User:CartridgeCulture/To do

• Outline: Build an outline before you do anything. This topic has lots of sub-topics which cover other sub-topics etc, and this all needs to be written from the top-down.
• Sources: Mirror everything that isn't already mirrored. Those links at the bottom of the page apparently contain interviews, ensure they're mirrored too. Because this article lacks references, you're gonna have to build a list of sources from scratch. I guarantee we're gonna double the content of these pages on this step alone. Ensure every developer in Production credits has a reference. Run a search for interviews for every developer on the project.
• Periods: Per Black Squirrel below, it's probably best to split X-treme's coverage into eras - Sonic-16, Sonic Mars (merging its "isometric concept"), main Sat branch, Point Of View branch, and Project Condor branch. A lot of this info is already where it belongs, but a lot isn't.
• Disambig: Consider not a straight disambig page but a general-coverage "Sonic X-treme" page, which covers the project as a whole and links to the individual development periods. This might not be necessary (see first bullet point) but would address the issue of our main X-treme page also serving as the main branch era page (when a main X-treme page should ideologically be defined as the whole project, not just its most recognizable form)
• Intro: Each page's intro needs to state that this is part of the larger X-treme project in the same style of writing, and provide a clear link to earlier/later iterations (maybe at bottom of introduction in dedicated line). Perhaps this can be done in the infobox, like we do with pages like AM2.
• Development: History (as in press history, prerelease stuff) and Development (what the developers were doing, technical stuff) need to be more clearly distinguished. Any info not on the Development subpage already needs to be moved there, and vice versa. Determine if the split is even necessary (probably, but check). There will be some overlap here. Earlier iterations might not have enough content to warrant a dedicated subpage.
• Legacy: This page's "Future" needs merging with Legacy, and the ROM rediscovery section needs to be moved out of the main history and into Legacy as well.
• Misc: Redirects, working names, any necessary categories or image tags, etc.

TO DO

• Fang had a grenade, what was Mecha Sonic's projectile?
• Senn recalls Iri's visit as being by a "Nakayama-san". He 99% means Iri but double check if a Nakayama was part of Iri's SoJ exec group.
• Find Sega of America Daddys & Daughters Day 1994 date.
• List music tracks used in the project.
• Organize and categorize all media. Host anything we're missing.
• Conclusion: Add descriptions for all magazine entries. List Red Shoes mistakes.
• Conclusion: Combine pages of Yasuhara's concept art book into a single .PDF (or multiple, if there are a few books)
• Conclusion: Find magazine issues for Sonic X-treme/Magazine articles.
• Conclusion: Who is that unknown STI developer?

Sources

• Everything possible from the available dumps
• This thread's Condor tech info
• Senntient forums
• SXC (make sure we're not missing anything, esp. stories)
• Michael Kosaka - Sonic Mars Game Script 1.1 (1994-05-17) (where is this on the wiki?)
• Michael Kosaka - Sonic 32X Game Script 1.x (199x-xx-xx) (where is this on the wiki?)
• All E3 videos, everything. Everything from here, use this to make a list, upload what we're missing.
• E3 1996 promo video
• "4worlds", internal pitch video
• SonicDEMO96, internal pitch video
• The Anti-Gravity Room SxxExx
• File:MTV'SRocktheRockSonic&Knuckles1994 US Video.mp4 (Tiara Boobowski concept art being drawn by Chris Senn at STI, glean other info)

Hardware/software/languages

• HARDWARE LIST: "PC" (Windows 95?) , Macintosh, Amiga 3000, SGI workstations
• SOFTWARE LIST: SoftImage. DeluxePaint Animator, Photoshop, Imagine, Studio MAX, Alias/Wavefront, possibly Strata3D.
• LANGUAGE LIST: C, C++, Assembly

Hire/leave dates

• Mike Wallis (hired Nov 1994)
• Michael Kosaka (left early/Summer 1995)
• Dean Lester (left late/Summer 1995)

List of developers by era

Sonic Mars ("pitch")

• Chris Ebert
• Christian Senn
• Jeremy Cantor
• Michael Kosaka
• Roger Hector
• Toshi Morita

Sonic Mars (existing credits) (all Sonic Mars creds. need to be checked against above "pitch"

• Director: Roger Hector
• Producer: Mike Wallis
• Lead Designer: Michael Kosaka
• Lead Designer: Christian Senn
• Lead Programmer: Don Goddard
• Programmers: Chris Ebert, Toshiyasu Morita
• Art Director: Don Goddard
• Artist: Jeremy Cantor
• 3D Modeler: Ross Harris
• Writers: Michael Kosaka, Christian Senn, Don Goddard

Sonic Mars (new credits)

• Producer: Michael Kosaka
• Team Coordinator: Michael Kosaka
• Co-Lead Designer: Chris Senn, Michael Kosaka
• Animator: Chris Senn
• Programmer: Chris Ebert
• Promotional Artwork: Jeremy Cantor

Sonic X-treme and Project Condor, members not listed below, i.e. "non-core"

• Director: Roger Hector (?)
• Programmers: Don Goddard, Chris Ebert (?), Toshi Morita
• Designers: Michael Kosaka (?)
• Artists: Alan Ackerman
• Conceptual Artist: Tony DeZuniga ?
• Dean Lester
• Mark Kupper
• Robert Morgan
• Manny Granillo
• Betty Cunningham
• Dave Sanner
• Dean Ruggles
• Robert Steele ("managed artists")
• Stieg Hedlund
• Kunitake Aoki
• Hirokazu Yasuhara

Sonic X-treme and Project Condor "Core Team"

• 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
• Lead Computer Graphics Artist: Ross Harris
• Animator: Ross Harris
• Technical Director: Ofer Alon
• Music and Sound Effects Director: Howard Drossin
• Conceptual Music Composer: Chris Senn
• Composer: Howard Drossin

Sonic X-treme and Project Condor "Core Team", post-May 95 streamline

• Chris Senn
• Mike Wallis

Project Condor alone

• Christina Coffin
• Dean Ruggles
• Jamie Bible (Contract Programmer)
• Jason Kuo
• Mark Kupper
• Mike Wallis
• Richard Wheeler
• Yasuhara Hirokazu

Sonic X-treme PC version

• Designer: Chris Senn
• Artist: Chris Senn
• Composer: Chris Senn
• Programmer: Ofer Alon

Images

Development

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  STI main branch team (Spring 1996)

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  STI main branch team (Spring 1996) Emaciated Senn :(

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  Ross Harris (Spring 1996)

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  Andrew Probert (Spring 1996)

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  Jason Kuo? (Spring 1996)

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  Rick Wheeler (Spring 1996)

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  X-treme stage concept flowchart (Spring 1996)

E3 1996

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  E3 1996

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  E3 1996

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  E3 1996

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  E3 1996

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  Sega Rocks the House of Sonic Blues

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  Sega Rocks the House of Sonic Blues VIP access

