NB: Article written by Kieran Butcher, proof-read by Christian Senn.

Prologue:

By 1996 the Sonic X-Treme project was severely behind schedule, and time had taken its toll on the members of SEGA Technical Institute (STI). After two years of development the team had little solid production to show, after experiencing key personnel differences, three platform shifts and internal politics. Much of those two years had been spent on the development of Sonic X-Treme’s game editor, created by Ofer Alon. Alon had a vision, he wanted to create an engine and editor that would bring to life the videotape demos created early on in the project, but which would also allow a game to be programmed relatively easily, severely slashing production times, and thus recouping the years that had been lost whilst in its development.

Tension was now mounting, increased pressure from SEGA of Japan, and personal prejudice from the games technical director Robert Morgan, were to spell disaster for Alon. Morgan disliked Alon; he withheld a vital development kit that would allow the transition of Alon’s editor from PC to Saturn, while frequently emailing SOJ to inform them of Alon’s poor behaviour. In reality Alon was a hard and dedicated worker, he’d often isolated himself from the other workers in order to focus his effort upon the development of his editor. Concerned only with coding he’d often neglect others when they required his assistance, and on some occasions he’d work from home just to avoid office politics, and spend time near his family. The way in which Alon conducted his work often drew negative attention from management, but Senn vigorously defended Alon’s position:

“Keep in mind that I had been extremely loyal to Ofer since he’d first arrived. I knew he was extremely talented and respected his abilities. I found myself protecting him many times throughout the course of development out of loyalty and respect for him. Management in particular viewed him as a maverick, not communicating or “playing well” with others, etc. They couldn’t control him and he wouldn’t play politics, nor did he choose to spend time managing other programmers – he spent his time coding… ALL day and ALL night.”

It was these circumstances that lead to Alon\’s removal from the project. Both he and Senn had been ‘Summoned’ to Roger Hector’s (CEO of Sega of America) office. Unable to gauge the reaction his news would provoke from either of the two Hector had a security guard station outside. It was only when the pair had entered that Hector and Morgan decided to voice their concerns over the current development of the project. Morgan also revealed that he had contracted outside help from the then recently established game studio ‘Point of View’ (POV), to which he had co-founded. POV was to handle all of the projects technical development, and that meant Alon was no longer required.

Maintaining their cool, Alon and Senn accompanied Hector, Morgan and the executive producer Manny Granillo to Morgan’s office. Here they demonstrated POV’s work that had helped convince management to choose this course of action. What Alon and Senn witnessed shocked them, for what they saw was rudimentary at best, making it extremely difficult to understand why anyone would scrap the project\’s current course in favour of the POV technical demo. Granillo, sensing their surprise, stated, “See… we’re on a mission,” to which Alon remarked, “have a nice trip.” as he and Senn left the room.

From this point on Senn separated himself from the rest of the team, he began working alongside Alon to produce their own variation of the game. The humiliation and betrayal suffered, not only by Alon, but also by Senn (who believed so strongly in Alon and his abilities), gave the duo the fiery motivation they needed to work quickly and efficiently. Senn reflects on this issue:

“To witness such blatant disrespect and destructive behavior not only by the TD but by management siding and encouraging that behavior, lost my respect for them. Ofer and I discussed this whole charade and decided to blow their socks off with our own version. We were going to come back stronger than before. This treatment fueled our resolve to return with a vengeance!”

It was only when Senn and Alon learnt that that Irimajiri Shoichiro (president of SEGA Enterprises) was to visit STI, to view the current development on the other X-Treme project, that they decided to use the visit as an opportunity to showcase their own version. Alon worked hard to make sure his editor would be complete on time, but when the day of Irimajiri’s visit finally came, Alon was insistent on working out a few minor bugs that were still present. Fearing they may miss the games chance at redemption, Senn took what other materials they had and dashed to meet Shoichiro. By the time Senn arrived at the presentation room he found the Japanese president, fuming with rage at the apparent lack of work which had been attempted on the other project. Unable to approach him in his current state, Senn decided to wait until a time when he had enough courage to inform Shoichiro that he and Alon had been working on an alternative. Unfortunately by the time Senn had found the strength within, and Alon had arrived, Shoichiro had already left the building.

Faced with the knowledge they would never get another chance to present the game to SEGA’s Japanese division, Senn and Alon had only one other option. The two of them continued to work upon the game and build a presentation in order to pitch the concept to SEGA’s PC division ‘SEGA Soft’.

