More Sonic Xtreme stuff leaked

[Detective Shadzter]

Scarred Sun over at Sonic Retro has come across a leaked package of files from Sonic Xtreme including various Sonic X-treme textures, definitions, and a nice viewer written by SANiK—fisheye perspective and all. There's also some images scattered about.

http://ss.sonicretro.org/PackageX.rar

Images from Sonic Paradise

I repeat again this is NOT a Rick Roll.

[Teoleulbogo]

This is what Sonic 3D Blast should have been like.

[Iceman Etika]

I don't know about that madness... I've seen some prototype game footage, and honestly, that fisheye camera really messed with me. Throws positioning of items and world placement WAY off. It was an innovative idea, but just watching the gameplay bugged me, I'd probably get a headache actually playing the damn thing...

My own personal opinion.

-Iceman

[Legendary Emerald]

It's a rick roll; don't click the links.

[Detective Shadzter]

It's a rick roll; don't click the links.

Quiet you

[Badnik Zero]

So this is pretty damn nice. Even though I agree with Iceman (this would've sold, but looks a little shallow in the gameplay department), I still wish this game was playable in some form. Maybe because it's that lost era of 32-bit Sonic. All I've ever had to go on was Sonic R. If you play with the level viewer, there's a handful of near-completed ones, from the early green stages to the later space looking ones, and those checkered and candy colored ones we've seen in released clips. They look like they're missing all the effects that went into those playable levels, but there's six or seven full levels I found so far. Is this as far as they got? If I was able, I'd work towards finishing this project, but I'm a novice at best when it comes to this stuff. Wonder if anyone could use this. Check out the viewer, guys! It's interesting how a lot of the levels aren't spheres themselves, but wrap around while Sonic stays on the outer peel, like a flat kind of 3D. Lots of videos use the dimension of depth though, maybe these are just different sections. Some levels are invisible to the viewer at first, so you have to use Q and E to rotate the maps.

Edited December 7, 2009 by Stretchy Werewolf

[redmenace]

It's interesting I suppose but I never found this level layout interesting to be honest. It would be perfect for a special level though.

[Marcello]

This is sort of dissapointing to me, actually. I only saw one picture before where the camera was behind Sonic and everything look like it was sprited. Now I see polygons and different perspectives @_@. Oh well, it never came out >_>

[Cortez]

It looks quite cool, kinda like the Mirror's Edge Pure stages but I imagine it'd be fucking horrible to play though, they dug this game's grave the second they decided it should be set in locations like those pictured above . What were they thinking?

[azoo]

It's exciting to have this stuff, but really it shows that the game probably wouldn't have been too good. I mean sure, the fish-eye camera doesn't bother me like it does to other people, but every stage looked the same, being flat and empty, very clunky, and every stage looked like a whole bunch of checker-tiled blocks haphazardly placed all over the area and was called a stage. I'm sorry, it's just that the level design for this game looked so...odd, blocky, and slopeless, I understand fully why Yuji Naka didn't like the game at all, this comes to show that he had perfect reason to dismiss this. Especially since the gameplay videos seemed to feature a very wonky moving Sonic with instant accleration and assumingly a lack of physics (with "there's no real gravity in this world Sonic's in" as an excuse to get away with it). And it doesn't help that Sonic didn't even roll after being launched from the Spin Dash.

I'm sorry if I irritated anyone with this, but if this game was released, I'm almost definite the unforgivably bad Sonic game everyone would remember with hatred would've been a lot sooner than 2006.

Edited December 7, 2009 by Azukara

[Iceman Etika]

Honestly, I think they would've lost more money going through and finishing the project than just quitting and scrapping it midway like they did.

If they did go through with it, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, and a handful of other legendary classics wouldn't exist I bet.

-Iceman

[Octarine]

Yeah, I can't help but express a small degree of relief that this game was scrapped. It definitely looks interesting, and I'd love to see a completed version in action, but... it's not really Sonic. I mean, I know that gets thrown around a lot with every newer game, but this really seems to have less to do with the classics gameplay-wise than even 3D Blast. It just looks awkward to play, and from the gameplay videos I've seen it looks pretty difficult to even see where you're going; kind of a big deal in a game that should reward speed.

Then again, I don't really know how much justice Sonic could've been done in the 32-bit era. I think the best bet might've been a 2D game in the vein of the Playstation Mega Man games, really. I mean, the Saturn was apparently really good at 2D, and I don’t think a 3D game of Adventure’s quality was really possible at the time.

[Agent York]

OK, it took me a while to get the hang of it, but this is very interesting. Basically you need to first take the two version files and decompile them, THEN take the SONICBOOM folder and use the "Main" file with mouse and keyboard and you can fully take a look into the games acts and stages. I may take a few videos soon for some examples, but looking at them, it's interesting, they look like a mess until you get closer to them, these levels only could really work with the fishcam, and I see now why.

The stages kinda' look like a big mess until you get really close to them and the fishcam effect comes in and then the stage starts making sense, strangely enough.

Edited December 7, 2009 by Dusk the Christmas Keeper

[Agent York]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW8kEl28zHQ

And there we go, just some random lookings at some of the stages I randomly recorded.

