The rational thing would be to demand credit for the engine on the title screen and box, instead a game was ruined because of his ego.
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Final build of Sonic Xtreme found, leaking as we speak
- Thread starter Krejlooc
- Start date
The rational thing would be to demand credit for the engine on the title screen and box, instead a game was ruined because of his ego.
A long time ago I actually had an NV1 card. My dad's friend was a hardware engineer for some manufacturer in Ohio and he would get all sorts of engineering samples to test. He gave us that card, the controller daughter board, a few off brand Saturn controllers, and a sleeve of cds.
If I had know what it was... I'm fairly certain I still have my nv1 and one of the controllers but the rest is gone.
Awesome to see this sonic game come to light, I had no idea it existed.
Edit: just looked in my magical box of old pc parts and It's not there.
If I had know what it was... I'm fairly certain I still have my nv1 and one of the controllers but the rest is gone.
Awesome to see this sonic game come to light, I had no idea it existed.
Edit: just looked in my magical box of old pc parts and It's not there.
This is the playable portion of the game, or what playable portions existed, that is.
Everything else has already leaked.
Spring-Loaded
Member
lostinblue
Banned
He sabotaged all he could, but that was actually the tip of the iceberg.
Higher ups at Sega were unreasonable, ordered too much and pressured too much, in ways they never would towards... say, Yuji Naka - deadlines were incredibad and dead ends like the NiGHTS engine were caused by them. The team got NiGHTS engine from them and was, if I reckon correctly - ordered to work with it.
They certainly assumed Yuji Naka knew or was informed of this, except he wasn't. When he discovered months had gone by and he was actually entitled to being pissed off because he had the right to know, but he channeled his rage into a wrong direction and Sega executives caving in made it so they lost several months of work.
The real blame for this was these Sega Executives who should have been held responsible for the screw up, but weren't. And they only covered their own asses there.
And then they dropped it like if it was nothing in the beginning of 1997 precisely when it was coming together - possibly with some Yuji Naka influence either to do with the Sonic Adventure Saturn prototype being shown to them and the prospect of turning into a full game (later used as Sonic Jam 3D overworked) or promised Sonic Jam for christmas 1997, we don't know - but it wasn't him calling the final shots and perhaps he didn't interfere further, I assume they ditched it on their own purely because they felt they didn't need it anymore.
Make no mistake, for multiple reasons (understaffed, Sega Saturn hardware nature, dev tools, etc) this game whole development could be described as development hell, most people bar two individuals had come and went and only towards the end did they have an engine and a vision to go along with it - But when it was cancelled it was the moment it wasn't in development hell anymore meaning they could finish it in a few months.
The problems Sonic Xtreme had and more in general how Sega poorly managed their most popular IP during the Saturn era are only partially related to Naka.
The rational thing would have been for Sega to give high priority and resources for a 2.5D Sonic game to shop for holiday 1995.
ElRenoRaven
Member
Wow. That is wickedly cool. It's always cool as hell to see unreleased games history told and the remains found to show. It really is a shame about this game. The videos look really cool.
See You Next Wednesday
Banned
No, this would be the 12 layers of parallax version of Sonic 1 debuted at CES when the game was actually unveiled. This version:
There is evidence Sega still has various Sonic 1 prototypes, though. A mobile phone port in 2003 appears to be built off of a build from a few months before release, as it still includes the rolling ball object that has been deleted in the final build, and it has the sprites for the marble zone UFOs in the marble zone tiles.
That's not the early build we're discussing, though. The build in question was only 1 level, a very early proto greenhill zone. As I said, it featured 12 layers of parallax, both in front and behind Sonic.
Would loved to see that in motion.
So, it looks like i'll have more info to share at 7 pm CST tomorrow
Looking forward to it bud. Thanks.
This proto also had non-badnik animals as seen in the early sonic pitch promotional materials:
See the jumping purple guy to the right?
He's there on the left in this screenshot
There's also this:
And the level featured weird signs, like this:
Hey quick question if you don't mind. I've been looking into SEGA PC games recently and I've read that apparently Panzer Dragoon works on modern windows too, but I can't find any iso's of it or anything. Have the games not been ripped, because I can't find a single one of them (Not asking for links or anything, just curious)
DICKS AHOY
Banned
Didn't some of the American members of the Sonic 2 team also say Naka came across as a douche and whenever content got cut, it was normally something from the American half of the development team?
There's also that infamous story of Peter Moore telling Naka to fuck off when he gave him shit over some negative focus group testing.
Friend of Sonic
Member
It would be so fascinating. Recently, the pilot of Nick Arcade was released which featured a more finalized proto, but with the rolling ball object intact with physics. Pretty interesting, but it would be incredible to see the baby before it became what we knew. I kind of doubt it exists anymore, though.
Bucket-o-roadkill
Member
Speaking of SEGA PC stuff, I know Sega touring car had a direct 3d patch, did Sega Rally ever get any 3D patch?!
PassiveObserver
Member
Lazy Game Reviews did a great overview of the Diamond Edge NV1 card. Those Saturn games look perfect running at the higher resolution like that.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jChtlWNIAL4
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jChtlWNIAL4
Jesus, talk about taking everything that made Sonic Sonic, and doing the opposite. Stealth, slow delayed panning camera, shooting rings.
If anything it wins the award for "best Sonic game no one played with the letters "xtreme" in the title".
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Yep, most of the content cut from Sonic 2 was from the North American staffers that were working on it. To be fair to them, though, based on the prototype versions of Sonic 2 that are out there, their content was also cut for being both of lesser quality and for possibly being behind schedule (unfinished levels like Hidden Palace and Wood Zone apparently went untouched for months without any significant updates).