Prerelease: Main branch

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  Test Act

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  Test Act

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  Test Act

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Jade Gully

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  Crystal Frost

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  Red Sands

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  Red Sands

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  Red Sands

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  Red Sands

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  Red Sands

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  Galaxy Fortress

Prerelease: Condor

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  Jade Gully (Sega Gamer's Day 1996)

Prerelease: Condor - Mecha Sonic

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  Death Egg

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  City

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  City

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  City

Prerelease: Condor - Fang the Sniper

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Prerelease: Condor - Gemstone

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Artwork

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  Mecha Sonic wireframe

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  Mecha Sonic model

Introduction

• Peter Morawiec and STI Burbank being aware of X-treme and confirming they are different projects

Story

“	"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

• Archie tie-in comic considered near beginning of development
• Story has admittedly gone through multiple iterations
• Contains Chaos Emeralds
• Not titled Sonic 4 because the gameplay was such a departure from previous entries
• Everything from the Red Shoe Diaries
• Death Egg's gravitational pull, 5 worlds, rescue MipsMedia:SonicXtremeAdvertisement2.jpg
• Six magical Rings of OrderMedia:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg
• Master Ring SmithMedia:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg, "Ringsmiths"
• Professor BoobowskiMedia:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg, Gazebo Boobowski
• Tiara, daughter of prof
• Prof. and Tiara are ring-keepers
• Robotnik kidnapping Prof. and Tiara (I missed some in the first 4 mag articles)
• From Lost Levels article/interview: "The game began with Sonic doing a little surfing and spotting the Bluestreak distress signal in the sky. Using this signal were two new characters, an old man named Professor Gazebo Boobowski, and his daughter, Tiara B. (right) (it is to be noted that neither of these characters would be playable). These characters were “Keepers of the magical Rings of Order”, and Sonic had been summoned to their castle, “wherein they practice the ancient art of ring smithing”. This is where series mainstay Dr. Robotnik entered the picture. Robotnik was after the Rings of Order, and had, in fact, already made an attempt at stealing the Rings, losing them somehow; and so, Sonic was charged with finding the Rings before Robotnik, giving impetus to the gameplay." According to Wallis, this story was created by “a combination of Michael Kosaka (original executive producer and designer), Chris Senn, and Rick Wheeler (Designer, world layout lead and conceptual gameplay design), with some input from Jason Kuo (Boss layout lead) as well."
• Sonic on beach, Prof. Gazebo call, Gazebo is ringsmith who makes rings (Satam tie-in, this is where Ring Worlds comes from).
• All Satam references were removed by E3 appearance.
• "The "Rings of Order" was part of a simple story generated for a news article in a magazine at a point when the real game story was in progress. The magazine needed something to print and the team wasn’t ready with a final story. The idea behind it leveraged the concept that there were magical rings, special rings, that coincided with the Chaos Emeralds that provided order to the Universe when kept together. Using this as a setup, any number of things could happen - not the least of which was Robotnik stealing them and Sonic trying to "restore order" by replacing them."

Gameplay

“	"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

Three acts each, with each emphasizing a diff. gameplay style. This mention references "puzzles", with 5-8 minutes of estimated gameplay time per world Senn once envisioned a different gameplay mode for each character. Modes: Sonic from 3/4 (standard) view, Tails from "Tails Cam" (behind him), Knuckles from top-down, Tiara from side-scrolling 2D perspective. Other than demo animations, these alternate modes never went anywhere, although Knuckles had some stuff made. Alon insisted they focus exclusively on Sonic to keep things simply for his first 3D outing.

Gravity/Rotation features created by Alon, previously described as "full 3D camera rotation" Wall hotspots where Sonic can transition from floor to ceiling/etc, possibly intended to be half-loops.

Reflex lens chosen as a way to combat the game being too fast for satisfying, fast 3D platforming, by means of expanding the visible play area on-screen. Snakey paths (which lock Sonic into place) are means of maintaining traditional 2D Sonic speed with the limited camera real estate of 3D sonic's world.

Powerups

• Invincibility (white sphere), 50 points, 1-up, Ring-up, and Time-up, Shoes (Speed & Traction), PowerShields (see below), Rings (Snake, Twist & Homing), Bomb (H-Ball). "The powerups were to be contained in a rotating sphere, with Sonic having to spindash or land on one to get the power up. Shields were based around a concept called "Elements". Elements represented the six powers that Sonic could unlock. There was a hierarchy of power whereby each Element was stronger than the next with the last Element being stronger than the first, thus making a Circle of Power. Every other Element could be combined together to make one of two special "PowerShields"."
• Elemental Circles of Power: Metal (cuts Rock), Rock (shields from Lightning), Lightning (electrifies Wind), Wind (extinguishes Fire), Fire (evaporates Water), Water (rusts Metal)
• PowerShields: (Metal - Lightning - Fire), (Rock - Wind - Water)

Characters

• Super Sonic considered, but dropped to focus on ensuring the non-Super Sonic gameplay would be fun, considering it was the character's first time in 3D.
• Playable characters: Sonic, Tails maybe, Knuckles for sure, Amy maybe (Coffin ref), Tiara maybe
• Characters: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Dr. Eggman, Amy (Coffin ref), Tiara, Fang the Sniper, Chaos Elementals, Mips, Archie characters (Sally, etc.)
• No Robotnik art/models made. He would have likely been represented in Condor (think Coffin's "dumb ai" boss, Egg Mobile, etc)
• Tiara designed by Senn as a means to give Sonic a love interest, not inspired by Sally
• "Mips were the replacement for Flickies. Each zone had a unique design of Mip, with it’s own color and movement. The name "Mip" was dubbed by Michael Kosaka and is an abbreviation for a computer term "Million Instructions Per Second"."

Unsorted

• Backgrounds were originally "flat backdrops" but team had plans to implement two-layer parallax scrolling
• Senn wrote, "Yasuhara-san's level designs for Xtreme were for 3D gameplay. The idea was to free Sonic into full 3D. I'm not sure how the designs would have worked using Ofer's fixed camera (that translated but never rotated about the vertical axis) - as his camera allowed for faster calculation. If a different camera were used (say one that could rotate around corners), the gameplay probably would have been quite different."
• Surfing and bungee jumping gameplay (likely the source of the "extreme sports" stuff seen on X-treme's ice cream bars)(also in Red Shoes)
• 4worlds: Invincibility item (a white sphere with Sonic's head) and "50 points" item, enemies lack collision. Mushroom springs (later seen in Condor Fang fight), skull switches which Sonic must touch to activate snakey paths, as opposed to DEMO96's later "panel on floor". Snakey paths not activated by touching switches are always visible. Features no music.
• SonicDEMO96: Falling in pits hurts Sonic but only takes away 4 rings. Features a purely invisible snakey section which shows a bridge-like object under Sonic as he travels it, kind of like a magic carpet? Probably just a neat affect for snakey sections. Sonic can now take damage from and defeat enemies. Sonic's animations are running far faster than normal, likely to compensate for how slowly the code ran when it was ported to the Saturn. Also features a NiGHTS "auto-flying through loops in the sky" snakey section, operates the same way. Features a normal conveyer belt, golf ball and drill hat enemies, bombs without collision which stomp up and down, bubbles which light up and fly away. Features the music Space Queens or w/e that song is. Invincibility returns, but I don't see 50 points.

