Sonic Xtreme

[BigusSchmuck]

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/sonic-x-treme/
Awesome!

[poponon]

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/sonic-x-treme/
Awesome!

Not sure why people are all excited about this. There was a reason they shelved it

[geise]

Ummm...why not just play the import Sonic Jam on Saturn?  Yeah there's no true sonic level but at least you can run around in 3D with him.

[pulstar]

I don't know. I've always wished I could play it. It'll be interesting to give it a go.

[SamIAm]

Well, I for one think that this is really cool just from a historical perspective. It wasn't until 10 years ago that the story behind the development of Sonic Xtreme really began to trickle out, and it was fascinating to be there piecing it all together.

One incarnation of Xtreme on the Saturn was leaked already, but this one had a lot more work put into it. The Saturn build is sort of a hack of the separate engine they were building for bosses. It's a long story.

Anyway, I'll see if I can give this a shot myself after work.

If only we could get the very last build on the Saturn and the last PC build...

[JoshTurboTrollX]

[slinkyturd]

Sure it doesn't look that great. You have to consider that everything Sonic related that has been released post genesis (and add-ons) has sucked ass, this is kind of a throwback to the good days of sonic. I'd play it happily.

[poponon]

everything Sonic related that has been released post genesis (and add-ons) has sucked ass,

Really? I think the most fun I had with a sonic title was the chao garden in adventure 2, of all things

[o.pwuaioc]

2D Sonic > 3D Sonic. In fact, nearly anything > 3D Sonic, so this is an obvious no go for me. Also, the article stating that Sega was "built" on Sonic is incredibly ignorant. I'm guessing that person was born in the mid-80s and never knew about the crap ton of awesome arcade games—Zaxxon, Outrun, Space Harrier, After Burner, Golden Axe, Altered Beast—which actually built Sega. Yeah Sonic brought them to a new level, but they would hardly have been relegated to a mere footnote.

[SignOfZeta]

It's mainly 17 year olds writing about video games now, so yeah.

I agree it's interesting to see, but not that interesting. I'm glad this game never came out since it obviously was terrible. Adventure 1 was bad enough, and that was light years beyond what they were trying before.

I don't think every Sonic game post Genesis was terrible though. The GBA "Rush" ones are actually pretty fun, significantly better than 3 was. The console games weren't anywhere near the quality of Mario stuff, but they aren't unplayable like this POS. By the time Colors and Heroes were released I'd say they were doing pretty well. I don't blame people for not noticing though since Sega has released a TON of Sonic games since going multi platform, most of them terrible, and everyone's patience has limits.

[esadajr]

Always fascinating to see these things pop up after so many years. Think of it as IT archaeology.

[Dicer]

Sonic is one of these things that should have stayed firmly in 2D land, his play mechanic just doesn't work in 3D all that well...

[xcrement5x]

Sonic is one of these things that should have stayed firmly in 2D land, his play mechanic just doesn't work in 3D all that well...

I dunno, I like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, but the play mechanic is drastically different from what the original 2D games were. 

[jeffhlewis]

Sonic Adventure 1, at the time of release, was quite enjoyable beyond just the fancy graphics (Dreamcast was honestly the last console generation jump where I was wowed by graphical improvement). It really has not aged well though, along with 9,999 other early 3D platformers. I don't understand why everyone shits on it constantly; it was a product of the time.

[DragonmasterDan]

Sonic Adventure 1, at the time of release, was quite enjoyable beyond just the fancy graphics (Dreamcast was honestly the last console generation jump where I was wowed by graphical improvement). It really has not aged well though, along with 9,999 other early 3D platformers. I don't understand why everyone shits on it constantly; it was a product of the time.

I got it with my import Dreamcast on 12,26,1998 (day after Christmas with Christmas money). I finished the game with Sonic and tails on day 1 and was thoroughly disappointed. And was left with playing through the game with Knuckles and garbage characters like big the cat and collecting emblems.

The reason everyone shits on it is that it is shit and it's a mound of it. There's a couple of decent levels in it, but for the most part it's poor level design, and an unfinished buggy mess (the Japanese version at least) that shouldn't have been released in the state it was considering the amount and quality of the content in the game.

Taking it being a product of its time into account, it's far far worse than Banjo Kazooie also from 1998 or Super Mario 64. It had mind blowing graphics for the time, but inferior level design really held it back.

[esadajr]

Like I said, the hip thing today is to troll and hate on Sonic and Sega.

Going back to the Sonic Xtreme code discovery, it is cool to see code from the mid 90s in a displayable form, even if it wasn't going to be that great of a game.

