Prerelease:Sonic X-treme

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Sonic X-treme.

This article has just been started and needs the article basics added.
Help us out and add them.

To do:
There is still so much to add, like more concept art for the Project Condor phase and many other miscellaneous materials for the game, Sonic Retro is a good place to start with bringing over everything.

Sub-Pages

Mock-up Demos
Created with Deluxe Paint and 3D Studio between 1994-1996 to demonstrate gameplay concepts. 56K warning!

Story
Various story outlines written throughout the game's development.

Development Timeline

1993

November - Using the Amiga software Brilliance, a proof-of-concept video of Sonic-16 is created by Peter Morawiec and John Duggan.

1994

May 17 - A proposal for the game is written by Michael Kosaka, alongside Chris Senn and Don Goddard. The estimated date of completion given is June 1995.
Don Goddard also creates some design concepts for implementation of the game.

1995

Unknown - A 32X ROM containing Sonic's would-be model is created.
Unknown - After working on Astro Chase 3D, Ofer Alon would join Sega and start work on what would become Sonic X-Treme's engine.
Unknown - Christina Coffin also joins development
June(?) - Internal disputes between designer Michael Kosaka and STI head of Engineering Dean Lester
August - After shipping Comix Zone, Dean Lester too leaves STI. Manny Granillo takes over as Executive Producer, while Mike Wallis is assigned to be a producer.
Fall - Being less than impressed with the Saturn, Sega of America plan to create their own console based on NVidia Riva TNT technology. However, the project would eventually be moved to the Saturn.
Fall - Ofer Alon's Sonic X-Treme engine moves from the Mac to the PC.
Winter - Development is split between Alon and Senn's team for the main game and Christina Coffin for the boss levels.

1996

Unknown - Conceptual music is created by Chris Senn.
Unknown - STI Technical Director Robert Morgan hires Point of View as contract developers to port Alon's existing PC code to the Saturn.
March - Sega of Japan would send over a team of executives to STI's office, to see the current progress of the project. Two game demos would be shown there, the first one being Point of View's work of porting Ofer Alon's engine over to the Saturn, and the second would be Christina Coffin's boss engine. The executives were disappointed at Point of View's showcase as the game struggled to run at a solid framerate. They were however impressed with the boss engine and demanded that the entire game now be built around that engine.
May 15-18 - At E3 1996, a basic demo of Sonic X-Treme with a small conical area and rings to collect using what would have been the boss engine. More emphasis is given on footage of Ofer Alon's engine, recorded from a Windows PC.
August - By this point, both Chris Senn and Christina Coffin have fallen ill. The former is given six months to live. The drastic situation behind X-Treme's development forces Sega of America to quickly come up with a Plan B for a Saturn game, which turns out to be a Sega Saturn port of Sonic 3D
By the end of the year, STI would be officially dissolved.

1997

Unknown Date - Chris Senn and Ofer Alon would continue to work on the PC version known as Sonic PC, and hope to pitch it to SegaSoft. However SegaSoft never greenlit the project as they only wanted ports of existing Sega games for PC and not entirely new games, which saw the end of Sonic X-Treme on PC.

Videos

Sonic-16

A conceptional pitch demo for a game baeed on ABC's Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, utilizing 3D playfields and giving Sonic new moves along with an appearance by Sally Acorn. The video uses the demoscene music "Michael J Sez Hai!", composed by Outzider.

E3 1996

The E3 promotional video, using recorded PC footage and alternating between builds with and without the fisheye lens. The "Spin Slash" is sloppily inserted on top of Sonic.

This page or section has one or more broken YouTube links.
Please find an archived version of the video(s) or a suitable replacement.

A playable demo seen at E3, running on the boss engine. You can only run around in a small circular area, collect some groups of rings, and you have 45 second timer before the level and your position restarts.

The Anti Gravity Room Build

Another build running on the boss engine, however it seems that this build was not publicly available for E3 and was exclusive to a group called “The Anti Gravity Room”. This time it was a fight against a large Metal Sonic, Sonic could jump into the crystals from the July 18th build, and could help him hit Metal Sonic as he moves around the arena. Metal Sonic's boss arena's model is also found leftover in the July 18th build, aswell as the floor texture.

Sonic PC

The famous 4worlds video, showing several zones: Jade Gully, a fortress-like level, Red Sands, and Crystal Frost.

A video of 2 zones that are not showcased in the 4worlds video, apparently titled "SonicDEMO96". The first zone shown is made up of mostly twists, turns, & loops. The second also appears to showcase such paths, but in a purple-yellow checkerboard scene.

Later Project Condor Stages of Development

After the executive meeting for the game back in March 1996, Sonic X-treme started to take a new form as it was now solely being developed on Christina Coffin's boss engine for the Sega Saturn now being code named Project Condor. While we do have a build from this era of development, known as the July 18th build, it is an early form of Project Condor as it still uses Sonic's pre-rendered sprites and there wasn't much implemented. We do however have some material of later builds from this era however, like screenshots and models.

These screenshots depict of a later Project Condor build, presumably around August 1996, very close to X-treme's cancellation.