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 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, Super Bounce, Ring Shield, Sonic Boom.

Acts

• Each act would emphasize a different ability or gameplay feature, like speed or precision platforming, with levels described as "huge, multi-story constructions". Sonic franchise staples like spikes and bottomless pits were implemented (which only seemed to taken away 4 rings when hurting Sonic), and cutscenes were planned for beginning and end of Acts. Planned bonus stages similar to "how it was in previous Sonic games"

• Senn recalls the configuration of numbers of acts per w/e changed multiple times during development, but generally the game featured 3 Acts per Zone: two gameplay Acts and a boss Acts. While some magazines reported up to 15 playable Zones, this number appears to have been later scaled back to 7 Zones. By Sega Gamer's Day 1996, this further dropped to a reported 4 zones; its final pre-cancel specs.

• Crystal Frost
• Red Sands
• Jade Gully
• Galaxy Fortress

Enemies

• Kosaka's early Mars story resulted in Senn's early enemy designs being loosely tech/computer themed Senn created 50 enemy designs, with Blue for weak enemies, red for strong. Ross Harris would then model 3D sprites based upon his concept art. Only a reported 28 of Senn's designs would actually reach a playable state before the game's cancellation.
• Mainbranch bosses: A boss that chased Sonic around the arena, another where the world would wrap back around to itself "carousel-style", and a possible boss which would throw its head at Sonic and grow another.
• Condor bosses: Fang, Metal Sonic, and an "evil Sonic clone". All 3 had "reasonably-polished" AI before cancellation. A 4th boss was a "dumb" ai which operated similarly to early-zone boss fights in the MD Sonic games, and required far fewer resources. May have been the "Gemstone" boss. Fang was a fully 3D model, head-tracked to Sonic, could cover his head to protect from being jumped on, was made noticeably larger than Sonic, and could toss grenades. Metal Sonic was modeled to be gigantic
• MAKE ENEMY LIST

Music and sound

• Senn created about 55 pieces of conceptual music from 1994-1996 intended to inspire creative discussion and help him envision other aspects of his design work
• Drossin was main composer and would have been so for the final game, but only made a few pieces late in mainbranch's development
• Chris Senn composed a few early "concept" tracks for the game, but Howard Drossin was the composer of the game's "final" tracks.
• No sound effects created for X-treme
• Coffin's music choice for Condor were tracks from the JP version of Sonic CD's OST, used as placeholders while X-treme's music was being composed.
• SENN'S EQUIPMENT
• Ensoniq ESQ-1
• Ensoniq Mirage
• Ensoniq TS-10
• Boss DR-550
• Sequenced with Cakewalk 3.0 for Windows 98 (does Senn mean 95?)
• Space Queens coverage
• Coffin using Sonic CD JP tracks for Condor

History

• PLATFORM ROADMAP: 32X (Mars) > Saturn (Mars) > V08/TNT (Mars or X-treme) > Saturn (X-treme)

Development

“	"Sonic Xtreme underwent many changes and difficulties that would have tested even the most seasoned game industry veterans. Lack of experience, poor business decisions, ego, politics, over-ambition, bad timing, poor communication... these were some of the ingredients that ultimately spelled disaster for the game. Bringing Sonic into 3D for the first time was a huge challenge - not only for gameplay, but from a technology standpoint as well. This made the job of defining what the game should be more difficult, but doubly so as the technology and platforms changed. In the first year and a half the team went through three programmers, causing the game’s technology to basically restart each time. Problems like this took a toll on the budget and created more pressure for the entire team down the line."	„
— Designer Chris Senn

Background

“	"We had artists doing art for levels that hadn't even been concepted out. We had programmers waiting and waiting and waiting until every minute detail had been concepted out, and we had designers doing whatever the hell they wanted. It was a mess and because of the internal politics (the art director had trained his art team to hate the designers and programmers), it was even more difficult to get any work done."	„
— Producer Mike Wallis

Sega Technical Institute was founded in 1990 by Mark Cerny as a means to train Western developers in adept game making and support Sega of America's ability to make their own Genesis games, particularly games which could establish new Sonic-like franchises based around mascot characters. His new studio would soon be joined by much of Sonic the Hedgehog's Japanese development team and a slew of other developers from Sega of Japan, who moved to the Bay Area and began working on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 199x. Despite the two teams working closely together, Japanese management reportedly held a distrust of American handling of their flagship franchise, and the Japanese side of STI frequently isolated itself to work alone.The two groups also clashed over work ethic, with the Western side of STI already known for its notoriously-slow development environment by 1992 - attributed by designer Peter Morawiec to a generous budget and lack of oversight.

To compound matters, fellow staff member Don Goddard recalls that the studio had very particular rules for its developers, particularly requiring an idea or piece of programming to be fully completed before anything further could be worked on. "Sega is the only place I've been at where you had to program the most optimized version of your code before they would let you move on to a new programming concept." This issue was only exacerbated by STI management, which began favoring style over substance. Stieg Hedlund recalls that the need for constantly presenting projects for check-ins with management slowed down the creative process, as "the atmosphere encouraged presentations that were all surface and no substance, since there was no time or forum to go into depth. We became adept at creating MTV-style smash-cut videos."

STI's lethargic development speed was even something the public was aware of, with the company's official explanation being the result of "approaching the game's design with a spirit of adventure and uncertainty", and that the developers were "leaving the [design of the] project open for as long as possible" until a team member thought of an idea. "Everyone has their own mental image of how the game should come together."

Despite these issues, Sonic the Hedgehog was still considered Sega Technical Institute's central franchise, and one that would enjoy nearly limitless company resources behind its development. However, political issues, unexpected setbacks, and even life-threatening illnesses would eventually threatened to derail the Sonic X-treme project as a whole.

Sonic Mars

“	"Michael was studying the previous Sonic games and creating the design document for the game…I seem to remember making some 2D side-view animations of Sonic at that early stage. My first real artwork consisted of two animations demonstrating the game concept. They were flat-shaded and looked like actual games in action. I even made ring-counters that incremented when Sonic picked them up. These animations were to be used to sell the concept to the executives."	„
— Designer Chris Senn

A Western-developed Sega Technical Institute Sonic game had been planned by the division for some time. SONIC-16 RECAP HERE. While this project was unrelated to any later Sonic games, the idea would stick around and still be fresh in the memory of a couple of STI developers.

Tasked by SoA management in early 1994 to begin development on a Sonic the Hedgehog title for the upcoming 32X, the project was intended as a launch game for the system, leaving the small team scrambling to work as fast as possible by Christmas 1994. STI was very much inspired to move to 3D after the release of Virtua Fighter, with Sonic intended to be a 3D model early in development.

