Sonic X-treme

This article needs more references. This page desperately needs more references to back up its claims. It could be inaccurate.

Not to be confused with the similarily named Sonic the Hedgehog Extreme.

Sonic X-treme
System(s): Sega Saturn, Windows PC
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega Technical Institute Point of View
Planned release date: Fall 1996, 1996-11-21Media:SonicXtremeUnknownFrenchArticle.jpg, 1996-12, 1997-03
Genre: Action
Status of prototype(s): Early prototype dumped, later source code leaked

Sonic X-treme is an unreleased Sonic the Hedgehog game, developed by Sega Technical Institute and set to be published by Sega of America during the mid-1990s.

X-treme is perhaps the most infamous Sonic game to be cancelled, and personifies much of the problems related to Sega's corporate structure for much of the decade. Following a showing at E3 1996, X-treme was aggressively pushed by Sega of America in an attempt to boost flagging Sega Saturn sales during the Christmas 1996 season. However, after a troubled development timeline, the project was shelved, and a Saturn port of Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island was released in its place.

This page covers the iteration of Sonic X-treme that was announced and demonstrated to the public for the Sega Saturn, however several pitches and re-writes for this Sonic game occurred internally between 1993 and 1997. For those, see Sonic-16, Untitled STI Sonic game, Sonic Mars, Sonic X-treme (Point Of View) and Sonic X-treme (Project Condor).

Story

The story of Sonic X-treme went through multiple iterations over the game's many years of development. Above all, the game was always intended to be a radical departure from the main Sonic the Hedgehog games in gameplay, and as such, its story does not appear to have been a continuation of the previous games' plot. Specifically, X-treme would not be titled Sonic the Hedgehog 4 for this very reason.. Additionally, while the addition of elements from the Sonic the Hedgehog television series was once considered (particularly the inclusion of characters like Sally Acorn), this does not seem to have gone anywhere. Likewise, a tie-in comic series produced by Archie was considered near beginning of development, but equally not followed up on.

“	"There were numerous storylines for Sonic X-treme. What motivated the game design ranged from the narrative to some game mechanic or element that seemed the strongest and most interesting. Michael Kosaka’s Sonic Mars story helped direct my enemy character designs for the game. Initially they were very “computer” and “tech” inspired but gradually fit more in line with the classic Sonic enemy style as developed between Sonic 1-3. My Sonic Saturn storyline definitely affected the game design by requiring that Sonic rescue not only his friends but Robotnik, too – from a new threat, the Chaos Elementals. Later on, my Sonic Twist storyline was inspired directly by Ofer Alon’s twisting world concept for the game. It really depended on the storyline and what stage of development the game was in at the time, but rarely did the story and gameplay lack strong ties to one another."	„
— Designer Chris Senn

Line art of Tiara Boobowski, Sonic's love interest in Sonic X-treme.

The story began with Sonic the Hedgehog doing a little surfing, when he spots the Bluestreak distress signal in the sky above. Using this signal were two new characters, an old man named Professor Gazebo Boobowski, and his daughter, Tiara Boobowski. These characters were “Keepers of the magical Rings of Order” who practice the ancient art of Ring Smithing, and Sonic had been summoned to their castle to foil Robotnik's plans to steal the six Rings of Order. Somehow, Robotnik manages to steal the Rings, but soon loses them, with players tasked with finding the Rings before the evil Robotnik can use them for his nefarious purposes. According to Wallis, this story was created specifically for Game Players magazine's Red Shoe Diaries with combined input from Michael Kosaka, Chris Senn, Rick Wheeler, and Jason Kuo.

No less than seven other storylines were created over the project's lifespan, the final one authored by Hirokazu Yasuhara and Richard Wheeler. In this version, Dr. Eggman returns with a Death Egg that is larger than planet Earth, its gravity causing other planets to fall into an orbit with the space station. Miles "Tails" Prower teleports Sonic to the Death Egg in the hopes of stopping Eggman's latest scheme, but the beam is intercepted by one of the planets now in orbit. Finding himself on a strange world, Sonic also discovers that the badniks Eggman are using are powered by an alien species called "Mips," the natives to the planets that have become a part of the Death Egg's defenses.

