally leaked in July 17, 2007.
In early January 2006, the game's director, 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 web site (SXC), which officially went online April 5, 2006

Project S

Senn later started ''Project S'', an effort to complete the game unofficially. However, he later stated that it will be an original fangame heavily inspired by ''Sonic X-treme'', rather than a straight resuming of the unfinished project. As of July 2007, ''Project S'' is currently under development.[2] At one point, there was an article on gaming site GameSpot referring to a possible release of a "Project S" for the PSP; however, the released game turned out to be ''Sonic Rivals''.

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.

External links

★ A website by Chris Senn that includes detailed looks of what sonic X-Treme would have been

★ Details of the game's development

★ The Sonic X-Treme Information Database

References

1. Sally Acorn and other Freedom Fighters in Sonic Mars