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

• TREAT MEDIA LIKE REFERENCES: List absolutely everything, categorize everything, check where it is, make sure we're not missing anything, host what we are. Tags seem to be good but give them a quick once-over for posterity.
• A lot of media is spread over different sections on different pages. Much of this needs to be organized, with things like concept art, prerelease images, etc. centralized on the Development subpage, mostly. We can have separate sections or even subpages which contain a lot of the images related to their content, but try to limit it to inlines. Or find another way to address this stuff being all over. Link to category pages?
• BUILD TIMELINE SKELETON
• Find the full magazines for the subpage, if possible. Everything Red Shoes Diaries needs to be heavily scrutinized.
• ADD DESCRIPTIONS FOR ALL MAGAZINE ENTRIES. List Red Shoes mistakes.
• Sonic-16 and Sonic X-treme were very separate projects apart from having some shared STI staff. Should be merged out of X-treme header eventually, and receive a section addressing it in the Development sections of both articles. Might have stemmed from Senn including Sonic-16 in X-treme's chronology. "Sonic Xtreme went through so many title and platform changes, that it’s impossible to consider the initial Sonic-16 pitch by Peter Morawiec the same game as what became Xtreme later on." - Senn
• List of developers (segmented into eras) (don't forget "isolated STI" version)
• List of music tracks used in the project
• Put this in Sonic Jam's magazine articles.
• Once this is complete, consider combining the pages of Yasuhara's concept art book into a single .PDF (or multiple, if there are a few books, not quite there yet). Most of them have page numbers and there's enough evidence to place the rest. Individual pages can always be displayed with a page= field if necessary, and this is how we handle it elsewhere.

List of developers by era

DEVELOPER CREDITS

Press

• Remaining E3 96 press coverage has been added. Go scrape them.

Development material

• Everything possible from the available dumps
• 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?)
• Chris Senn's Senntient
• Chris Senn's Sonic X-treme Compendium (find better link)
• Mike Wallis' Sonic X-treme timeline

Videos

See if we already have these hosted somewhere.

• All E3 videos, everything. Everything from here, use this to make a list.
• 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)

Images

Development

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  STI main branch team (Spring 1996)

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  STI main branch team (Spring 1996)

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  Ross Harris (Spring 1996)

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  Andrew Probert (Spring 1996)

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  Chris Ebert (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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  Test Act

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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

History

Background

• STI already had a slow development environment in mid 1992, attributed by Morawiec to a generous budget and lack of oversight.
• "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." (Goddard) might be another contributing factor to "STI Slow".
• STI required staff to "fully complete what they were working on" before they could move on to other work, causing a lot of inflexibility and contributing to Mike Wallis' inability to manage as a producer.
• Team's management was in disarray. Even as a producer, Wallis had little control over artists and designers. Artists, designers, and programmers responded to their own leads and were uncoordinated. The producer position was not considered superior to these leads. Art was being made for unplanned stages, programmers were spending weeks doing nothing, and internal politics hindered the game's progression. (Mike Wallis, Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz)
• Sonic was considered STI's main franchise
• Hedlund recalls "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." He additionally recalls the need for constantly presenting projects for check-ins with management slowed down the creative process, something Die Hard Arcade did not suffer from (because it was technically attributed to AM1 and the team had more carte-blanche) With an American team handling Sonic, this would have been the exact opposite.
• Slow development explained as "approaching the game's design with a spirit of adventure and uncertainty" and that the team was "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" Tie this into Mike Wallis saying the three dev divisions did their own things without coordination etc.

Sonic-16

• Mid 1992: Sonic was becoming a big business and SoA was experiencing unprecedented growth as a result. The company hired Roger Hector of Disney to capitalize on this momentum, with the intent of using his experience to turn STI into a Sonic-focused studio.
• Shortly after finishing Spinball, Hector took Naka's JP side of STI (alongside a few members of the American side) to DIC Animation in Burbank and showed them an early version of Satam. The team wasn't too invested in the project but Hector wanted them to make a spin-off regardless.
• Morawiec designed a gameplay format which allowed for more story and adventure than previous entries in the franchise. His familiarity with creating Amiga demos helped him create a pitch video, Sonic-16, alongside Josh Duggan (STI’s Art Director, who created the title screen and helped with the character sprites) in about a week. The demo was developed in the art program Brilliance.
• Reportedly, animating fast-scrolling backgrounds was an issue for the demo, and as a result the pitch came off as slow-paced (despite Morawiec's intention for fast-moving segments). Reportedly, Yuji Naka gave the thumbs-down himself. As Morawiec puts it, "The cartoon wasn’t even out, so banking on its success would’ve been premature, and too many spin-offs for a fresh new franchise are likely to do more harm than good."
• Game (Sonic-16) was "xfered" to 32X, codenamed Sonic Mars (just him connecting the two projects by "Sonic")
• Sonic-16 and X-treme were separate projects, with X-treme conceived as a 32X game.
• STI was very much inspired to move to 3D after the release of Virtua Fighter.