One element notably absent from the project was the character of Dr. Eggman. While reportedly planned for the larger game in some capacity, Chris Senn recalls that no artwork or models were ever made of the character, resigning him exclusively to the game's backstory. If time allowed that he had been included, he would have been represented in the Project Condor stage of development. Curiously, Chris Coffin describes Condor's fourth boss fight (the "dumb AI" boss) as resembling a classic boss fight from earlier Mega Drive Sonic games, indicating a possible including of Eggman in a simple Egg Mobile-type fight.

Gameplay

One of the proposed alternate playstyles that was ultimately discarded.

Senn once envisioned X-treme featuring different playable characters, each of which would boast a unique gameplay mode. Sonic the Hedgehog would be played with the game's normal perspective, Miles "Tails" Prower from "Tails Cam" (directly behind him), Knuckles the Echidna from a top-down perspective, and Tiara Boobowski from a side-scrolling 2D perspective. While demo animations were created for these playable characters, the concept of including alternate gameplay modes appears to have never let the drawing board - although, Knuckles' reportedly had some development work completed. According to Senn, Ofer Alon insisted that the gameplay focus exclusively on Sonic himself, to keep things as simple as possible for what would be the series' first-ever 3D outing. During Project Condor, Chris Coffin requested Ross Harris to edit Sonic's pre-rendered 3D model and make a playable Amy Rose. This was done, and while Coffin thought she was looked cute running around in Condor, the idea was equally not followed up.

X-treme was set to feature Zones consisting of three acts each. The first two acts would each emphasize a different ability or gameplay feature, like speed, precision platforming, or puzzle-solving, with these acts described as "huge, multi-story constructions". Act backgrounds were originally simple "flat backdrops", but the team had solid plans to implement two-layer parallax scrolling. Staples of the Sonic franchise like spikes and bottomless pits were implemented (the latter of which only causing players to lose four Rings), and cutscenes were planned for beginning and end of each Act. Each Act would take a reported 5-8 minutes to complete, with the third Act of each Zone pitting Sonic against a boss fight. Chris Senn recalls the number of Zones changing multiple times during development; while some magazines reported up to 15 playable Zones, this number appears to have been later scaled back to seven. By the game's final appearance at Sega Gamer's Day 1996, this further dropped to a confirmed four zones: Crystal Frost, Red Sands, Jade Gully, and Galaxy Fortress.

Bonus rounds were also planned. Described as being similar to "how it was in previous Sonic games", these bonus rounds were never publicly demonstrated, and no further detail was given to their contents. However, Senn recalls that this bonus round concept was created by Michael Kosaka early into the game's 32X development, and later became one of Senn's three "Amiga demos" used to pitch the idea to management; in the particular demo, Sonic rolls through a tubular red circuit and is tasked with collecting as many Rings as possible - directly inspired by the bonus rounds featured in Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Special Stage, but seen from a three-dimensional perspective. Later in development, surfing and bungee jumping gameplay were also briefly described, but as this information comes solely from Sonic's Red Shoe Diaries (which invented much of its content specifically for the articles) and no other developers recall this topic, it is assumed this was also a fabrication of the magazine.

“	"The basic gameplay was focusing on Sonic being in 3D for the first time... so running, spindashing, etc. in a 3D world. Collecting rings was still the bread and butter goal while getting through the levels. Everything else stemmed from this classic set up... just variety in the scenery, concepts, special objects per world, etc…the gameplay was further enhanced by the enemies that populated each world. A lot of thought was put into giving the enemies personality, attacks, and defenses that really changed how the player needed to navigate/act/react when near them. This branched out to some of the initial basic power-ups, as well, further intertwining more levels of basic gameplay."	„
— Designer Chris Senn

An example of the "fish-eye" lens, one of the unique features in the game.