The team was being lead by Michael Kosaka, who created a design document for the game by studying previous titles in the Sonic franchise, and also penned the earliest known story for the game. Designer Chris Senn was also brought onto the team at this time, working as a character designer and animator. The team soon realized the 32X would only be able to reasonably render a few hundred polygons at once (nowhere near what they would need for a fun game world), so programmer Don Goddard created a 3D Doom-like engine which could smoothly rotate 90 degrees in any direction (including up and down) allowing for "loops". He says the team came up with a single concept for a "rail-style" game around this technology (likely referring to linear, Crash Bandicoot-like gameplay), but as the original intention was a free-roaming 3D game, this experiment was scrapped.

Goddard later programmed a "blazingly fast scaled/rotated sprite routine" which could display thousands of sprites at once, and created a demo where Sonic runs around on a black background with about a thousand Rings bouncing around the screen. Running at 60fps, it was playable at Sega of America's Daddys and Daughters Day 1994. Company executive and one of the biggest supporters of the project, Shinobu Toyoda, brought his daughter to work that day, and they both played and enjoyed the brief demo - despite Goddard admitting it to be a very basic one.

Following the success of Goddard's demo, the development team began creating new concepts entirely out of multiple sprites, including Senn designing multiple monsters constructed out of Rings. Goddard recalls they were possibly going to design a specific zone or two populated with these Ring creatures, which would appear as either a stack of rings or a giant one, and would slink around the playfield. When hit, they would explode into smaller rings which could be collected as a unique gameplay mechanic.

Senn would not only begin creating new characters during this time (like Tiara Boobowski), but also produced a number of early test animations for the project. Produced in his Amiga 500 computer in PROGRAMHERE, he created a total of three demos for the project. The first two are potential gameplay concepts, featuring Sonic running around small gamefields suspended in the sky and demonstrating how the new 3D gameplay could possibly work. The third was a bonus stage conceptualized by Michael Kosaka, in which Sonic would roll through a hollow circuit of tube attempting to collect as many Rings as possible.

Despite being in development for the 32X, Sega of America management was already considering moving the game to the company's following console (what would become the Saturn). Because the team didn't have a solid answer on the choice of platform (nor any choice in the matter ), Senn's Amiga demos were rendered on the conservative side, with flat-shaded graphics more comparable to the 32X.

These early tests were used to pitch the gameplay concept to company executives Tom Kalinske, Shinobu Toyoda, Yuji Naka, and a small group of others, who said that the graphics would have a hard time competing with games like Donkey Kong Country. The executives insisted on a stronger focus around classic franchise staples like loops and Rings, disregarding the team's attempts to design a new game concept specifically for a 3D environment - and nearly bringing Senn to tears during the meeting. According to Goddard, Sega's management was asking the team for a game more similar to what would be seen in the later Sonic Adventure, but years earlier by a smaller team on less powerful hardware. To make matters worse, Yuji Naka himself simply shook his head, turned to Chris Senn, and said "good luck."

Regardless, the team was able to argue that the graphics could improve, the videos showed the early gameplay concept clearly enough, and further Sonic staples could always be added down the line, and the project continued without issue.

Unsorted

• During the 32X era, game design wasn't fully formed enough to determine if the hardware could even run the game.

• Senn was hired early 1994 (or earlier), and his work on Mars through X-treme was focused on art direction, character design, game design, level design, and team coordination.

• 32X timeframe, up to V08: 1994-1995

• When Kosaka left, Senn took the opportunity to go in a direction w/ the design that excited him more. Kosaka's design was solid and more traditional Sonic, but Senn wanted to explore new ways of approaching the design, story, etc.

• Mid to Fall 1994: Chris Senn working as a character designer at STI, and artwork of him drawing Tiara concept art appears in the Rock the Rock TV special (Oct 1994). Hector identifies the Mars dev team as "Sonic Team".
• Late 94: S&K released, STI staffs up more. Sonic X-treme (at the time called Sonic 32X) was very early in development, mostly just technical prototypes and very early character concepts.
• November 94: Wallis told he'd be working on an upcoming Sonic project with Kosaka, Senn, and Goddard, slated for the 32X
• Sept 94: Goddard joins STI and begins working on the game.

• Hirokazu suggested the game be for the Sat, not the 32X.
• Early/Summer 95: Exec producer and lead designer Michael Kosaka leaves STI over political tensions between him and Dean Lester. This leaves the Sonic 32X team with only 4 other team members. 1 concept artist, a designer, and two programmers, but no leader. At this time, the game was still very much in pre-production. Senn became temporary producer while mgmt looks for another. Mgmt (Hector and Lester) decided Senn should be actual producer.
• Late summer 1995 - Exec producer Dean Lester leaves, replaced by Manny Granillo. Wallis is moved over to the Sonic X-treme project several months later in an attempt to save it.
• Alon was hired in the era just before X-treme was being moved to the Saturn. Before this, Goddard had been the only programmer on the project for 3 months. See if we have a hire date for Goddard.
• "Mark Kupper was a tools guy trying to build a 3D modeler animation program for the artists"
• Gary McTaggart, an outside programmer experienced in 3D engines and Doom specifically, was recommended by Kupper and had a great interview with management. Despite being cheap to hire, management dragged their feet and he was never hired. Later, Goddard made another attempt to acquire another programmer with his own recommendation, Midway's John Morgan (of Super Off-Road fame) He also had a very positive interview and was equally qualified for the project, but was also never called back.
• Reportedly, the dev team ran into a common theme of their requests going unanswered and unfulfilled for months at a time.
• In the period before Alon was hired and Goddard was the only programmer (around them trying to hire McTaggart), Goddard had been clamoring for programming help from Dean Lester, and a THIRD attempt was made. Lester said he'd found a programmer from the Middle East who had previously worked on a Mac game and had made an impressive demo. Goddard flew him into Redwood City, and felt, like Ruggles, he had a superior attitude about knowing what was best for the project. To their surprise, this programmer, Ofer Alon, was hired and began working 3 weeks later.
• Ofer was "very expensive" to hire, and would reportedly agree to gameplay designs when speaking to fellow staff, but would later ignore these requests and perform his own work. He seemed to only get along with Chris Senn, the source of the actual "game design" ideas.
• While Toyoda/Hector understood that X-treme didn't need to include every element of 2D sonic games (loops, clean lines of rings, etc), the press (and even elements of SoA's non-Toyoda/Hector management) would constantly ask where these things were, and expecting more performance than the game would ever be able to deliver.
• Goddard did make some fast, optimized 32X code, but the 32X was still the flawed platform it is, so this likewise went nowhere.
• Goddard's team took a look at early Saturn specs and were extremely turned off, seeing it as a complicated mess to develop for. Still, they began running technical evaluations and familiarizing themselves with the hardware.
• Early into learning the Saturn's specs, Coffin was hired (who had coincidentally worked with John Morgan in the past). Coffin was described as being a passionate developer and fun to work with. However, for some reason she grew paranoid early into the project and make a few enemies, in particular Ofer Alon.
• During this time, Goddard was still attempting to get Ofer Alon to cooperate or listen to any of their requests. He continued to refuse, and would now lock himself inside his office for the entirety of the business day. He also began willfully ignoring members of the staff, reportedly creeping Goddard out (who worked in the office next to Alon's).
• Chris Ebert spent ten months coding a 32X demo in which a camera would fly over a single line of ten polygons.
• Tensions within the team: Goddard recalls that a good number of SoA staff and people he worked with did not get along with Dean Lester, and than Dean Ruggles was also disliked by the staff, leaving work early every day and once walking out in the middle of a team meeting.
• Sega of America created a series of promotional Sonic X-treme pins which were awarded to the development team.
• Wallis says the team hadn't spent much time actually working with the 32X before they were moved to the V08, and then the Saturn, where actual "development" began to take place. Because of this, he specifies that "releasing X-treme for the 32X wasn't even a consideration".
• Third pitch demo (red tube) may not have been created by Senn.
• The problematic development of the game forced Sega of America to keep the game behind closed doors as opposed to including it in November 10th's (1995) "32XPOSED" 32X announcement event.
• SoA wished to move X-treme off of the 32X because it was tanking.
• Near end of development, after having shown the Mars team the upcoming SoJ Sat specs for some time, ordered them to start developing for said specs. However, this "Mars on Saturn" dev period would not last long, being shifted to Riva in Fall 1995.
• Development of "Saturn version began during development of Comix Zone.
• Fall 1995: SoA orders shift from 32X to Riva TNT, wasting months of 32X development (and some Saturn tech work).