“Our objective was to present our work and convince the PC division to fund production of Sonic Xtreme for the PC. Ofer created a test world and I designed and created four worlds. Our presentation went well, but the PC group decided not to fund Xtreme. Meanwhile, STI had set up Project Condor with a handful of people moved to another building to work in isolation. This ultimately failed as well and Mike Wallis had to pull the plug. And so ended three years of extremely extreme difficulties!!!”

NB: Article written by Kieran Butcher, proof-read by Christian Senn.

Senn took four weeks to prepare the demos for SEGA executives and Sonic Team. This was one of many hurdles that could make or break the project; if the demo didn’t manage to impress the executives then it would have been terminated, and if it did impress, then it would mark the start of a long and arduous journey.

Understandably Senn didn’t sleep much during the four week development, but it was the inspiration provided by Michael Kosaka’s original game design and the music track ‘Stardust Speedway-bad future’ (from the Sonic the Hedgehog CD soundtrack) that gave him the creative energy to complete his task. In fact Senn was so inspired by the music that he decided to include it in both of the test demos.

Senn produced both demos on his Amiga 3000 using Imagine 3.0 and DeluxePaint Animator. The demos weren’t playable, both were merely pre-rendered animations.

At this particular time Sonic had never appeared in a truly 3D game before, and the game’s ‘pitch’ was based on this premise. Senn set out to create a game that would have a visual appeal, a wow factor. In Senn’s own words:

“The intended audience… wanted to see something that would take Sonic someplace new… they wanted dollar signs in their eyes. It was supposed to be playful, fun and colorful. Granted, all the 3D was flat-shaded and didn’t/doesn’t look that impressive, but I think the cleanliness and colors keep it charming in a simple way. Overall, it still shows some basics of Sonic moving around in 3D… The assumption was that if we could visualize the slower, more tedious gameplay, we could definitely have fast sections that went by in a blur…”

Demo 1:

Senn created this demo in two halves. The first half was the animation of the level itself. Later he overlaid the HUD, for which every ring and second that past was manually animated.

“I’d already designed some enemies… and went ahead and modeled those in 3D using an Amiga 3000 and the software Imagine 3.0. I’d already modeled Sonic for use in a demo prior to this one (a bonus round design concept of Michael Kosaka’s). The entire rendered scene was blocked out so it had a small view rectangle so that the rest of the space would be filled in with a HUD I’d design/draw later. I designed a simple 3D playground and planned a route for Sonic to run, coming up with environmental hazards (like the spike plate, the pumping platform, etc.) along the way. I had to tweak Sonic’s orientation each frame, too. (oy) Since I was working with 8-bit (256 colors), I needed to have the 3D images from the Imagine renders to mesh with the 2D HUD I created in DeluxePaint Animator… so I limited the color output of the renders to something like 192… and used the remaining 64 or so colors to draw the HUD. Then I manually updated each frame of the HUD to match what was going on in the game window. I even updated the ring counter graphic and number every time Sonic ran over a ring!”

Demo 2:

The second demo was designed to demonstrate some faster gameplay which had be absent in the first.

Senn’s plan for the geometry of Sonic, the enemies and the background was to work with as few polygons as possible. This would serve as a basic technical test to analyze whether the eventual game could even be done on the target platform (32X). Following the 3D rendering process, Senn went over the demos touching up Sonic’s low-polygon model using DeluxePaint Animator. In this demo the camera zooms in for a close up of Sonic at the end, and DeluxePaint Animator was used to touch him up.

“…You’ll see the detail ‘rez in’… and that’s me cheating with 2D! The Sonic model stinks… but it’s probably the most efficient use of polygons you’ll ever see, baby! lol (that’s me impersonating modesty) …I built 3D models like I did 2D graphics, as efficiently as possible (learned that from some of the most amazing 2D artists at Cinemaware)… and for this demo, the fewer the overall polys, the faster I could work with the wireframes – and faster to render the flat-shaded output. BTW, another reason for the flat-shaded final output choice was to keep the look clean. Knowing that I would need to work with 256 colors, and knowing that the HUD was the only element I could control exactly how many colors and how they were used… I chose to not have shadows or shading. Honestly I think it reads better without them.”

Conclusion:

Both demos helped gain support by management to continue development of the project. But, Senn and the team had planned to use these demos not only for presentation outside the team, but to discuss within the team potential benefits and problems in their game plan.