Aside from the reflex lens (which increased the POV to combat a limited viewpoint), one of the game's most-noticeable features is the concept of "world rotation", which allows Sonic to run up walls and onto the ceiling at specific points in the world. Previously described as "full 3D camera rotation", this technology was created by Ofer Alon as a means to experiment with free-roaming gameplay in a 3D world.

Other gameplay concepts were envisioned for Sonic's first 3D outing. Senn designed an intricate system of items and shields which could be combined with one another for added abilities. Additionally, a Flicky-like mechanic (as seen in Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island) was planned, in which each Zone would boast its own unique design of small characters called Mips. Mips would feature different colors and movement patterns with each zone. The name "Mip" was dubbed by Michael Kosaka, and is an abbreviation for the computer term "Million Instructions Per Second." A Super Sonic transformation was also considered (as was the inclusion of Chaos Emeralds), but ultimately dropped to focus on ensuring the regular gameplay would be fun, considering it was the character's first time in 3D.

Abilities

In addition to the expected Spin Dash, three new abilities were planned for Sonic's first 3D outing: the Spin Slash, Ring Throw, and Sonic Streak.

The Spin Slash (previously known as the Spin Bash) was a mid-air version of the Spin Dash where Sonic transforms into a high-speed sawblade. Performing this ability would have either caused more damage or increased Sonic's area of attack; however, Wallis says this ability would have been cut in the final version for being too similar to a midair Spin Dash in execution. The Ring Throw would feature Sonic throwing his collected Rings as an attack. This would deplete the player's actual Ring count. While reportedly incorporated into early development builds of the game, Wallis recalls that the ability was removed for not working with the gameplay, recalling "things that sound good on paper don’t always translate into a good game feature."

A third ability, the Sonic Streak (previously known as the Spin StreakMedia:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg) was reported on but never described in detail. Four additional abilities were planned but never left the concept phase, being the Power Ball (an attack to strike down on enemies below), Super Bounce (a jump with added height but less control), Ring Shield (a shield players could create at the cost of their own Rings), and Sonic Boom (an attack in conjunction with the Ring Shield to attack all enemies on screen).

Items

As one of the notable departures from mainline Sonic the Hedgehog games, powerups were designed to not appear in Monitors but in a rotating sphere, which Sonic would have to break open in a similar fashion. Sonic could also collect Traction Shoes which reduced his speed, making navigation of the 3D landscape easier. A number of special Rings, like the Snake, Twist, and Homing Ring were planned, alongside something known as an "H-Ball Bomb".

While featuring staples like Invincibility and One-Up items, X-treme was also set to introduce a new system of powerups: Elements. Elements represented six different types of powers Sonic could unlock, with a hierarchy in which each Element had both advantages and disadvantages to each other. Similar to the later Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, up to two of these Elements could be acquired and combined to create PowerShields, similar to standard Shields but boasting more unique abilities - like breaking through sections of the landscape or evaporating pools of water.

Enemies

The first enemies designed for the project were created by Chris Senn. As a result of Michael Kosaka's technology-themed Sonic Mars storyline, Senn's early enemy designs were loosely themed around computers and technology. In total, Senn would create about 50 enemies during his work on the game, with each enemy boasting one of two colors: blue would indicate a weak enemy, and red would indicate a strong enemy. Artist Ross Harris would then model 3D sprites based upon his concept art, which would eventually be converted into a pre-rendered sprite. Despite this, only a reported 28 of Senn's roughly 50 designs would actually reach a playable state before the game's cancellation.

