Sonic X-treme (Point Of View)

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Sonic X-treme

System(s): Sega Saturn
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Point of View
Genre: Action
Status of prototype(s): Prototype dumped

The Point of View iteration of Sonic X-treme, also known as Sonic Extreme^[1], is a version of the game developed by the third-party studio Point of View. While they only worked on the project for a few months at most, their involvement marked a turning point in the game's already-troubled development. Ultimately, the studio's intervention directly contributed to Shoichiro Irimajiri's fateful March 1996 decision to move everything to Project Condor, as well as resulting in the creation of the equally-unreleased SonicPC.

The 1996-07-14 prototype is the only known surviving build of this iteration of the game.

History

Main article: Sonic X-treme/Development#Point of View

Around early 1996, STI tech director Robert Morgan took Ofer Alon's engine and tools to Point of View, a company co-founded that same year by Morgan, in an attempt to get the engine's Saturn output to render at a playable framerate. Unfortunately, this was done entirely without either Alon or Chris Senn's knowledge, and when the two were informed, the two considered it deeply insulting to their work so far, directly leading to the creation of the independently-developed Sonic PC. Ultimately, Point of View was not able to achieve a satisfactory engine on the Saturn: it was their poor performance which caused Shoichiro Irimajiri's displeasure on his March 1996 visit, and resulted in the Sega of Japan executive ordering all development moved to Christina Coffin's boss engine, Project Condor.