A look back at what was never had: Sonic X-treme

post from Destructoid - Hardcore video game blog on 17 November 2007 02:38:00 PM. © Destructoid - Hardcore video game blog

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Sonic X-treme was originally a Genesis game which kept getting pushed to different systems before it finally died on the Sega Saturn in 1997. The game was going to star Sonic as well as have Tails, Knuckles, and Tiara (the girl Echidna from Sonic Adventure) as playable characters and they had to stop Dr. Robotnik from getting a hold of some magical rings to which he would use to take over the world and blah blah blah. Basically, the same story from all of the other Sonic games more or less.

Each of the playable characters would have different styles of play. As you can tell by the headache you now have, Sonic's gameplay utilized a fish-eye lens perspective on his levels. Other characters like Metal Sonic, Fang the Sniper and get this, Sally Acorn and the rest of the Freedom Fighters from the cartoon show, were to make cameos as well.

The game was close to coming out for the Saturn as a launch title but the game went through hell while developing. You can read up on what happened in more detail on Wikipdeia, but to sum it up, there was too much miscommunication, not enough people on the team and that Yuji Naka (creator of NiGHTS) was a little drama queen.

If you're interested in seeing more concepts of the game, character designs and a whole mess of other things, then check out Senntient which looks to have everything that was going to be in Sonic X-treme. This site belongs to Chris Senn who was the Designer of the Sonic X-treme. Speaking of which, Chris is working on making a game that is heavily inspired by Sonic X-treme.

The entire time I watched this video, I couldn't help but think of Mario 64. Mario 64 has always been heralded as being the game to brought gamers into the 3D market. Who knows how things would have turned out had the team was able to work on this more and actually release it. One thing is for sure, the song in the video is damn catchy.

[Via NeoGaf]