Sonic Mars

• Goddard and the team 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 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 couldn't come up with more than one concept for a "rail-style" game (probably something Crash Bandicoot-ish) when the original intention was a free-roaming 3D game, so this idea was scrapped.
• Goddard: "I also came up with a blazingly fast scaled/rotated sprite routine that let us put up thousands of sprites. I had a demo of about a thousand rings and Sonic running around on an invisible plane (black background) and it was 60fps and felt very nice. Shinobu actually showed up after I had it going (it was a "Daddy's and Daughters day" where dads could bring in their daughters to see how they work.) He was floored by it. It's really cool to see a Japanese business guy smile; they almost never do. He was loving it and letting his daughter play it. Needless to say it was just a demo and pretty basic."
• Following this demo, the dev team went ham with the idea of making things from sprites, including Senn designing multiple monsters constructed out of Rings (think Gunstar Heroes' block man boss, but with sprite scaling) Goddard recalls they were possibly going to design a specific zone(s) populated with these Ring creatures.
• Ring creatures 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.
• Alon was hired in the era when 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.
• 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).
• Further into development, Goddard showed a tech demo to Kalinske and some other SoA executives, who again insisted on seeing more loops, rings, and traditional 2D Sonic staples. Chris Senn was so disheartened he almost cried. SoA wanted a game the team described as being more akin to what we would get in Sonic Adventure.
• Chris Ebert (not traditionally a programmer) spent ten months coding a 32X demo in which a camera would fly over a single line of ten polygons.

Lester was later fired or quit, with Goddard recalling that a good number of SoA staff and people he worked with did not get along with the man. Dean Ruggles was also not liked by much of the staff.

• Sega of America created a series of promotional Sonic X-treme pins which were awarded to the development team.
• During the 32X era, game design wasn't fully formed enough to determine if the hardware could even run the game.
• 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".
• Another ref for the move off the 32X being due to the platform tanking
• Senn was hired in Mars period, and his work on Mars through X-treme was focused on art direction, character design, game design, level design, and team coordination.
• Kosaka not only led Sonic Mars/32X era team, but penned the Mars story as well. This led to Senn's early enemy designs being loosely tech/computer themed
• Senn only recalls the two commonly-known 32X pitch demos he created, but not the third one where Sonic's rolling around a red tube.
• Dean Lester left STI in summer of 95, replaced with Manny Granillo as director of dev. At this time, Wallis was brought on as senior producer to try and save the project. (Mike Wallis, Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz)
• Reportedly, the Sonic Mars team had no input on the game's target platform. (Mike Wallis, Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz)
• Kosaka left STI after clashes with the game's (or just STI's?) executive producer Dean Lester in 1995(check date), a serious blow to the project. With Kosaka gone, Senn was only Mars designer left.
• Mars was in development when Mike Wallis arrived at STI in November 94. At this point, it was not called X-treme, and reportedly did not have a proper title, just "another Sonic game in development". X-treme name was chosen either sometime before or on the switch to the Saturn.
• Wallis joined STI in November 94, where alongside starting work on The Ooze and Comix Zone, was eventually told he'd be working on an upcoming Sonic project with Kosaka, Senn, and Goddard, slated for the 32X
• Programmer Don Goddard joined STI in September 1994 and began working on the project.
• 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".
• 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.
• Later, SoJ ordered development to switch to the Sat. This wasted months of 32X development.

