Sonic X-Treme

[Milo]

Lol I was just about to find this thread and post this. That Metal Sonic boss is for the zone Metal Blade.

 

And kudos to the boss gameplay in terms of framerate-the gameplay looks very smooth.

 

Here's a slightly converted version of the video with cleaner colors: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B74H9496rzgcZ1FFVnJRNzlzc00/edit

 

Also, Andrew75 posted a level configuration for the game with boss assignments, drawn up by Hirokazu Yasuhara. Apparently it's the last configuration made for the levels prior to the game's cancellation.

 

Edited November 23, 2013 by Gabe Scrooge

[Tara]

I don't know; judging by that video among others, the controls in Sonic X-Treme look really awkward.  It just appears slippery, and it looks like you'd also come to an immediate stop as soon as you let go of the button or analogue stick.  Of course, that's probably not the final version of the engine that they had planned, so maybe it would have been improved had the game been released.

 

Still, the game looks pretty cool, and I've always wished that there had been a 3-D Sonic game with classic Sonic story and atmosphere, so it's a shame that it was never released. =c

[Tenko]

Also, Andrew75 posted a level configuration for the game with boss assignments, drawn up by Hirokazu Yasuhara. Apparently it's the last configuration made for the levels prior to the game's cancellation.

Aww man where's Nack? I don't see him listed as a boss on those charts. Perhaps he was already removed by this point? The act structure and how you can almost skip act 3 and then get a bad ending looks interesting for the time. Almost along the lines of not clearing objectives and getting bad futures in Sonic CD.

[baba_944]

I was actually looking forward to playing this game. I heard it was scrapped 10 years ago, so I was really disappointed. The zone that stuck out to me the most is this zone:

 

 

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111130165735/sonic/images/thumb/f/f9/Concept-cf.jpg/185px-Concept-cf.jp

 

Sorry for the image being too small.

[Detective Shadzter]

Why didn't any of you tell me more Sonic Xtreme discoveries had been made? >:-U I wonder what that Super Sonic boss battle would have been like. 

[TheOcelot]

I found this video on youtube; footage of a stage called Crystal Frost that was apparently supposed to be in X-Treme. I don't think this has been posted before.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzvS_beXtXk

 

I know not everyone likes the 'fish eye lense' view, but I think it looks cool. It certainly would have been a more interesting game to have released on the Sega Saturn than Sonic 3d Blast.

 

 

I don't recall ever hearing much about the story. According to Sonic Retro:

 

"The storyline for Sonic X-treme was one never set in stone, with quite a few ideas thrown about during the development process. The best known of these (which were mentioned in such magazine features as the Red Shoe Diaries) explains that Sonic The Hedgehog, having received a "bluestreak" distress signal, runs over to the home of Professor Gazebo Boobowski and his daughter, Tiara. The two are the guardians of the Rings of Order, and also know the ancient art of ring smithing. Dr. Eggman having learned of the rings, has set about to claim them himself, prompting the professor to ask Sonic to retrieve the mystical rings before the evil doctor. When explaining the evolution of the storyline years later, Chris Senn stated that the "Rings of Order" story was hastily thrown together for the specific purpose of the Red Shoe Diaries feature in Game Players, the "final" story having yet to be solidified.

 

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

 

 

That would have been so cool to have had another Death Egg story after the classic games. 

[Tenko]

There was also a story where Eggman stole the Master Emerald and kidnapped Knuckles and Tails. Eggman experiments on the Master Emerald and it cracks, releasing 7(?) evil Chaos Energy beings that end up capturing Eggman and poisoning all the zones etc. You end up having to rescue not only Tails and Knuckles but being an above average hero and saving Eggman too.

Almost sounds reminiscent of Adventure with Chaos. Also a bit like the Deadly Six. And that previous story with the Mips sounds a lot like Colours with the planets etc. It makes you think.

There's actually a really good multipart video up on YouTube about everything that's currently known about the development of X-Treme, its multiple stories, the dev team changes, different game revisions, the controversy within Sega around the game etc. Very good watch. I'm sure it was posted a few pages back. If not and I'm not spamming ill post the links again if anyone wants them.