Saturn V08

• Fall 1995: SoA orders shift from 32X to Riva TNT (SoA+Nvidia had partnership for the card, and/or SoA owned 1/3 of Nv. Described as "very first Riva") (, wasting months of 32X development (and some Saturn tech work).
• Goddard overheard a conversation Roger Hector and other executives were having with Alon in his office, discussing a potential "Saturn-killer" (SoA hated the Saturn that much). Being left out of this discussion bothered Goddard, and at this point he had had enough of Sonic, leading to his eventual departure from the company.
• At this time, SoA presented STI with Nvidia's Riva TNT. The broad concept for the platform shown to STI's tech director Robert Morgan for evaluation. (Mike Wallis, Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz) This was reportedly liked by management more than SoJ's Saturn, and was more 3D capable. (Mike Wallis, Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz) It spent several months in evaluation.
• Just as the "Saturn killer" was going to be a Western-developed attempt "to show SoJ how to do things", X-treme was going to be the game version of that, and this is a big part of why it was intended as launch game for the V08.
• The Saturn-killer (nvidia TNT/Saturn V08/what would become NV1) was described by Goddard as being extremely capable, with the unique ability to morph polygon vertexes in-hardware for performance gains, and with build-in hardware colored lighting. Think a unique rendering feature like the Saturn using quads opposed to triangles. Unfortunately, Sega passed on the platform as the industry was used to rendering with triangles and preferred to keep it that way. This was mirrored by SegaSoft (STI's largest internal competitor who, as described by Goddard, was jealous of STI's unlimited funding). Ironic considering the SoJ-pushed Saturn ended up not using triangles anyway.
• The V08/NV1 was reportedly a response to the powers of the upcoming PS1. Sega also owned something like 1/3 stake in nvidia, hence the cooperation.
• Ofer was very briefly doing tech evaluations with the NV1, and Goddard was working on early experimental game prototypes for it. Reportedly, integrating the NV1's unique curved polygon capabilities into the existing graphics pipeline was a nightmare. This didn't last more than a few months, with the project soon returning to Saturn specs.
• Goddard and Alon were also courted by 3Dfx, who promised a chip with the unique ability for development emulators to perform 1:1 with the final product. Nothing became of this.
• During this time, Goddard had developed an extensive "UFO demo" for the NV1 hardware, and had invested a great deal of effort into the project. When Sega dropped the NV1, his work had gone to waste, and after spending a few months away from the Sonic project, quit Sega entirely in June.
• Around Fall 1995: Wallis and team spends up to three months on V08 evaluations, meaning the team was largely sitting around (outside those on evaluation duty). During this time, they never received any TNT documentation, tech specs, or dev kits, which further left the team's direction in limbo.
• Around Fall 1995: To achieve this move to TNT, STI shifted all development team resources onto the project. Wallis recalls they probably had 9-10 artists & animators, 4 programmers, 3 designers, a sound guy, myself, and an exec producer.
• Some early tech was created and was supported more than the potential Saturn by SoA, but SoJ came in and ordered the TNT evaluations cancelled. Everything was then moved to the Saturn.
• Apparently, nvidia did actually print a "Saturn-version of the NV1" chip, reportedly in a great rush. This was shipped to Sega, who installed in and turned it on, only for it to instantly fail and display nothing more than a black screen. With that, Sega dropped the project on the spot.
• Around late 1995: Riva TNT dropped, SoJ forces SoA to go with the actual Saturn, and development is shifted again. This was less SoJ ordering an X-treme platform shift, but instead killing the platform it was on, leaving SoA and the team with no other option

Sonic X-treme main branch

• X-treme name was chosen either sometime before or on the switch to the Saturn.
• Around Late 95 (possibly early 96): Shortly following move from TNT to SoJ Sat, team split into two groups. Ofer Alon/Chris Senn "main branch", and Chris Coffin (team "leader" for Condor) "boss engine".
• Rick Wheeler joined project as intern, became core team.
• Alan Ackerman created 3D enemies and animations for the project which were designed to be efficient on polygon use, and created the texture maps for the game's Acts and in-game models.
• Serious anxiety among dev team during buildup to E3.
• Senn recalls a strong push to market X-treme before the team had much to show, and that Red Shoes Diaries had the unintended effect of increasing the cycle of marketing hype and added to the team's stressMedia:ElectronicGamingMonthlyUnknownIssue2.gif
• Difficulties related to size and perspective in 3D environments and being an early 3D game. Addition of reflex lens (early/Spring 96) sparked a renewed sense of inspiration in the developers
• Despite previous claims, SoJ did support the project in some capacity: Senn says "near the tail end of Sonic X-treme, Yasuhara-san and Aoki-san were enlisted to help the project." (NEEDS DATING)

Design

• Goddard speculates the mainbranch's fisheye lens was a means to cover up the lack of true curved environments.
• "Sonic Saturn" splash screen created by Ross Harris on a whim, not a working title but only meant to represent "Sonic on the Saturn"
• Harris modeled the 3D Sonic "and other objects" (likely everything 3D) in SoftImage which were later digitized into 2D sprites, and did other pieces of artwork
• Fully 3D (and not prerendered) models of Sonic found in "the SDK" (SGL or a dumped version of X-treme?) were a design choice of Coffin's from the late POV era. Modeled by kunitake aoki during his work on Dynamite Deka, "they demonstartated the rendering trick 'bug' where if you collapse opposite points of a saturn quad you get a triangle with one edge that's collapsed in and smoothly concave in screenspace at the pixel level."
• Coffin used above "quad bug" to show how certain enemies can be safely attacked from certain angles, and for terrain hazards like spike pits. She refers to a forum signature of a turning cannon, and also a magazine screenshot "showing a bunch of koosh-ball type objects in a small arena with sonic standing near them", as examples of the bug.