For the game's bosses, the team had a number of curious choices planned for X-treme. One boss was designed to chase Sonic the Hedgehog around the boss arena, and another would throw its head at Sonic and grow another. A third idea featured a unique gameplay feature where the boss arena would wrap back around to itself "carousel-style", seemingly acting as further inspiration for what would become Project Condors unique circular boss fights. Later in Condors development, four new bosses appeared: Fang the Sniper, Mecha Sonic, an "evil Sonic clone", and an unnamed fourth boss. These first three had reasonably-polished AI before the game's cancellation, while the fourth, described by Coffin as a "dumb" AI which operated similar to simple boss fights from earlier Sonic the Hedgehog games, required fewer resources and ran more smoothly. This boss appears to have taken the form of the green gemstone fight playable at E3 1996. These bosses all all notably larger than Sonic, particularly in regard to Mecha Sonic; this was done not only because seeing such large characters was considered impressive, but that the increased size made the bosses easier to hit for players potentially inexperienced with 3D gameplay.

Music and sound

Given all the chaos surrounding the game's development, it would be no surprise that X-treme's soundtrack took a backseat to more pressing issues. Still, from about 1994 to 1996, Chris Senn created about 55 pieces of conceptual music intended to inspire creative discussion and help him envision other aspects of his design work - the first music composed for the project. Said tracks were created with an Ensoniq ESQ-1, Mirage, and TS-10, alongside a Boss DR-550, all sequenced in Cakewalk 3.0 for Windows 95. Some of these tracks were frequently utilized for internal demonstration videos, with the track "Space Queens" growing strongly associated with the Sonic X-treme in the years following its cancellation.

STIs in-house musician, Howard Drossin served as the project's official composer, but for whatever reason only produced a handful of tracks late in the game's development. Notably, no sound effects were created for the project whatsoever. During the production of the later Project Condor, Christina Coffin used tracks from the Japanese version of Sonic the Hedgehog CD as placeholder music while the actual soundtrack was being created. While these tracks were definitely used internally, it is unknown if they played during the game's public appearances at E3 1996 and Sega Gamer's Day 1996.

History

This article needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. You can help Sonic Retro by fixing it. After fixing this article, please remove this notice.

Background

With the release of Sonic & Knuckles, Sega was more than aware of the potential contained within the Sonic franchise. Not wanting to lose the momentum created by the string of hits in the early 90's, Sega wanted to create the next "big" Sonic game, along with a slew of other titles to help support it. While games like Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island, and even G Sonic were being done in other areas of Sega, Sega Technical Institute received the big assignment - to create the true successor to Sonic & Knuckles.

With such a daunting task ahead of them, and with the Japanese side of STI returning to their home country, the American team behind such games as Sonic Spinball, The Ooze, and Comix Zone dove head first into a project that would take numerous twists and turns before its cancellation.

Development

Main article: Sonic X-treme/Development

Legacy

“	"This game went through many iterations, working titles, team members, and target platforms. Its 3 year life cycle attempted to boldly go where no person had gone before, at least with a Sonic game. It failed to finish and reach market, but has had far-reaching implications on my career and has had a surprising effect on a number of interested fans. Sonic is quite a brand, and one I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work on, especially at such a young age."	„
— Designer Chris Senn

Roger Hector says X-treme was just one of the STI projects which suffered from political tensions between Sega of Japan and Sega of America. The project's lead designer Chris Senn also doubts that X-treme, even had it been released, would have been able to live up to consumer standards for a Sonic game, or even been fun to play. "The team changed hands so many times as did the target platform for the game, making a collective vision for the game an inevitable impossibility." Senn later became one of the project's primary sources of information, notably compiling his work on the game (along with the work of some other members) on a centralized website known as the Sonic Xtreme Compendium. In creating SXC, Senn honored a request by Ofer Alon to not share in-game maps or screenshots based on his engine, as Alon believes his work could still be copyrighted by Sega of America.

It was rumored that Yuji Naka was involved in the project's cancellation. This seems to have stemmed from Naka's cancellation of the similar Sonic Saturn (which X-treme is frequently confused with). The Sonic community also speculated that the later Sonic Lost World's fisheye perspective was inspired by that of Sonic X-treme's. However, according to Chris Senn, the projects were definitively unrelated, and their use of a shared perspective is simple coincidence.