You do remind me of two other examples, though:
Yuji Naka and Hirokazu Yasuhara apparently butted heads a lot. Naoto Ohshima handled character designs, Yuji Naka handled game logic and coding, leaving Yasuhara to be the man who focused on levels. He did a lot of art direction and even built many levels himself. He also was a general Director, overseeing many of the other aspects of how the Genesis Sonics were put together.
Between them, Naka, Ohshima and Yasuhara were the combined heart of Genesis Sonic.
After S&K was finished Yasuhara left Sonic Team because he and Yuji Naka didn't get along. Yasuhara stuck around Sega for a while after that, bouncing around between various projects (and even helping out on a few Sonic projects; I think he was attached to Sonic R, for example, and there's concept stuff he did for Sonic X-treme floating around out there).
When Yasuhara left Sega some time in 2001 to join Naughty Dog, Yuji Naka disliked him so much that he actually made a public statement that he felt Yasuhara had become "useless" to Sega. (Yasuhara now works at Nintendo.)
Rumors float around regarding Naoto Ohshima's relationship with Yuji Naka, and that a similar thing possibly happened. According to the rumor, after the original Sonic Adventure, Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka got in to an argument over where they wanted the franchise to go for Sonic Adventure 2. Ohshima reportedly quit because Naka wouldn't listen to him.
Some credence is lent to this rumor - a couple years later, when Sonic Team released Sonic Adventure DX for the Gamecube, Naoto Ohshima's name was completely scrubbed from the game's ending credits sequence. In the original Dreamcast release, he's credited for a few things - notably being the director of the game's pre-rendered CGI sequences - but his name is completely gone from the DX release.
It would seem as though Yuji Naka might've driven away everyone who made those 16-bit Sonic games what they were.
At least he got a Ferrari out of it, though.
KojiKnight
Member
It's neat to see Sonic Xtreme finally being unearthed, but if the requirement is an NV1 there isn't going to be a lot of people able to mess with this. Unless there is a fully working NV1 emulator out there or in the works?
Ghost_Messiah
Member
We might be able to get the build to run in software mode which theoretically means any of us could run it.
if nothing else, VOGONs has started an NV1 wrapper project and I'm certain the combined effort of the Sonic hacking scene could get something up and working.
tiggerkiddo
Member
Man I love seeing stuff like this come out, can't wait to see more.
It'll be modded to hell in back in no time. I give it a few months before it's running on modern hardware.
Barkley's Justice
Member
Thanks OP!
Gameboy415
Member
Awesome news!
I'm very excited to see whatever you can share once you get it up and running, Krejlooc!
I'm very excited to see whatever you can share once you get it up and running, Krejlooc!
Seven Force
Banned
Great OP and holy shit, I never thought I'd see the day that build got leaked.
Small Mailman
Member
This actually looks great! And I really don't like Sonic!
Would there ever be a way to get this running on a real Saturn? I would love to play this as it was intended
Would there ever be a way to get this running on a real Saturn? I would love to play this as it was intended
MightyHedgehog
Member
Cool-looking. I remember being so hyped at the Sega Saturn E3 booth watching that bit of video and playing that circular boss room demo a couple times. Too bad they didn't go ahead with it since all Saturn owners ended getting was Sonic Jam's 3D area. Feels like Bug! meets Sonic 3 special stages.
Demon Lizardman
Banned
So Naka is kind of an a-hole I take it?
Absolutely
I was never really part of the hacking community, but I'd always been interested in this game just because I was a young Sonic fan that found out about a Sonic game that never came to be. It's almost sad; after this there's practically nothing worth finding for this game, and the whole story is basically wrapped up, apart from more stories about how big of a dick Yuji Naka is.
Well, whatever comes of this, which hopefully turns out to be (relatively) playable Sonic X-Treme for everybody, it's sure to be one hell of a roller coaster.
Well, whatever comes of this, which hopefully turns out to be (relatively) playable Sonic X-Treme for everybody, it's sure to be one hell of a roller coaster.
Shadow Hog
Member
Most of the resources in question were already released, I believe. Might make it easier to compare what things are supposed to look like in the released files, at least, since I'm not 100% sure the formats have been reverse-engineered fully.
DwightSchruting
Member
Gimme a Sonic game with chao garden and then leave me alone so I can play
One thing to temper expectations - we've already had the levels from this leak for years now. They're terrible. Just random paths with nothing to do or nowhere to go. They had never actually began designing levels. So whenever this gets into a state where people can play it, you'll merely have an engine with no real content. Who knows what a final version of this game would have been like. The engine looks like it had some neat tricks with paths, but a lot of what makes a game is the level design.
I should say that this engine likely isn't as advanced as many expect. It was built in a short period of time, and back when the original assets leaked from Senn, figuring out the level format was a snap. You could actually edit the levels in microsoft paint. The most advanced thing the engine looks like it does is rotate the playing field or shooting sonic along little weird paths. It looks like it's merely a competent 3D engine for the saturn with a unique rendering technique, not necessarily a killer sonic title
I should say that this engine likely isn't as advanced as many expect. It was built in a short period of time, and back when the original assets leaked from Senn, figuring out the level format was a snap. You could actually edit the levels in microsoft paint. The most advanced thing the engine looks like it does is rotate the playing field or shooting sonic along little weird paths. It looks like it's merely a competent 3D engine for the saturn with a unique rendering technique, not necessarily a killer sonic title
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