Alon's engine

• Named feature list: World Display, Sonic Interaction, World Construction, World Rotation, Fish-Eye Lens, Dynamic Spline Paths
• Senn: "(Alon's) engine and tool was built with so much thought put into it, that it could be used for many games."
• During creation of Alon's editor, Senn spoke with him about 3 hrs a day on how to do so. Existing videos only showcase a fraction of its abilities.
• Ofer's engine (and/or editor?) took one year to create.
• Senn wouldn't know what the engine's restrictions were when imagining its gameplay. Once he got his hands on Alon's editor, he adapted quickly.
• By end of the project, many other staff had learned how to use the editor's basic functions, but only Senn and Wheeler knew the program entirely. Editor was changing frequently during development and difficult to teach.
• As a response to the POV branch, Senn/Alon started doing their own "eventual PC game" PC branch team. POV and mainbranch were stuck using an old version of the editor, while Alon kept updating the editor for his private Senn/Alon PC thing.
• Alon's tools were considered to be used in a potential X-treme follow-up, but this never came to pass.

Iri's visit

• March 1996: Head of SOJ Irimajiri visits STI with his entourage. Wallis and team show him their progress with POV's technology and he is disappointed with the work thus far. However, when shown what Coffin has been doing on the boss levels, he says, "I like this. Make the whole game like this." Then he left shortly after this statement.
• Iri's Mar 96 visit: when viewing main branch, he "was outraged to see how much was left to be done", according to Senn. According to Senn, Iri viewed the POV version, and later Condor. Iri hated that POV still had so much work left to do, but saw Coffin's engine and "ordered" everything moved to that.
• "He said firmly, "make the game like [Chris Coffin's boss engine level]". Due to the importance of Nakayama-san, being at the top chain of command, nobody could go against his decree.
• Alon/Senn's "PC port" was something they worked on concurrently with POV and Condor. It was reportedly in a demonstrable state by Iri's visit, but because he left so quickly following his disappointment, they weren't able to do so.
• Unfortunately, the attitude from SOJ (Iri) was: Anything remotely looking like Ofer's old version should not continue. I think this was a political reason why the PC group at SOA decided to pass on our PC version.
• Senn/Alon actually did make it in time for Iri's visit (with the intention of showing their duo-exclusive PC port), but after Senn saw his severe disappointment, he didn't bring it up for fear of making things worse.

Post-Iri

“	"I went to the exec producer and VP and told them the only way we had any semblance of hope of finishing this game for Christmas was to give me the reins, get rid of the political crap, isolate a core team, and give us the tools necessary to get the job done. SOA/STI management agreed, we pulled a core group of 4 artists, 2 programmers (+ 1 contractor), and 3 designers into the old STI location and we get to work."	„
— Producer Mike Wallis

• March 1996 (post-Iri): Wallis goes to exec producer (Roger Hector?) and VP (Toyoda?) and told them the only way we had any semblance of hope of finishing this game for Christmas was to give Wallis the control he previous lacked as a producer, get rid of the "political crap", isolate a core team, and give them the tools necessary to get the job done. SOA/STI management agreed, and with Wallis they pulled a core group of 4 artists, 2 programmers (+ 1 contractor), and 3 designers into the old STI location (275) and got to work. A Wallis mag interview claims 15 designers around June. Probably don't use as ref, but this either refers to: 5 unlisted supported people within STI, the Condor team?, or 15 was the pre-March streamline headcount.
• At this point, its only Condor, with Senn/Alon doing their own thing with their exclusive PC version.
• Around April 96: Stolar takes over as CEO. Visits Hector, requests he isolate the best of STI, provide them all they needed, and have them focus on nothing but X-treme.. visits Wallis at STI. Stolar asks Wallis if he can provide anything needed/what would be needed to further their chance at winning Xmas 96. Wallis consults with team, "it is determined that the NiGHTS engine would be very helpful, as we didn't have time to develop all the tools necessary". Stolar promises to get these tools. Following this, the team receives "some editors", and shortly after, "the engine code". Two weeks later, after the team had familiarized themselves with the editors, Stolar informs the team that SOJ (specifically Naka) forbade them from using "his code". Stolar claims Naka threatened to quit if SoA were allowed to use Sonic Team's technology. The team acquiesces and these 2-3 weeks are wasted.
• "Core group" was "locked into" STI's old hq at Redwood Shores 255 1st floor. Brought food, sleeping material, worked 15-16hr shifts before sleeping and repeating.
• Soon, Stolar reportedly delivered "a NiGHTS editor, a level-based editor". Wallis recalls this spent about two weeks being learned by STI's staff before Yuji Naka went to "Yuri Maguire" (Irimajiri) and threatened to quit Sega IF the team was given the NiGHTS engine. The same interview later says "while SoJ was completely uninvolved outside Iri's visit, SoJ INITIALLY did promise to actually deliver the NiGHTS engine, but later "pulled it from us". Wallis does not clarify whether this means the engine or the request.
• NIGHTS RUMOR FUEL: RSD3 claims Coffin's "game was developed with same tools used in NiGHTS and Panzer Dragoon." Referring to SGL but NiGHTS engine rumor fuel. Mike Wallis was reported as being a fan of NiGHTS as well.
• NIGHTS RUMOR REFUTATION:, "Q: Was the NiGHTS engine used? A: No. This was discussed at one point, but never became a reality. The Boss engine Christina Coffin created provided a similar look, albeit simpified, to the NiGHTS engine, but the actual engine was never shared or used." Naka also said it'd be impossible to adapt. Request likely happened but was denied. The magazines also conflated SGL with "the NiGHTS engine". Probably came from RSD3 mention, mirrored in articles like this.Media:SonicXtremeUnknownFrenchArticle.jpg
• Either way, the team did not get access to the dev tools it was seeking, and began developing their own dev tools from scratch (likely those level editor programs from the dump/etc)
• May 96: "Core team" streamlined further, removing 1/3 of team (now being led by Senn) This is when Senn moved into SoA offices and did the 16-18 hr shifts (June-Aug) in an attempt to move mainbranch into Condor's engine, but separately of the Condor team.
• May/June 96: Wallis fires an artist/animator "who is being disruptive to the team by not carrying his weight". He is terminated from the project and from Sega.
• Around June/July 96: Alon was working on X-treme main branch, developing on a PC with Sat as target platform. Authored PC-based development tools, and while the game ran fine on computer, it chugged when ported to Sat. Alon leaves sometime around/following this time, leaving Senn the only developer. As a result, Senn moved out of his apartment, stored all his stuff in a storeroom at Redwood Shores (255), and moved into the office, working night and day.
• Around Aug 96: Senn gets super sick at 255. Coffin gets super sick at 275. Shocked at their condition, Wallis tells management the project cannot continue like this, and they will not make Christmas. The game is officially cancelled.
• Senn: "I took on far more than was healthy... and after 2 years I became extremely ill... a nurse told me he thought I had 6 months to live, actually. I lost 25 pounds, was sick all the time, had cramps... and still went in to work... all due to too much stress"
• Upon cancellation's, about 80% of X-treme's main gameplay worlds were textured and close to completion.
• August 96: Stolar reveals (that Stolar had been working on) 3D Blast Sat to Wallis and offers to make him producer on it, which is accepted. Wallis manages development teams in the US, Japan, and Europe to bring out the Saturn version later that October. IMPORTANT: Wallis contradicts his Pachuka interview and says the Genesis version of 3D Blast was always in development, and wasn't a last-minute idea to replace X-treme. Given the previous information, this is the more likely case.