Saturn V08

• Goddard later 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. "I pleaded with Robert Morgan [STI tech director] to let me do something original that has no license ties and that Ofer will easily want to take the lead on Sonic and Robert very nicely did just that. At that point, it spins off into Chris Senn and Ofer working on this bizarre cube engine that had severe limitations and Christina Coffin doing her bonus game all on her own."
• 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 (SoA?) 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.
• The team/SoA/at least 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. ADD THIS DATE TO TIMELINE
• V08 TESTING PERIOD: Wallis' PLAYING interview says "multiple weeks", his Pachuka interview says two months, and his Sega-16 interview says three months. Either way, evaluating this technology meant the team was left largely in limbo (outside those on evaluation duty) during this time.
• 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 weeks (months) in evaluation.
• The team never got any TNT documentation, tech specs, or dev kits (Mike Wallis, Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz), which left the team's direction in limbo.
• X-treme began on 32X as Mars, but because the platform quickly tanked, it was moved to Sega's undecided 32-bit system SoA and Nvidia had partnership for their very first "RIVA", the "TNT Card" (aka Saturn V08), and the game was more or less officially slated for this platform as a potential launch title. 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.
• X-treme moved from 32X to Saturn, then Nvidia's "Saturn V08" (TNT hardware) (32X > Satspecs > TNTspecs > Sat)

Sonic X-treme main branch

• Late 95: dev team divided into Coffin's (boss stage) group, and Senn (game world design) and Alon's (engine programming) group.
• Goddard speculates the mainbranch's fisheye lens was a means to cover up the lack of true curved environments.
• 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."
• Ref for Senn working crazy long hours at post-streamline STI
• Irimajiri's March 1996 STI tour: (where he only viewed POV's rough in-progress Sat port instead of the original Senn/Alon PC version), and his desire to see everything moved to Coffin's boss engine.
• Stolar requested Hector isolate the best of STI, provide them all they needed, and have them focus on nothing but X-treme.
• Wallis recalls the "Bernie Stolar to Roger Hector: streamline and isolate" request happened in September of 96. This might have happened a little earlier but check against other dates.
• "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.
• Around this time (as part of his assessing SoA resources for Sat dev and marketing, PLAYINGREF maybe), Stolar asked Wallis what was needed to complete Xtreme on time. Wallis and team replied with "the engine in NiGHTS" and all the dev tools associated with it, citing the long development time that creating dedicated devtools would require.
• WALLIS NIGHTS STORY #1: 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 said no." (In next paragraph, Wallis claims it was never given to them. Did Stolar deliver some generic "NiGHTS-like" editor?)
• WALLIS NIGHTS STORY #2: Naka went to "Yuri Maguire" (Irimajiri lol), "head of SoJ at the time", and threatened to quit Sega entirely if the team was given the NiGHTS engine (contradicting his previous statement), and nothing more came of the engine.
• WALLIS NIGHTS STORY #3: Wallis later says that while SoJ was completely uninvolved (not including Irimajiri), they INITIALLY promised to actually deliver the NiGHTS engine, but later "pulled it from us". Pulled what, the request, or the engine?
• NOTE: The above are Wallis' three contradicting stories, but there's a lot of evidence supporting the fact that said engine was never actually delivered. It was very likely requested (or something similar was requested), but Naka himself said it'd be near impossible to adapt.
• 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)
• Around this time (July to Septemberish 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.
• Also around this time (July to Septemberish 96, after E3 appearance), Irimajiri had his visit, saw both PC mainbranch and Sat Condor, liked the latter, and expressed his desire to see development focus on that. Alon (described by Wallis as being particularly proud of his work) grew upset and quit Sega over this. This left virtually everything hanging on Senn.
• As a result of the above, Chris Senn moved out of his apartment, stored all his stuff in a storeroom at Redwood Shores, and moved into the office, working night and day. In this interview, Wallis misidentifies Senn as Coffin (yet correctly attributes her "hot-shot programming" ability to her name, contributing to her misgendering)
• Senn worked for about 7-8 weeks straight, an avg of 20hrs a day, living and showering and eating at Redwood Shores for two months. In late August, he caught "walking" pneumonia and told Wallis it would not be complete for Christmas.
• Upon being told X-treme would have to be cancelled, Stolar revealed he had been working on the SAT port of 3D Blast as a backup, and offered to move Wallis to the project as a producer, which he accepted.
• Wallis implies he, at some point, reached out to SOJ for development assistance, but they were "uncooperative".
• Internal politics
• The team made weekly builds, but most were deleted/destroyed.
• "Extreme pressure" to deliver a top-notch product in X-tremeMedia:ElectronicGamingMonthlyUnknownIssue2.gif
• Senn recalls a strong push to market X-treme before the team had much to show.Media:ElectronicGamingMonthlyUnknownIssue2.gif
• Red Shoes Diaries had the unintended effect of increasing the cycle of marketing hype and added to the team's stressMedia:ElectronicGamingMonthlyUnknownIssue2.gif
• By E3 1996, all Satam references were removed.
• Chris Senn composed a few early "concept" tracks for the game, but Howard Drossin was the composer of the game's "final" tracks.
• Development of Sat main branch began during development of Comix Zone.
• Alon's editor was for Mac, or a separate Mac version.
• Serious anxiety among dev team during buildup to E3.
• A little after mid 96: Senn gets super sick, project stalled, and Wallis informed management that they would be completely unable to meet Xmas 96 launch date.
• Late summer 96/October: X-treme cancelled.
• In July, Stolar was hired and requested that the team be slimmed down, isolated, and provided with all the dev tools needed. They were moved from Palo Alto's STI offices to Redwood Shores SoA offices (in the "old STI" office, specifically)
• Post-E3, press claims Saturn version reportedly uses NiGHTS engineMedia:SonicXtremeUnknownFrenchArticle.jpg
• NIGHTS ENGINE: Refutation
• Chris Coffin says her main competition and inspiration was the boss engine in NiGHTS.
• Mike Wallis is a fan of NiGHTS as well.
• "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
• 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.
• Admitting pressure to deliver and difficulties ("upheavals")
• By June 1996, team had been using custom development tools for some time. Check date against the request for dev tools from Bernie Stolar.
• 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
• 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
• Ofer Alon's custom dev tools
• Backgrounds were originally "flat backdrops" but team had plans to implement two-layer parallax scrolling
• "Coffin" (probably the actual Coffin here) used SoftImage for animations and Silicon Graphics workstations for rendering the characters. Might be Senn but probably Coffin.
• PC Editor. "Everything done on the PC editor perfectly translates to the Saturn" ahuh.
• Around June/Spring 95: About 15 ppl on dev team
• Mike Wallis says he joined Sega about 18 months prior to May 1996 interview. Check dates against this.
• Set to take advantage of both Saturn's processors (missed some in the first 4 mag articles or so), "three 32-bit chips"
• Goddard recalls Dave Sanner may have been involved with X-treme's later iterations.

