Sonic X-treme

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

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

StoryVarious 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.
Unknown 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 joins development.
June(?) - Internal disputes occur 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 technology, codenamed "Saturn V08". 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, each developing their own engine and technology.

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.
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.
Mid-1996 - Hirokazu Yasuhara drafts a large amount of concept art for things like stages and the layout of the game as a whole. Some of these concepts would have work done on Ofer Alon's engine.
July(?) - 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. It's said that Point of View accidentally showed an extremely unfinished and laggy iteration of their efforts to port Ofer Alon's engine to the Saturn. Unaware of the accident, the executives would be enraged and demanded that Christina Coffin's much more impressive and stable boss engine be used for the entire game.
August - By this point, both Chris Senn and Christina Coffin have fallen severely 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.
Late-1996 - Chris Senn and Ofer Alon would continue to work on the PC version codenamed SonicPC, in hopes of pitching it to SegaSoft. However, SegaSoft refuses to greenlight 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's development.
By the end of the year, STI would be officially dissolved.

Videos#

Sonic-16#

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A conceptional pitch demo for a game based 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 demo scene music "Michael J Sez Hai!", composed by Outzider.

E3 1996#

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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.

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.

Watch on YouTube

The Anti Gravity Room Build#

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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, as well as the floor texture.

Sonic PC#

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

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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 July 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 a build from this era of development is available, known as the July 18th build, it is an early form of Project Condor as it still uses Sonic's pre-rendered sprites from most of development up until that point and not much content was implemented. Material of later builds from this era are known however, such as the screenshots seen here.

These screenshots depict of a much later Project Condor build where Sonic has an actual 3D model and the level environment is more stylized, this build was presumably around August 1996, which would be very close to X-treme's cancellation.