“Ultimately, these demos were simply exploring what could be done… and the result would inevitably be riddled with all sorts of problems – obvious or not – to discuss when attempting to make the actual game. The first 3D Sonic game wasn’t magically going to fly out of someone’s butt… it was going to take lots of discussions, testing, etc. – and one of the most beneficial forms of exploring the game was to visualize it. From that point, true ‘development’ of the concept began…”

Practically everything was unknown about Sonic X-Treme. How it felt to play, what the levels were, how many bosses, the story… When information was revealed about a female character, people wondered whether she was going to replace Amy Rose, and if she’d be the timid ‘damsel in distress’ type.

Chris Senn, co-lead Designer and Art Director, has revealed concept artwork of Tiara Boobowski. Tiara is a Manx kitten, according to Senn. The concept was going to be a bandicoot, but the resemblance beared more of a Manx.

The character of Tiara was not going to be the helpless girly type, but rather someone more of a match for Sonic. “I didn’t steer towards or away anything other than what seemed to work right as a character I could see Sonic interacting with… she needed to be spunky, and match Sonic’s “tude.” I think the final sketch design of her captures that (at least for me).”

“Michael Kosaka wanted her to have this type of character, so we went in that direction. You’re right in that the “damsel in distress” was not what we were looking for and I think that exemplifies some of the (at least then) cultural differences between the Japanese and American markets.” If we’re going to be talking about cultural ideas as well, Tiara’s ‘well rounded’ figure not only is quite a link to the definition and traits of a real life Manx cat (long hind legs, raised rump and large chest) but also perhaps a (probably unconscious) decision to exercise some ‘girl power’ within the series with the ‘X-Treme’ (sorry!) feminity of the character.

“Personally, I still like the idea of Sonic meeting his “match”… and seeing that involvement evolve through experiences together. Unfortunately, the back story that would support gameplay like this was never really a part of Sonic Xtreme. The storylines we had all pretty much focused on supporting the worlds and basic plot premise between good and evil… but didn’t delve into the involvement of the characters with each other as much as we could have. To make it a deeper, more rewarding game, I think this should take place…”

Not only did Tiara have a matching attitude, she had matching gameplay too. Concept images were made showcasing how Tiara would look if played in the game. This shows that Tiara was under consideration as a playable character instead of a simple storyline piece, but as the project progressed Tiara was removed as a playable character due to time constraints. Click on the thumbnail to see an entire animation of Tiara running through the level, it also displays a lot of the 3D level manipulation that had been designed for the game.

As for Tiara’s occupation and background story, that’s still not been fully revealed to date. We know she is the daughter of a Gazebo Boobowski, who is a revered Professor living in the Castle of Light. An official ‘myspace’ account was created to reveal more on Tiara’s character, which can be accessed here. On this profile it states Tiara is a “Princess”. Which would make sense given her father’s abode and her name – Sonic characters are usually named in relation to their abilities or status. In fact, certain blogs being posted on Tiara’s myspace even appear to reveal certain plotlines to Sonic X-Treme, with references to “climbing the tower” and a recent entry containing the following:

“Breaker says station lost communication with Base Orbit – and I haven’t heard a peep from Dad. I’m worried. He never gets anywhere without contacting me. I’m gonna go run for awhile. Hopefully that will clear my mind a little.”

A blog on January 15th is written as an “Emergency Transmission”, with a broken ‘May Day’ message. Also of equal interest is Tiara’s apparent dislike for Sonic the Hedgehog – her profile mentions ‘arrogant hedgehogs’ as a turn-off, while she openly claims she wouldn’t ask Sonic for water if she was dying of thirst. Pretty bold statement. But is there real dislike there, or is it all a front? Time will tell, when information on the rest of the game is revealed…

Amongst all the mess that was happening with development of Sonic X-Treme itself, there wasn’t a lot of things left for Chris Senn and co to hold on to. SEGA America believed in SEGA Technical Institute and released promotional box artwork to publishers – but it wasn’t quite the box any of the development team had in mind.

“Behind schedule and over-stressed, I found out through the grapevine that the marketing department had chosen box art for our game – without us having ever seen any of it.” recalls Senn, who went out of his way to design and propose an alternative cover (Click image to view full size). “Needless to say, after working so hard and trying to coordinate a team atmosphere, this lack of “departmental coordination” came at the wrong time for me. To top that off, I hated this cover with a passion. Cutesy, poor posing, nothing dramatic, no energy (no fire!).”

So, taking (FUNKEE) action, Chris decided to send a letter to the marketing department with his cover proposal (click the images above to view them in full size). As you can see, the proposal Chris designed is full of character, and would have likely suited the game presentation. Alas, we can only imagine as this becomes another archived pleasantry on the most mysterious Sonic X-Treme.