Point of View branch

• Senn/Alon made 4 worlds with 50 enemies on the PC. Initially ported in-house to Sat but struggled to get engine running faster than few fps. STI tech dir. Robert Morgan decided to take Senn/Alon engine (the PC code) to POV in hopes to take another swing at a Sat version, but hopefully optimized. (ref? Playing?)

Project Condor

• 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.
• Coffin was often left to work alone for long times, dedicated herself solely to programming.
• The "green valley" test level in the dumped ver of Condor had more features than what was dumped. There were enemies and prerelease screenshots show Sonic appearing to bounce on Mushroom Hill Zone mushrooms.
• Jason Kuo designed boss levels.
• Coffin ("programmer within STI" not on main team, i.e. Condor not mainbranch) "hacking together some quick demos" to appease execs (might be misremembered from "which appeased the execs")
• Light-sourcing (gourad) for Condor, such as in Fang's grenade.
• Condor had real-time gourad lighting except for Sonic's pupils which were a 4bit texture
• Engine "looks NiGHTS-ish" due to Coffin's use of contrasting-colored backlights for each light-shaded source (done on the DSP, likely limited to about 3) to help Sonic from looking flat
• Also looks NiGHTSish for these reasons and these reasons. Coffin attributes this as one of the sources of the "NiGHTS engine" rumor.
• 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.
• Fully 3D (and not prerendered) models of Sonic found in "the SDK" (SGL or a dumped version of X-treme) were a creation of Coffin's, from her older version of "the Sonic game" (likely an early Condor). "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."
• ALL THE REST OF THIS THREAD'S TECH INFO
• "After extreme I worked on R&D and assisted SoA/SoE/SoJ developer support regarding the saturn hardware so these discoveries were passed on and implemented in some late generation 3rd party titles and 1st party works like burning rangers so the time invested in xtreme did not feel like a total loss."
• In reference to 3D model of SGL/whatever Sonic: it was modeled by artist/designer kunitake aoki (who was working on Dynamite Deka at the time)
• (The dumped Condor proto?) is a very old "tester app", with most of the game's source code removed (as Coffin designed it to be tweakable on the fly, to combat the slow speed of traditionally using a CD emulator). Described as nothing more than a "little sandbox" for Sonic to run around in.
• Three bosses were programmed for Condor: 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.
• Support for the RAM cartridge was never seriously looked into for Condor, as Coffin knew the tight development schedule wouldn't have time to fit in the extra time required.
• 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.
• Chris Coffin says her main competition and inspiration was the boss engine in NiGHTS.
• Coffin was in correspondence with Yuji Naka during development, who reportedly "didn't get along" with her/the team/the game
• Coffin hardcoded a value of 21 lives for earlier non-gameplay focused versions of Condor, alongside an automatically-increasing life counter for press photo purposes.
• 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.
• "The initial design for mecha sonic and fang bosses were such that only one big projectile was active at any moment" for more impressive lighting effects Fang had a grenade, what was Metal Sonic's?
• Condor Gourad shading was baked in
• Condor used the Sega Graphics Library, which the game was running on for its E3 96 appearance.
• "Back when" the boss engine was using sprites for Sonic (?), Harris agreed to a request by Coffin to modify the digitized sprite into one of Amy (for use in the boss engine). "It only took a couple days work to model the new shoes,eyes and ribbon and render all the sprite frames out." Having Amy in the game was not Senn's original plans, but something pursued by Coffin, figuring if the game was set to feature multiple playable characters, Amy would be the easiest to prototype. (Research date on this)