[SamIAm]

I love the Saturn, but to make a fun 3D Sonic game on it, especially one that feels at all like a Sonic game should feel, would have been very difficult. There's more than one way to do it, but the designers would have needed to base their entire approach very strictly on the capabilities of the system.

Unfortunately, with all the platform changes and design revisions, this just wasn't happening with Xtreme. When you look at what they were attempting, it seems like they were lost in thinking about high-level theoretical 3D game concepts. The fish-eye lens and gravity rotation ideas, which were practically the whole foundation of Xtreme's game design, were pretty gross overreaches IMO. Even with more time and resources at their disposal, I don't think they would have ever made a good game on the Saturn out of those ideas.

The leaked Saturn build that's based on a totally different engine, however, at least gives me enough imagine a fun game with. Sonic's prerendered sprite looks really good, and the simplified engine is actually running at 60fps. The control feels good, too. If they had gotten something like that going way, way earlier on and built a simple, linear platformer out of it, I think they could have had something nice.

[LostFlunky]

I love the Saturn, but to make a fun 3D Sonic game on it, especially one that feels at all like a Sonic game should feel, would have been very difficult. There's more than one way to do it, but the designers would have needed to base their entire approach very strictly on the capabilities of the system.

Unfortunately, with all the platform changes and design revisions, this just wasn't happening with Xtreme. When you look at what they were attempting, it seems like they were lost in thinking about high-level theoretical 3D game concepts. The fish-eye lens and gravity rotation ideas, which were practically the whole foundation of Xtreme's game design, were pretty gross overreaches IMO. Even with more time and resources at their disposal, I don't think they would have ever made a good game on the Saturn out of those ideas.

The leaked Saturn build that's based on a totally different engine, however, at least gives me enough imagine a fun game with. Sonic's prerendered sprite looks really good, and the simplified engine is actually running at 60fps. The control feels good, too. If they had gotten something like that going way, way earlier on and built a simple, linear platformer out of it, I think they could have had something nice.

I think Sonic R's engine was about as far as that whole thing could go on Saturn.

If they used the NiGHts/Burning Rangers approach, they probably could have come up with something pretty cool...

[VenomMacbeth]

I find the Saturn to be pretty limited as per 3D games; even the "best" ones seem readily outdone by those of its 32-bit contemporaries.

Honestly, in my opinion, with how Adventure turned out (even though I love it to death) they could have easily pulled something similar off on the Saturn.  Sure, the textures, polygon count, draw distance, and perhaps gameplay speed/framerate would have suffered, but it probably would have been an even bigger landmark than it was on the Dreamcast. 

I wonder, if Sega had use the Adventure formula for a Saturn Sonic game, would the resulting success have encouraged them to actually improve on said formula for later games, instead of churning out shovelware every year or two.  I think other than the PS1 looming on the horizon, I'm willing to bet lots of people choked on the Saturn since Sega choked on putting a Sonic game out for it.

[SamIAm]

I think Sonic R's engine was about as far as that whole thing could go on Saturn.

Sonic R gets a lot of flak, but the framerate is pretty good, the rendering is clean, and the environments look nice. It definitely could have been tweaked into platformer if they had wanted it to be one.

The Saturn has trouble drawing wide open areas because of the way its rendering works. The guy who made the Saturn port of Quake talked about this. Basically, you can't use only one giant polygon to draw a large surface because it will distort too much when only part of it is on screen. Since everything has to be made of multiple smaller polygons, it works better to use a linear/rail kind of approach to the level design.

[DragonmasterDan]

Sonic R gets a lot of flak, but the framerate is pretty good, the rendering is clean, and the environments look nice. It definitely could have been tweaked into platformer if they had wanted it to be one.

Can you feel the sunshine? Does it lighten up your day? Don't you wish that racing game, was actually fun to play?

[esadajr]

I think Sonic R's engine was about as far as that whole thing could go on Saturn.

Sonic R gets a lot of flak, but the framerate is pretty good, the rendering is clean, and the environments look nice. It definitely could have been tweaked into platformer if they had wanted it to be one.

Once you get used to the controls, the game is not that bad. Is not the best Saturn game or anything but still quite enjoyable and shouldn't be absent from your Saturn/PC/GC library.

Take it for what it is, a weird game 3D game developed by Traveler Tales, the same company which brought us Sonic 3D Blast (another game you should take for what it is).

[LostFlunky]

Sonic R gets a lot of flak, but the framerate is pretty good, the rendering is clean, and the environments look nice. It definitely could have been tweaked into platformer if they had wanted it to be one.

Can you feel the sunshine? Does it lighten up your day? Don't you wish that racing game, was actually fun to play?

I love the soundtrack.

[esadajr]

now I can't shake that one out of my head

[SignOfZeta]

I do love the soundtrack.