Point Of View era (mainbranch using POV engine with old map builders)

“	"Somewhere between six and eight months prior to the project’s cancellation, management had investigated outside options to help insure completion of the game. They chose a company called ‘POV’. The effort was led by the Technical Director Robert Morgan, one of the original founders of POV, without the knowledge of Ofer Alon (or Christian Senn). When ready, management brought both Ofer and Senn into an office and unveiled their new plan to finish the game. The plan included removing Ofer as technical lead of the project and shifting technical control over to Robert Morgan, who would lead POV. Management presented POV’s efforts on-screen which included a computer monitor with an animating Sonic sprite fixed on-screen, a ground plane with a checkerboard texture on it, and a shaded sphere floating in the sky - without interaction of any kind."	„
— Designer Chris Senn

• Around early 96: Robert Morgan, STI tech director, takes Alon's PC engine (developed to port code to the Sat, but which at first ran slowly) to POV (a company he co-founded) in attempts to get a smoother Sat version, done without Senn/Alon's knowledge. One day, the duo are invited into Morgan's office, where they learn about POV for the first time. A security guard was posted outside the meeting, with SoA considering the possibility Alon would grow violent. Alon was "replaced" as lead programmer (with Morgan now acting as programming lead on mainbranch, which now essentially became POV by his orders), and was demoted to just programmer. Senn considered it backstabbing and drastic. Their "hope" for success was shown off as a demo POV provided: "They showed us the Sonic sprite we were already using floating in the upper-right of the screen, a checkerboard ground, a rotating shaded polygonal shape floating in the air and maybe a ring sprite animating." When an SoA rep sensed the pair's astonishment and tried to frame the unimpressive demo as the start of something larger by saying, "We're on a mission [to]...", Alon said "have a nice trip." and walked out of the meeting.
• Morgan becomes Programming lead and project lead for POV (fka mainbranch)
• POV demo insulted duo, as Ofer's engine already boasted a much larger featureset. It was particularly upsetting to Alon, who had dumped ridiculous hours into getting his engine to where it was, only for it to be thrown away so quickly. While management tried to justify the plan by framing it as using POV's "technology" to port Ofer's PC engine to the Saturn, Senn feels this "trivialized the complexity of Ofer's technology and proved there was a very different understanding of what was involved to port the existing technology." Additionally, Alon was the one responsible for both the game's central features of world rotation and the reflex lens, but was generally referred to as "just another programmer" by management.
• Senn also believes management held Ofer to unfair expectations, being hyped up by Hector (as a MENSA genius) and being expensive to hire, but choosing to work from home. Senn attributed this to Alon's preference of isolating himself as a programmer to avoid distractions. Despite maintaining a consistent 16 hours a day, 7 day a week workweek dedicated solely to coding for the game, Senn thinks management likely viewed his absence from the actual office as laziness or vacationing. Later in the project, Alon leaves Sega over these reasons.
• RUMOR: It was rumored that Robert Morgan withheld a development kit Ofer needed to translate his PC work to the Saturn, so Ofer would "fail" and Robert could use a company that he co-founded to become the "savior" of the project (Don't use this for now, but hold onto it for the future)
• Because of POV insult, Alon/Senn get together and start really going after cleaning up their original PC version to blow SoA out of the water. This leads to establishment of dedicated PC version as more than an editor and instead a game. I.e. this leads to the duo's SonicPC project.
• Either way, POV gets to work on "technology" (and possibly levels of their own), where the STI team fka mainbranch is now switched to using POV's technology. They're still using the same editors/map builders.
• POV/"STI POV" teams were working "on a much older game engine with many new project recruits who were just learning the tools and what the game was all about" Also described as working with "a very rudimentary version ... based on an old version of Ofer's editor"
• POV unable to achieve mainbranch's fisheye
• This was the version of X-treme showed to Iri in Mar 96 alongside Condor
• Iri's dislike is pretty much what canned POV's involvement

SonicPC (?)

• Original engine created somewhere between 94-95 when Alon ported his Mac engine code to "PC" (Win 95?) to continue development. Intention was to port this later ver. of mainbranch engine to Sat. After POV meeting, Senn and Alon were so disgusted with SOA's management, they set out to develop their own PC version and show how wrong they really were. Was pitched to Sega Entertainment (SegaSoft?) but passed on, ending both developer's involvement with the project.
• Alon/Senn's "PC port" was something they worked on concurrently with POV and Condor. It was reportedly in a demonstrable state by Iri's visit. Senn caught up to the group but was fearful of upsetting Iri further and didn't ask him to wait for Alon to arrive. By the time he did, motherboard slung under his arm, Iri had already left.
• "Mainbranch POV" were stuck using an old version of the editor, while Alon kept updating the editor for his private Senn/Alon PC thing. The updated engine featured the "dynamically-animating" snakey paths seen in late demos.
• At some point, the two-man Alon Senn team took this version, cleaned up 4 levels, placed enemies and such, and pitched it to Sega Entertainment (Sega's PC group) (SegaSoft?). The person running this group, "Greg Swoarez" (Greg Suarez), refused to invest money in the project, as the division was really only comfortable with ports of existing games (or possibly didn't want to risk going against Irimajiri's wishes). At this point, Senn's 4 levels were 60% complete at best, and Senn himself estimates it would have taken the two of them about six months to complete the game.
• After this, the PC port is dead. Alon leaves Sega entirely. Senn sticks around by himself, goes hard, gets sick. He seems to be working on porting elements of SonicPC to Condor, but claims twice he's not a part of that team and he's in a different office. Regardless, they're right next door and he's still informally a part of Condor.