Sonic PC (?)

• At some point, the two-man Alon Senn team took the smooth-running mainbranch version (but specifically the PC version used to develop the potential Sat version), cleaned up 3-4 levels with enemies and such, and pitched it to Sega Entertainment (Sega's PC group). 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.

Sonic Pool

• FOR SONIC POOL: Clarify September screenshots not being entirely mockups a bit more. Add bug mode/sphere engine thing, and ref for Coffin receiving Pool's art assets, to main article.
• SONIC POOL: Plans to include STI Burbank's Pool because art style matched pretty closely to Condor. "The technique they used to rendered sonic was very different looking than the polygon sonic approved for xtreme so the plan was to use everything from that minigame except their 'sonic'" (referring to Adrian Stephens' sphere-rendering engine)
• SONIC POOL: That bug model is one of the only known remnants of Stephen's sphere engine(!) Sonic Saturn looked like a more advanced Ballz 3D with some VDP-1 polygon support.
• SONIC POOL: Coffin/Condor never actually received Pool's source code, just their art assets. Both Condor's version of the sphere-rendering engine (doesn't appear in existing screenshots) and Pool's actual gameplay programming were recreated by Coffin for Condor.
• SONIC POOL: ADD EVERYTHING FROM THIS. This is where the remainder of Pool's unsourced info comes from(!) Probably nothing more here, but google Morawiec's responses to ensure this isn't copied from an earlier interview.
• SONIC POOL: Another ref for them being separate projects

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."	„
— Developer Chris Senn

• Senn says X-treme had a roughly 3 year development cycle.
• Senn: "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."
• The whole "Sonic Lost World takes inspiration from X-treme" thing probably doesn't need to be covered, but if so, Senn words it well here.
• Senn 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.
• Wallis says Coffin made duplicates of her build. I know she contributed something software to all that noise but was she the original source for the ver of Condor we have? She herself says she didn't really develop on CD-R too frequently, but this needs research. Wallis also reportedly has a box full of design documents and project notes, AND a copy of some version of X-treme itself.
• Goddard thinks he has "code for a demo or two" from the 32X era of X-treme, as well as a promotional "billboard".
• 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.
• 2006 "auction"
• In ref to Condor protos: "I rarely did testing with cd's so if there's any more cd's out there, their contents will most likely be small modules of the game like that one. Burning cd's back then waas a huge pain and really slowed production down. By working mainly with code that had compiled in assets, adding more programmers to the project was eaiser, this gave them a starting to point to familiarize themselves with parts of the source, make modifications and see what their changes would influence more easily so their iteration time was better as well."
• SoA "rep" says some design ideas and art were later used in/inspired elements of Sonic R.Media:GameProUnknownIssuePage42.jpg (This article seems post-cancellation, but also seems to have been written within the following years. Probably don't use this as an original source outside for the SoA rep thing.)
• Alon's tools were considered to be used in a potential X-treme follow-up
• Note on Coffin's misgendering section in that RSD correctly attributes her SGL work to her, adding to confusing.
• Naka cancelling Sonic Saturn is likely source of Naka cancelling X-treme rumor, but needs research.
• 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.
• Peter Morawiec and STI Burbank being aware of X-treme and confirming they are different projects To address Legacy speculation that they were the same.