With the cancellation of Sonic X-treme, the Sega Saturn would not see a core Sonic the Hedgehog title released on the system. Though Sonic Team, fresh from their work on NiGHTS into Dreams, did briefly work on a Sonic title for the system, they realized it would be futile to continue further, seeing as the system's short lifespan was already visible. Taking what they had, they quickly slapped together the Sonic World area in Sonic Jam, applying what they learned from this experiment into the production of Sonic Adventure, which would ultimately be released on the Sega Dreamcast.

Sega of America, having never officially canceled Sonic X-treme in the public's eye, at one point teased the idea of certain concepts from X-treme (such as Sonic's proposed arsenal of new moves) being carried over to Adventure, but in reality it was all spin to try and rebuild brand loyalty in US, who had felt burned at the lack of a new Sonic platformer for the Saturn. Additionally, X-treme stands as one of several examples of the fraught relations between Sega of Japan and Sega of America, others being the Sega 32X console itself, as well as problems concerning the Saturn and Dreamcast.

Even though there was no official announcement, it became quite clear that Sonic X-treme was indeed canceled, and soon became a wildly discussed myth in fan circles, little known about what had happened to the game. It was only with the growth of the Internet and a fanbase reaching adulthood that allowed proper inquiry into what had really happened, resulting in fan contact with Mike Wallis, Chris Senn, and Christina Coffin. This outpouring of support led to the creation of the Sonic Xtreme Compendium, a site owned and operated by Chris Senn meant to organize the many resources made during the project, and chronicle the highs and lows of development.

Preservation

Though no copy of Ofer Alon's engine has been released, a prototype of Christina Coffin's boss engine (early in its conversion into "Project Condor") was put up for auction on ASSEMbler Games, and though effort was made to buy it for public release, it was ultimately sold to a private collector.

In 2009, a package of unreleased textures and level data was leaked to the public. Coupled with a viewer, the release finally allowed fans to experience the levels that were meant to be in Chris and Ofer's Sonic X-treme, albeit in an unplayable format.

Sonic X-treme engine v37 ported to modern Windows by Jollyroger

In 2014, ASSEMbler Games member Jollyroger acquired a source code archive of Point of View's work on Sonic X-treme. This archive contains the source for builds v37 and v40 of Ofer Alon's engine and level editor titled "SonicBoom", along with level data and a never before seen engine programmed from scratch by Point of View on Sega Saturn. The PC version of the engine requires an nVidia Diamond Edge 3D NV1 video card, NV1 SDK and a Windows 95 system to work.

The v37 engine has been recompiled in the latest version of Visual Studio and the NV1 renderer code was converted to render in OpenGL instead. It was released for first time on February 23, 2015 as a single level demo. The level featured in this release was the same version of Jade Gully featured in the E3 1996 trailer.

Later on at the same year, more versions of the engine were released; v40 on PC/Saturn featuring the famed "fish-eye" 360-degree view, an updated version of v37 which included over 150 incomplete test levels and allowed running them manually with ease, and a port of Point Of View's engine to run on regular Sega Saturn hardware because the original code would only run on Saturn development hardware. Jollyroger expects other updates which go beyond the "as-is" phase by modifying several aspects of the gameplay in the hope of reaching a semi-completed version of the game. Although binaries of the v53 level editor were found in the archive, there was no source code, so creating a modern Windows port requires reverse-engineering the code.

In 2016, Jollyroger discovered that the POV archive also contained binaries of build v001 on PC from 1995. This build is very early, with no controllable Sonic. You can control the camera by moving the mouse to explore the level. Although no source code was found, this build predates the transition to NV1 technology and renders entirely with software, therefore it will run on modern machines as-is. Due to the simplicity of the code, the engine runs extremely fast on modern CPUs.

