Lost Sonic Game Gets X-Treme Flashback

Thanks to The Lost Levels for its in-depth report on 'lost' Sega Saturn title, Sonic X-Treme, originally shown in playable form at E3 1996. However, "what gamers didn't know was that the game was being rushed to completion on a compressed development timeline, a fateful decision that would eventually doom the entire project." Using interviews with the original developers of Sonic X-Treme, which was to "take full advantage of the 3D environment in a free-roaming fashion, much more like Mario 64 than NiGHTS", its ultimate fate is discovered, with an overstressed, overworked developer being told by medical staff that "he thought I had 6 months to live", and the entire project eventually cancelled.

I was looking forward to it

[M3wThr33]

I remember reading Game Players and it had shots of it. It seemed like a great idea, but it seemed a little odd because all the shots were of indoor levels.

Plus the 2D-sprites kinda scare me. I never noticed it in the images, but now that it's explicitly mentioned I can't avoid it. I would have felt cheated if it was released like that. Paper Mario got away with it because his body spun as he turned. Sonic would have just been choppy and floaty.

Re:I was looking forward to it

[Fred Or Alive]

Most Saturn games ended up using spites somewhere, the machine was much more of a 2D beast than a 3D one (the polygons on the Saturn were actually distorted sprites anyway.) As we can't actually see a finished game we can't tell how good Sega Technical Institute were at integrating them into the game. I could've worked alright, but we'll never know.

Sonic 4 Life

[SphericalCrusher]

Yeah, I remember when it failed -- I was really bummed. I've read the book several times and I was really looking forward to actually playing everything out. I'm a huge Sonic fan though, so I got over it quick with games like Sonic Jam and Sonic R. I guess we all just have to learn to move on...

I always knew Sonic games were bad for you,

[empaler]

but I didn't expect developing them could be fatal.

[insert cheesy canned laughter here]

Awesome Product, Bad Management

[Mr.Dippy]

"Everyone else in the company (literally) was working on a different version of the game... based on a game engine Ofer had created before." There is no excuse for this. The reason why Sega finally failed (demise of Dreamcast) was bad management. If your the project manager of a game and allow your development staff to be so disorganized, you deserve to be unemployed. That's the overall story of Sega: Great, Innovative concepts but management was made up of Monkeys and malcontents so they couldn't execute any business plans without screwing everything up.

Re:Awesome Product, Bad Management

[dancingmad]

In contrast, a lot of people bemoan and curse Yamauchi, head honcho of Nintendo until a few years ago (indeed, he was known as Mother Brain), but his hamfistedness kept stuff organized and working and was a major aspect of Nintendo's success.

Re:Awesome Product, Bad Management

[Anonymous Coward]

While Yamaguchi _IS_ a bit of a nutcase, he was a sound businessman. Very _very_ rooted in real world returns rather then super-flashy whizbang stuff.

Did he survive?

[tprime]

Did the cancellation of the project keep the developer "that had six months to live" alive?

Re:Did he survive?

[Fred Or Alive]

Seeing as he's one of the interviewees in the article, I'd guess he lived. :-)

A longer quote, putting the other one into contex is:

Sometime in May the decision was made to streamline, cutting out at least 1/3rd of the team, leaving most of the development chores to Chris Senn. Taking the job very seriously, and determined to get the game out on time, he moved a cot into his office and worked alternating 16 to 18-hour shifts. He toiled nonstop like this from June through August implementing the changes necessary...

...

Disaster struck in August when Senn's body, worn out from the nonstop work, couldn't take it anymore.

"I took on far more than was healthy... and after 2 years I became extremely ill... a nurse told me he thought I had 6 months to live, actually. I lost 25 pounds, was sick all the time, had cramps... and still went in to work... all due to too much stress," says Senn.

However, from the sounds of it, if he'd kept on going, he could've ended up dead, or in hospital. No amount of coffee and pizza would keep a coder going after two months of 18 hour days.

Re:Did he survive?

[Doc Ruby]

When I started my Internet company in 1994, I moved to Canada where I knew only my biz partner, and worked an average of 20h:d for over 2 years (>800d - we billed hourly, and I had the time records). I was the only coder for over a year, and continued to be the primary coder for the second - I started taking off a few days a month, and skipping the 72h stints, in the 3rd year. I survived, sold out big at the end of 1999, and retired. Sleeping in since then has been sweet sweet revenge.

Much of that info was already known...

[Stormwatch]

...by readers of Sonic Cult [sonic-cult.org] .