Press

• Debut 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 the only press coverage we have of this event doesn't mention X-treme at all. Either the same boss engine that was playable at E3 was playable here, or the E3 setup was (somehow) finicky and it was kept an E3-only game.
• Uses pre-rendered graphics (there are others)
• Comparisons to BugMedia:GamePro83june1996pageunknown.jpg
• Promises that X-treme will not resemble BugMedia:GamePro83june1996pageunknown.jpg
• Press pointing out the game's emptiness
• Dev team referred to as "Sonic Team"
• Doubts over reflex lens, but developers saying reflex lens takes "about 30sec of adjustment"
• Developer passion
• Section on RSD and it basically being an SoA marketing script.
• Should cost less than $54 (a speculative reseller ad says $45Media:SonicXtremeAdvertisement2.jpg)
• X-treme as the answer to Mario 64, "potential to do battle with", "will be its main competition" and "a worthy competitor to"
• 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"
• Unenthusiastic press
• Naka reportedly had multiple interviews where he spoke poorly of the project
• Following E3 appearance, Irimajiri's visit became an "open secret" within the industry
• Since E3 appearance, game received little press
• Majority of prerelease material comes from SoA-distributed videotape
• Last appearance and possibly last official press info: Sega Gamer's Day 1996
• September 9, 1996 cancellation rumor ("put on hold indefinitely") citing Irimajiri's visit and quality concerns.
• September 18, 1995 cancellation announcement citing gameplay not suiting Sonic's style. They speculate the engine could be used in a future game.
• Another cancellation announcement and another and another.
• Speculation Naka was involved in the game's cancellation
• Sonic 3D Sat as replacement for X-treme
• Irimajiri's visit as reason for cancellation
• Quality concerns/"not suiting Sonic" as reason for cancellation

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."	„
— Developer Chris Senn

• 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
• 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)

Gameplay

• Playable characters: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Tiara
• Tiara designed by Senn as a means to give Sonic a love interest
• "Teleporters" with transparency
• Reflex/fisheye lens
• Gravity/Rotation features, previously described as "full 3D camera rotation"
• Camera angles change according to gameplayMedia:GamePro83june1996pageunknown.jpg
• Planned that Sonic couldn't run up walls or change gravity anywhere, but at specific transition points, possibly half-loops
• 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.
• Certain "snakey" surfaces lock Sonic into place as he runs along them, although he can jump off them. By DEMO96 demo, these sections could also be marked to rotate the camera for loops or not, and generally warp the camera in interesting ways along its path. Can also generate a dust trail for Sonic.
• Collecting a ring doesn't remove the Ring sprite, but instead slowly scales it into Sonic with a unique animation.

Abilities

• Spin Dash
• Spin Slash: a mid-air version of the Spin Dash where Sonic transforms into a high-speed sawblade. Addt. refs:Media:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg Previously known as the Spin Bash. There was no differentiation between Spin Slash and Spin Dash except for the former taking place in air.
• Ring Throw: Sonic throws a Ring as an attack, which would deplete actual ring count. Addt. refs:
• Sonic Streak: Unknown. Previously known as the Spin Streak.Media:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg
• Never left concept/planning: Power Ball, Super Bounce, Ring Shield, Sonic Boom
• Ducking (repeated by two other press outlets in the content of "running, jumping, and ducking through a 3D environment", likely generic "platformer" talk without realizing what was being said.)

Acts

• Each level is a huge, multi-story construction
• Planned bonus stages similar to "how it was in previous Sonic games"
• Spikes, pits, what other stage hazards?
• 15 levels. 7 levels: 2 acts and one boss each. Bosses counted as acts for 3 acts per level. Gamer's Day 96: 4 "zones", 3 acts each, 12 total stages, final pre-cancel specs.
• Each act would emphasize a different ability or gameplay feature, like speed or precision platforming.
• Titlecard for Jade Gully in 4worlds
• Crystal Frost
• Red Sands
• Jade Gully
• Galaxy Fortress

Enemies

• MAKE ENEMY LIST
• 28 enemies, not including bosses
• 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