Project names

The following is a list of names the game Sonic X-treme was developed under. It must be noted that there was a second, unrelated Sonic the Hedgehog game being developed for the Sega Saturn under the name Sonic Saturn as well.

• Sonic Mars (32X)
• Sonic 32X / Sonic32X (32X)
• Sonic Saturn (Saturn) (unrelated to Sonic Saturn)
• Sonic Ring Worlds / Sonic Ringworlds (Saturn)
• Sonic Boom! / SonicBOOM (Saturn / nVidia08)
• Sonic X-Treme (Saturn)
• Sonic Twist (Saturn)
• SonicPC (PC)
• Sonic Bluestreak (briefly considered)
• Sonic Blast (briefly considered)
• SuperSonic (briefly considered)

Resources

Download Sonic X-treme File: Xtreme.rar (20.74 MB) (info) Current version: 712

Download Sonic X-treme File: 20150220 Release 001.zip (1.78 MB) (info) Current version: v37

Production credits

• Director: Roger Hector
• Producer: Mike Wallis
• Team Coordinator: Chris Senn
• Co-Lead Designers: Chris Senn, Ofer Alon
• Art Director: Chris Senn
• World Layout Designer: Richard Wheeler
• Boss Programming: Chris Coffin
• Boss Layout Designer: Jason Kuo
• Computer Graphics Artists: Fei Cheng, Andrew Probert
• Conceptual Art Designers: Fei Cheng, Ross Harris, Andrew Probert
• Conceptual Gameplay Design: Chris Coffin, Richard Wheeler
• Lead Programmer: Ofer Alon
• Programmers: Don Goddard, Chris Ebert, Toshiyasu Morita
• Lead Computer Graphics Artist: Ross Harris
• Artists: Alan Ackerman, Betty Cunningham
• Conceptual Artist: Tony DeZuniga
• Animator: Ross Harris
• Technical Director: Ofer Alon
• Music and Sound Effects Director: Howard Drossin
• Conceptual Music Composer: Chris Senn
• Composer: Howard Drossin
• Dean Lester
• Mark Kupper
• Robert Morgan
• Manny Granillo
• Dave Sanner
• Dean Ruggles
• Robert Steele
• Stieg Hedlund
• Kunitake Aoki
• Hirokazu Yasuhara

Source: Developer statements

Magazine articles

Main article: sega:Sonic X-treme/Magazine articles

Technical information

Sonic X-treme was primarily coded in C, C++, and Assembly on IBM and Windows 95 PCs, with additional work done on Macintosh and Amiga 3000 computers; the game's pre-rendered graphics were created on dedicated Silicon Graphics workstations. Additional programs involved in the game's creation are Softimage 3D, DeluxePaint Animator, Photoshop, Imagine, 3D Studio MAX, Alias/Wavefront, and possibly Strata 3D.

ROM dump status

System	Hash	Size	Build Date	Source	Comments
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1			CD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		1996-07-14	CD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		1996-07-18	CD-R				Page

See also

• Sonic Xtreme Frequently-Asked Questions (December 23, 2008)
• Sonic Saturn - A separate Sonic the Hedgehog title developed for the Sega Saturn concurrently with Sonic X-treme that was also canceled.

External links

• Sonic Xtreme Compendium - Sonic X-treme website run by developer Chris Senn.
• Spotlight: Sonic X-Treme - A feature from the website Lost Levels on the development of Sonic X-treme, featuring an interview from Mike Wallis.
• The greatest Sonic game we never got to play - A feature from the site GamesRadar on Sonic X-treme, featuring an interview with Chris Senn.

References

Sonic the Hedgehog games for the following systems
	1996  Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island     1997  Sonic Jam | Sonic R      Demos  Sonic R: Trial Version  Prototypes  Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island (Saturn tech demo) | Sonic R (Saturn prototype; 1997-09-10)  Unreleased  Sonic X-treme | Sonic Saturn