[baba_944]

There was also a story where Eggman stole the Master Emerald and kidnapped Knuckles and Tails. Eggman experiments on the Master Emerald and it cracks, releasing 7(?) evil Chaos Energy beings that end up capturing Eggman and poisoning all the zones etc. You end up having to rescue not only Tails and Knuckles but being an above average hero and saving Eggman too.

Almost sounds reminiscent of Adventure with Chaos. Also a bit like the Deadly Six. And that previous story with the Mips sounds a lot like Colours with the planets etc. It makes you think.

There's actually a really good multipart video up on YouTube about everything that's currently known about the development of X-Treme, its multiple stories, the dev team changes, different game revisions, the controversy within Sega around the game etc. Very good watch. I'm sure it was posted a few pages back. If not and I'm not spamming ill post the links again if anyone wants them.

 I would like to see the videos.

[Milo]

It's not much, but Andrew75 has posted a new clip of Sonic X-treme E3 1996 footage from a Japanese gaming video. Most of it is from the E3 1996 trailer (you know, the one with the "Mario Who?" live-action clips); but it has a scene that has a cleaner look at the crystal arena, with (according to Andrew75) some dynamic lighting effects applied to the jewels.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aS9nAuyp_o&feature=player_embedded

 

Also posting the three part retrospective on X-treme's development below in spoilers, as baba requested in his previous post. It's really good and explains a lot regarding how the development became as it is.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLPk2rGgg7s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hePIWmjV4bg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIP6GlmyXuI

[Kenny_Glover]

Honestly, the game looked like garbage. I really don't think Sega Technical Institute understood how to make Sonic work in 3D. The Sonic World from Sonic Jam was only a prototype for Sonic Adventure and yet it looks worlds better than anything from this game.

 

It was for the best Sonic Xtreme was canned. It would have most likely been a failure had it been released and I strongly doubt one mainstream Sonic game could save the Sega Saturn. The Saturn just had bigger problems (bad surprise launch, overpriced, complicated hardware). The Sega Saturn's hardware just should have been much less complicated and easier for third party developers to use. Scrap the surprise launch and stick to Saturnday. Price should have been no more than $299 at launch. Sonic Team should have got off their asses and been the ones to do the big mainstream Sonic game for the Saturn in 1996. After that, they could take a break from Sonic and release new IPs.

[goku262002]

♫ LETS DO THE TIME WAAARP AAAAAAGAIN! ♫

Okay so this should be bumped back up with current news from Retro.

Engine Ver. 037 Release 2:
Jolly was hard at work it seems.... Sooooo....
•Fixed palette management
•Initial implementation of scrolling backgrounds (no quadratic distortion)
•Fixed foreground objects transparency issues. (For when Sonic moves behind objects like rocks)
•Gamepad Support Added
•Windowed mode EXE added
Mega
Anonfiles
Hugefiles
Mediafire

Enjoy guys !

Also if anyone could report back their key configs for gamepads like ps4 , USB Saturn, ect.  That would be great !

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

News feed!

Version 040 engine is being worked on,Its slow but steady!

The initial release will be a bare bones and as close to how JollyRoger had found it as possible. The engine state is worse off than the 037 was. The code is in shambles!

Sonic was not even controllable from my understanding. ( that's been amended for this release)
Anyhow Once the initial 040 drops ,

 

I believe the plan is to continue work on it to spiff it up quite a bit to to make something very special for everyone to enjoy.
I'll elaborate further regarding the state of 040 in the near future when I have more time.

Between the 10th threw the 15th, I'll be extremely busy, so I cant keep up with this for a little while.

 

[Oscillo]

Are there any reviews out there for this yet?

[-blank-]

Okay, I know I may look like an idiot for this but how do you jump in this game? I'm using a keyboard if that helps.

[TheOcelot]

New update from Andrew75 on Retro:

 

== V40 Engine for PC And SEGA SATURN ==

 

K guys ! 

 

2 new simultaneous releases for Engine v040! The First Release is for the PC. And YES SEGA SATURN TOO!!!! (Again lets thank JollyRoger for his hard work)

 

Both releases Support Fisheye ! YES I said it Fisheye and SEGA SATURN together! Did I say Fisheye with good FPS! ? !
 

