The Sonic Game That Never Happened
By William on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 10:31 PM PST In Sega
I’m a big Sonic fan myself, and somehow had never caught wind that a game titled Sonic X-treme was being developed for the Sega Saturn.
The guys at Sega Nerds uncovered a video of the unreleased Sonic X-treme, which was a game that was at one time in development for the Sage Saturn. The game was running with the NiGHTS Into Dreams game engine. Sega heard that they developers were using this particular engine and forced them to switch to a different one. The next version that came out was deemed “unworkable†by the powers that be and the project was completely canned.
Looking into things further, I definitely feel as if Sega made a huge mistake. The NiGHTS engine probably could have made a great Sonic title. The title was bounced around many times before this as well. It was originally being developed for the Genesis, then shifted to the 32X team and finally on to the Saturn team who basically killed it. This was probably just another blunder in the long line of mistakes Sega was responsible for in the mid 1990s. Apparently, a disc of the original test version of X-treme still exists and was sold at auction in 2005. Very little information from the game has been released to the public since. I’d like to think that whoever purchased the game would eventually release it to the public.
Just looking at it, a few things come to mind (I’m also a Sonic fan).
1) Looking at Sonic’s movement, the fact it’s in 3d, the time at whcih it was made…could this not have been a prototype for Sonic 3D? It makes sense you put a few things together. The grpahics for Sonic are similar, movement of Sonic along the 3d plain, cin arrangement etc. tc.
2) Why would someone release a video of it? What purpose does it sever? Was it an accidentally leaked video during development that found its way onto the net? I can believe it, but it would be one of the more crazier things to have happened. Also, something about it doesn’t click with me, almost as if it was a fan-made game…but that doesn’t explain many things in itself.
Still, a Sonic game is a Sonic game and had this come out, I’m sure I’d have tried to have played it.
Some things do seem fishy about it, but I did check several sources and it was in fact a game that was auctioned. I can only assume the party that purchased it leaked a little clip.
I also think after they scrapped this title, they worked on Sonic 3d next, so perhaps they borrowed some elements.
Actually William, from what I heard (which was alot) Sonic Xtreme and Sonic 3D (which I’ll presume you are speaking of Sonic 3D Blast) were developed by two separate development houses. The Sonic Xtreme developers which were an American based development team from the STI (Sega Technical Institute) development house, and the game had a very distinctive American flavor. And I believe because of that and many other things (including Sonic’s speed in the game, or lack there of, camera view including the fish eye cam, the Saturn’s duel processors making it hell to program for the Sega Saturn Platform) had alot to do with the difficulties the team suffered during development . Because of this I believe the Sonic Xtreme development team (Which was NOT the original Japanese Sonic Team helmed by Yuji Naka, Sonic the Hedgehogs creator) had a harder time convincing Sega of Japan that the game at second stage was a viable product. According to one of the Sonic Xtreme development team members, there was a meeting concerning the future of Sonic Xtreme, all of the members where to show a prototype of the game to Yuji Naka and where all nervous but optimistic and proud of there work before the meeting commenced, Yuji Naka comes in with a not so positive look on his face into the meeting and is shown the prototype, after the demonstration Naka points out to the team members that the game is running fine on a development system PC but he wishes them good luck if they can get anything decent running on the Sega Saturn . After the meeting the very same programmer took the copy of the game and threw it into the trash bin. Sega of Japan did not have any confidence in the “American” made Sonic game and shortly after Xtreme started development the Sonic Team began to work on Sonic 3D Blast, so in other words EVEN if Xtreme was released, Sonic 3D Blast was to follow immediately afterwards (or possibly as a portable spin off of the Xtreme game) Anyways I got ahead of myself ( I do that sometimes) I think someone should make this into a book, I even have a title: “Development Hell: The why big name games failed”. They can include stories of Duke Nukem Forever (or as lovingly referred to these days Duke Nukem Never) and Nights 2: Another Dream and tons of other canceled games.
I would read it!
No, Sonic 3D blast was just a back up plan Bernie stolar had to soften the blow if Sonic X-treme didn’t get finished, You have also reminded me to ask Chris Senn if making the game for the SEGA saturn was as hard as everyone else said it was.
This is not the offical gameplay -_- This is a beta version using the nights gameplay… The offical gameplay has sonic running in loop dee loops around the clock