Sonic X-treme

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Sonic X-treme was a 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Saturn. The concept was truly unique; to further the traditional Sonic "go-anywhere-or-run-through" formula, every level would be designed in a rather tube-like fashion; Sonic would be able to walk onto walls, thus changing the direction of gravity and the rotation of the level itself. In addition, an unusual, fish-eye lens-styled camera was put into place so players could see more of their surroundings at any one given time.

Unfortunately, it was canceled because of many, many internal problems. The game was being developed by Sega Technical Institute, a US-based developer that had worked on such games as Sonic 2, Sonic Spinball and Comix Zone. Originally it was based on the engine Sonic Team's at-the-time most current work - NiGHTS into Dreams - but Yuji Naka discovered this and had their usage of the engine pulled. As of such two separate engines started work; one was for the main levels (similar in style to Bug!), while the other was for the bosses. Later on a Sega of Japan representative came over to check on the game's progress, and was so impressed by the boss engine he requested the entire game be made on that. By now the team was running short on men, and it all had fallen on one man to finish it up before the Christmas deadline so as to go up against Super Mario 64 alongside NiGHTS. However, despite his putting 200% into the project, he literally worked himself sick and had to stop before it became any worse. Sadly, that was the nail in the coffin; Sega of America pulled the plug then and switched to plan B: a Saturn port of Sonic 3D Blast. Instead of releasing that and then continuing work on X-treme, that was it; it was dead.

The game is a popular topic among Sonic message boards, allowing for much speculation and curiosity to surround it. Some fans have tried to make fangames recreating it, but as of now nothing has ever seen completion.

Due to the way that the Saturn's hardware is constructed, most of the environment is rendered with sprites rather than polygons. The complete sprite sheet for the enemies can be found online. All of them are coloured red, presumably this is a base colour which allows them to be easily recoloured via palettes, similiar to how Doom's player sprites worked.

In September 2005 a Sonic X-treme demo was privately auctioned and sold to an anonymous collector for $2,500.

It was said by the seller that the game was never any more complete than this demo, however, it's possible that this assertion was an attempt to raise the value of the demo due to existence of media which suggests there were far more levels and certainly bosses completed.

This version of the game has since been released and is available here.