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Sonic X-treme

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Revision as of 22:27, 24 September 2023 by CartridgeCulture (talk | contribs)

Overhaul 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.

CartridgeCulture (talk) 20:40, 23 September 2023 (EDT)

Source list

A master list of all original Sonic X-treme sources.

Interviews
  • Tom Kalinske (Playing at the Next Level, 2015-02-09 telephone interview by Ken Horowitz: 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.)
  • Peter Morawiec (Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-05 email interview by Ken Horowitz)
  • post-Spinball STI was going to make Satam game.
  • STI unimpressed but Hector wanted team to make it anyway.
  • Morawiec's gameplay was story/adv opposed to action
  • him+Duggan made Sonic 16 demo in 1wk
  • cancelled due to slow pace of gameplay and development. plus cartoon had not been released, so no prev. knowledge or marketing buildup to support game. also, STI didn't want to make another spinoff.
  • Morawiec's Sonic 16 design was shelved, but didn't bother him as it freed him up to work on Comix Zone
Videos
Websites
Development material
  • 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?)
  • Everything possible from available dumps
Press

Find the full magazines for these, if possible.


2015 Wallis interview
  • Mike Wallis (Playing at the Next Level, 2015-01-07 email interview by Ken Horowitz)
  • CROSSREF OTHER WALLIS AND SENN INTERVIEWS (to ensure this info comes from this specific interview, as the book doesn't ref per line ofc)
  • Game was xfered to 32X, codenamed Sonic Mars
  • Was hoped 32X power could allow them bringing Sonic into the next gen while allowing existing Genesis owners to partic.
  • 32X dev hardware difficult, and was being updated during development
  • 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
  • Following this, team's disinterest in Satam caused the connection to be dropped. By E3 1996, all Satam references were removed.
  • With Kosaka gone, Senn was only Mars designer left
  • 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.
  • 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. This was reportedly liked by management more than SoJ's Saturn, and was more 3D capable. It spent several weeks in evaluation.
  • The team never got any TNT documentation, tech specs, or dev kits, which left the team's direction in limbo.
  • Reportedly, the Sonic Mars team had no input on the game's target platform.
  • Later, SoJ ordered development to switch to the Sat. This wasted months of 32X development.
  • 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 stopped the game's progression.
  • Late 95: dev team divided into Coffin's (boss stage) group, and Senn (game world design) and Alon's (engine programming) group. (SENN CROSSREF)
  • 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. (SENN CROSSREF)
  • After 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, Wallis knew he'd have to reduce the team down to a few dedicated people, and provided with all the dev tools needed.
  • Wallis and STI management chose 4 programmers, 2 artists, three designers, 1 contractor, and isolated them from the rest of the company: moving them from Palo Alto STI offices to Redwood Shores SoA offices (in the "old STI" office, specifically)
  • Mid 96: Kalinske replaced with Stolar. In assessing SoA resources for Sat dev and marketing, Stolar asked Wallis what was needed to complete Xtreme on time. Wallis and team came back to Stolar with "the engine in NiGHTS" and all the dev tools associated with it. Soon, Stolar reportedly delivered the code, but weeks later, Stolar says Naka was infuriated it had been given to them without his consent and threatened to quit unless they stopped using his engine. (NOTE: This is Stolar's "story", 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, so I'd imagine the request was turned down, lost over the pacific, or ignored. Find the source for this rumor though: maybe the team looked to NiGHTS and said "let's make something similar".) 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)
  • 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. (SENN CROSSREF)
  • Late summer 96: X-treme cancelled. (SENN CROSSREF)

New mirror

Also, if you've been living under a rock or something, I have (yet another!) mirror of Xtreme at http://info.sonicretro.org/images/large/Xtreme.rar . I'm in the process of adding it to Retro's media handling system manually right now. — Scarred Sun 11:42, 17 July 2007 (CDT)

UPDATE: Turns out, someone else thought of this pain in the ass long ago and wrote a script that will do just this, but it's made specifically for multiple large files. I'm adding some more large files onto the server for inclusion—if you have something over 6MB that you think should be on the site (at the moment, I'm going to put up 510, 712, 920, the CD 409 hoax, and Sonic Adventure Gaiden), contact me. — Scarred Sun 12:03, 17 July 2007 (CDT)

Redo

I was actually going to add in the references myself but... ooh it's messy. I think I might have tackled this once before, pushing things off into Sonic X-treme/Development, but I'm now wondering if it's worth dividing this up further.

There is

  • All the early Mega Drive and 32X guff that shouldn't really be described on this page since they're covered elsewhere
  • A sort-of "main branch" Sonic X-treme, being fronted by Ofer Alon and Chris Senn, and is the X-treme we know and love
  • The Point Of View (POV) attempt, which is essentially a tangent that didn't go anywhere
  • Project Condor, the "lets build everything with the boss engine" version, fronted by Christina Coffin and pals
It might make things easier to work with -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:51, 18 September 2021 (EDT)
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 [gameplayers, issue 0906, page 38 gameplayers, issue 0906, page 38]
  2. ↑ [gameplayers, issue 0907, page 42 gameplayers, issue 0907, page 42]
  3. ↑ [gameplayers, issue 0909, page 52 gameplayers, issue 0909, page 52]
  4. ↑ File:SonicXtremeAdvertisement1.jpg
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 File:SonicXtremeAdvertisement2.jpg
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 File:STC Summer '96 - Xtreme.jpg
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 File:GamePro83june1996pageunknown.jpg
  8. ↑ File:SonicXtremeUnknownFrenchArticle.jpg
  9. ↑ File:GameProUnknownIssuePage42.jpg
  10. ↑ [gameplayers, issue 0909, page 55 gameplayers, issue 0909, page 55]
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