Project Condor branch

• Condor engine in development during mainbranch/POV, might not have been known as Condor then, just "Coffin's boss engine".
• Coffin's circular boss arenas were directly inspired by the circular boss fight in Gunstar Heroes. The team liked her idea and agreed to incorporate it, but as they were still learning how to program for the Saturn (compounded by the Sat being hard to code for), development of what would become Condor took longer than expected. She was also inspired by the NiGHTS engine in her contrasting-colored backlights to keep Sonic from looking too flat, and the use of similar horizon-fogging techniques to mask uneven horizon lines. She also attributes rumors of X-treme using Sonic Team's actual engine to these similarities, definitively stating that she never used the NiGHTS engine, clarifying that her and Yuji Naka did not see eye to eye during development.
• After Iri's March 96 visit and the canning of mainbranch+POV, everything moves to Condor (except Senn/Alon who are doing their own thing with the PC.) "Core team" gets moved into STI's old Redwood offices (275) and are tasked with moving POV-era work to Condor. Senn says he wasn't a part of Condor, but had moved into 255 by himself (meaning he could walk over to 275 to be included in the Game Players shots). This is either during the tail end of SonicPC, or after it was turned down.
• Team leader Chris Coffin was often left to work alone for long times, dedicated herself solely to programming. Senn describes her as "a wild stallion" who had difficulty taking direction, "but when unleashed did great stuff." She worked with Jason Kuo, who designed the layout of Condor's boss stages. Coffin [and team] were tasked with "hacking together some quick demos" to appease execs, and then its the upcoming E3 96 appearance
• Four bosses were programmed for Condor: Fang, Metal Sonic, and an "evil Sonic clone". These three had "reasonably-polished" AI before cancellation. A 4th boss was coded, a "dumb" ai which operated similarly to early-zone boss fights in the MD Sonic games, and required fewer resources. This may have evolved into the "green gemstone" boss fight available at E3 1996. Bosses are big for two reasons: that it was impressive, but more importantly it made the bosses easier to hit, a "first time in 3D" design choice.
• A hardcoded value of 21 lives was for earlier non-gameplay focused versions of Condor, alongside an automatically-increasing life counter for press photo purposes.
• Coffin tested Condor with the 3D Analog pad, and it reportedly played "so much better". She pushed for the game to even require the controller altogether, but this does not seem to have panned out. She also recalls never seriously looking into RAM Cartridge support due to the project's tight schedule.
• Condor used the Sega Graphics Library, which the game was running on for its E3 96 appearance. Its appearance at the show used baked-in gourad light-sourcing, most notable when boss characters throw a projectile (such as [[Fang the Sniper]'s grenade). "The initial design for mecha sonic and fang bosses were such that only one big projectile was active at any moment".
• At least two versions of the bonus game builds (not Condor as a whole) were shown publicly: an earlier one where Sonic (and other things?) lack light-shading, and a later one where he has shading. Condor's Jade Gully once featured enemies, and also featured mushroom springs from Mushroom Hill Zone. (PRERELEASE FILEREF)
• Coffin designed Condor to be largely modular and tweakable on the fly, to combat the slow speed of traditionally using a CD emulator. As a result, much of the project's testing was not done on CD (instead run directly from development hardware), and the version of Condor publicly dumped in 2016 is a "very old tester app" described nothing more as a sandbox for Sonic to run around in.
• Because of how much Coffin was now carrying Condor (and the project as a whole), management put pressure on her to deliver the game, resulting in her moving into SoA offices for long shifts, overworking herself so badly she grew seriously ill, and having to stop entirely - a situation mirrored by Chris Senn at around the same time. (misgendered ref) Due to both X-treme's main developers having to duck out, Wallis informed management the game would not meet Xmas 96 and it was cancelled.
• Following X-treme, Chris Coffin returned to Developer Technical Assistance, where the discoveries she made during the development of Condor were passed onto the division and implemented in the development of a number of later Saturn games, such as Burning Rangers. A Sega of America representative also claimed that certain design ideas and art went on to inspire elements of Sonic R, but did not clarify which.Media:GameProUnknownIssuePage42.jpg

Prerelease

• Pre-E3 coverage and rumors. Brief section on RSD and it basically being an SoA marketing script. Some of the objective stuff is true, but anytime the magazine can "marketing exaggerate" things, it does. Example: it talks about Ofer Alon's custom PC dev tools, but then says "Everything done on the PC editor perfectly translates to the Saturn". It also largely created Coffin's misgendering issue. Following this but in the same paragraph probably, introduce dev team being referred to as "Sonic Team" here.
• Announced at E3 1996 "to thunderous applause"
• E3 96 prerelease party: Sega Rocks the House of Sonic Blues, held at HoB LA. Attended by members of AM2, and SOA+SE execs. Sonic gave away "golden rings" and Sonic tattoos to partygoers. Uses X-treme's (marketing campaign's) Sonic render with a vague "Sonic" theme, but press coverage doesn't mention X-treme at all.
• E3 appearance was a timed "bonus round" where "you constantly run around in circles" with pretty lighting and trails of colored light following Sonic, and was high-framerate and smooth. Another mag says "full of bugs" Was reportedly 20% complete at E3 appearance
• "Complete absence of crowds around the X-treme booth" due to "lack of anything playable" E3 promo video unimpressive
• Two "E3 promo" videos exist. One consisting solely of gameplay, and one with a live-action Mario parody interspersed with gameplay of X-treme and 3D Blast MD. At least one played at the show.
• X-treme had two E3 appearances: public booth on the show floor, and "private" showing in Sega's dedicated press backroom. Might have also appeared at House of Blues and Sega Gamer's Day in playable forms.

• Was revealed to use pre-rendered graphics and would take advantage of both the Saturn's VDP1 and VDP2 processors. It was reported by the press as Sega's answer to Super Mario 64, "potential to do battle with", "will be its main competition" and "a worthy competitor to"
• Comparisons to BugMedia:GamePro83june1996pageunknown.jpg
• Promises that X-treme will not resemble BugMedia:GamePro83june1996pageunknown.jpg
• Unenthusiastic press pointing out the game's emptiness. Doubts over fisheye lens, even from developers, who say reflex lens takes "about 30sec of adjustment"
• No known plans to release the game in Japan

• Since E3 appearance, game received little press Following the event, Irimajiri's visit became an "open secret" within the industry, and even Yuji Naka was reportedly interviewed speaking poorly of the project.
• Last appearance and possibly last official press info: Sega Gamer's Day 1996. While it is unknown what form of Condor was playable at the event, a photograph included in (MAGREF HERE) shows the only known public appearance (?) of Condor's "Jade Gully playground". (FILEREF HERE)
• Game Fan Online, 1996-08-23: First (?) cancellation announcement
• September cancellation announcements citing quality concerns and the gameplay not suiting a Sonic game{magref|mms|49|8}}, with some magazines directly referencing Irimajiri's visit.
• Sonic 3D Sat as replacement for X-treme

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 Worlds fisheye perspective was inspired by that of Sonic X-tremes. However, according to Chris Senn, the projects were definitively unrelated, and their use of a shared perspective is simple coincidence.

Preservation

• Everything missing here. This is its own history project.
• 2006 "auction"
• Senn doesn't/never had protos. Goddard thinks he has "code for a demo or two" from the 32X era of X-treme, as well as a promotional "billboard". Coffin doesn't have any protos, or already contributed what she has. Is she the source for one of the dumps?