EDIT: Geh, out of habit fast replied instead of edited. Well. Here you go anyways?

Edited December 7, 2009 by Dusk the Christmas Keeper

[Detective Shadzter]

^ Thanks for the video, I can't seem to download the files so the video's very helpful

EDIT:

Some guy on YouTube has come across some cam footage of the E3 '96 Sonic Xtreme booth -

[BaronSFel001]

This is what Sonic 3D Blast should have been like.

Remember that Sonic 3D was designed for the Genesis from the get-go, while Sonic X-Treme was always meant to be pure 3-D. By the time of X-Treme's cancellation, considering how short the notice Traveller's Tales got I think they did an extraordinary job adding features to the Saturn version and completing a marketable product. If you dislike Sonic 3D Blast in general, that is one thing, but I absolutely love the Saturn version.

[Sapphire]

I feel indifferent about this game. It seems like it would have been very different from Sonic 3D Blast, and it seemed a lot of people didn't like that game. So, yes, it could have been totally awesome, but I think it just gets all this hype because it was never released, not because it was going to be a good game. If it were to be a lot like 3D Blast, I would have liked it, but by the look of these pics and videos, it seems pretty different.

[Tornado]

I'm not sure about this. I would want to play it a bit before I pass any judgement on it, but the fisheye camera does seem a bit weird.

I do hope that this isn't the stuff that Chris didn't want released, though.

Edited December 9, 2009 by Tornado

[BaronSFel001]

I'm not sure about this. I would want to play it a bit before I pass any judgement on it, but the fisheye camera does seem a bit weird.

I do hope that this isn't the stuff that Chris didn't want released, though.

Remember, that is the system that was part of making Super Mario Galaxy such a raging success. It is easy to be even more subjective now considering that it was never released and how long it has been since expectations, but back then, it might have taken that tiny bit of greater wisdom to save the Saturn and Sega. The fact that Sonic's darkest days fall into the same era as Sega's darkest days is no coincidence (though 2005-2006 may easily be seen as a second dark time, for Sonic if not for Sega).

[Tornado]

It might have kept Sonic from crashing hard in the late 90s, but I don't think it would have made much difference for the Saturn even if X-Treme wasn't shitcanned because of company politics (what with how messy the Sonic Adventure/Sonic X-Treme mess was getting as 1996 turned into 1997). Quite frankly, Professional Asshole Bernie Stolar had already essentially killed the system by Christmas of 1996, so even if the game came out on time it probably wouldn't have saved it.

[Phos]

Remember, that is the system that was part of making Super Mario Galaxy such a raging success. It is easy to be even more subjective now considering that it was never released and how long it has been since expectations, but back then, it might have taken that tiny bit of greater wisdom to save the Saturn and Sega. The fact that Sonic's darkest days fall into the same era as Sega's darkest days is no coincidence (though 2005-2006 may easily be seen as a second dark time, for Sonic if not for Sega).

No, Super Mario Galaxy was this in reverse. It used a non dish eye camera on levels that actually were round... And it didn't actually do that very often.

And the Saturn was not Sega's darkest days, in Japan, the Saturn was outselling the Nintendo 64 when it was discontinued. Sega's upper management not being a bunch of idiots would have saved the company.

This game looks basically like Bug!, only with jerky acceleration. It probably would have done more harm than good to Sonic's image. It does have me wishing that, after NiGHTS, Sonic Team had made (And finished!) the game that would become Sonic World and postponed Burning Rangers.

[Tornado]

Wasn't the game that eventually became Sonic World the thing that started the NiGHTS engine debacle in the first place? I can't remember if it was that or the early versions of Sonic Adventure, or both.

[Phos]

Sonic Xtreme was to come out the year that the Saturn port of 3D blast came out, long before Sonic World. The Sonic X-treme developers wanted to use the NiGHTS technology because it would greatly shorten their development time, and something along the way bothered Naka, leading to him forcing them to stop using it. Sonic World was presumably based on the latest revision of the engine that Sonic Team made for NiGHTS, but it came out much later.

[BaronSFel001]

Sonic Xtreme was to come out the year that the Saturn port of 3D blast came out, long before Sonic World. The Sonic X-treme developers wanted to use the NiGHTS technology because it would greatly shorten their development time, and something along the way bothered Naka, leading to him forcing them to stop using it. Sonic World was presumably based on the latest revision of the engine that Sonic Team made for NiGHTS, but it came out much later.

If there was going to be a whole game made with the concept that became Sonic World, that is news to me. Somehow, I doubt that is actually the case, although at the very least, Sonic World can still be considered a taste of what traditional Sonic in 3D on the Saturn would be like. I also thought Sonic R was pretty darn impressive, at least in terms of graphics.

[Tornado]

If there was going to be a whole game made with the concept that became Sonic World, that is news to me. Somehow, I doubt that is actually the case, although at the very least, Sonic World can still be considered a taste of what traditional Sonic in 3D on the Saturn would be like.

Iizuka came out and said that Sonic World was supposed to be a full game that they scrapped and included in Sonic Jam for a bonus. They started working on Sonic Adventure soon after.