The PC release generally looks better with more frames of animation for Sonic, enemies and the rings. The PC ver Also sports higher res with better color than the Saturn version which looks a bit washed out, but that is to be expected. Improvements for both 040 versions are planned including frame rate improvements and more frames of animation for sprites like rings for the Saturn build among too many other improvement to list.

 

The video shows the engine essentially unmodified from the way it was found.

As you can see, this is a very early build of the Saturn version. The v40 engine is very different from v37: many features had been removed or simplified to streamline portions of the code and data structures to increase the performance, so that it could run on Saturn at an acceptable speed.

 

The engine was clearly in the middle of heavy refactoring and basic functionality such as player control and collisions were disabled. The code for those features had not been ported to use the new data structures and functions, and was completely commented out, so it had to be partially rewritten/ported.

The engine was also prone to constantly crashing due to several bugs, so the code has been altered further, but only to make it more stable, no other changes were made to its appearance or functionality.

The level displayed is a test level that was used to debug the engine, and it is the only level that was found with this particular version of the engine. The engine only loads and displays one animation frame every eight, this explains the mostly non-existent animation.

Please keep in mind that there are visual differences between Saturn and PC build of v040 so try them both if you can.

 

PC Engine Ver. 040 Release 001:
Mega 
Mediafire

SEGA SATURN Engine Ver. 040 Release 001:
Mega
Mediafire

I used ImgBurn for burning the iso. 

If attempting the swap trick or installing a Mod chip , please be careful not to bust your Saturn, all parties involved with this release are not to be held accountable. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcm_1oneb0

[Badnik Mechanic]

Has this been posted yet?

 

Skip to 2:00

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIhckKWN5ZU

 

PC build! Holy shit!

[PatMac]

Oh my god! This is incredible! I've said it before, but the fact that this was all accomplished by just a few people is amazing, I have up most respect for Andrew75 and his crew for all they've done with this project.

[TCB]

Incredible. So it's finally able to run on the hardware it was originally destined for. Nearly 20 years of time, work and perseverance finally paid off. Kudos to the Andrew and the team for finally making this happen.

 

And yeah, the POV build looks much better and pleasing to eye when it comes to movement, although that's not really anything to write home about I'd reckon.

[Tracker_TD]

Holy shit!

As this site's resident Saturn fanatic, the prospect of finally getting to play xtreme on actual hardware is a thing of beauty. The efforts of the crew that've accomplished this can't be overstated.

[Tara]

Has this been posted yet?

 

Skip to 2:00

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIhckKWN5ZU

 

PC build! Holy shit!

I have to say that I've never been too disappointed about Sonic X-Treme's cancellation, because the game looked like it wouldn't have been that amazing anyway, but I have to say... this looks like it could have really worked out for the better.  Like, maybe not SA1 levels of revolutionary, but I think it would have been a cool experiment at the very least with a little bit of polish.  It looks like it controls better and even the textures, primitive as they are, look a lot more appealing.  Kind of upset we'll never see the outcome now.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

I'm really impressed by the progress so far. The fact we'll be able to finally play Sonic Xtreme in some capacity is something no Sonic fan wants to miss out on.

[TCB]

Out of all the most well-known and advanced builds of the game we know of, I would pick this over them any day of the week to be the one for the finished game. 

[Tracker_TD]

Much as I'd love to, I'll likely be unable to try this on actual hardware myself. Saturn Disk Swapping for burned games is an absolute pain in the arse, and can damage the system. I have two Saturns, but my spare is a Model 2 and those are hellish to disk swap; my other is a model 1, but it's my prized JP one, and I couldn't bear to damage it.

...I'll find a way, haha.

(Edit: unless they managed to get the Saturn reading the build as a normal game, but I doubt that)

[Ryannumber1gamer]

It's actually funny how much that Xtreme build looks like Lost World, especially with the way Sonic moves.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Have to say.

 

I have never, from the 90's to present day liked the look of Sonic X-Treme, always hated it, but that PC build from POV looks great, had I seen that from back in the day, I would have more than likely got a Saturn.

[goku262002]

Jollyroger released the POV build running on actual hardware:

Wow, holy damn.