The following information was compiled from different sources and opinions to help educate the community about the cancelled Sega game known as "Sonic Xtreme". If, after reading through this FAQ, you have further questions, please direct them to the forums here.

Q: Where can I find LOTS of materials related to Sonic Xtreme?
A: Visit the Sonic Xtreme Compendium (SXC).

Q: What is the "SXC"?
A: The "SXC" stands for Sonic Xtreme Compendium which is a compilation of materials from the development of the game. Images, animations, storylines, music, sketches, and notes are some of what are shared.

Q: What different names existed for the game?
A: The project went through many name changes and considered others, usually corresponding to platform changes mandated from management or the introduction of drastically new technology. The names that were considered or actually given to the project included:

• Sonic 16 (Genesis)
• SonicMars (32X)
• Sonic32X (32X)
• Sonic Saturn (Saturn)
• Sonic Ringworlds (Saturn)
• SonicBOOM (Saturn / nVidia08)
• Sonic Xtreme (Saturn)
• SonicPC (PC)
• Sonic Bluestreak (briefly considered)
• SuperSonic (briefly considered)

Q: How many platform changes did the game go through?
A: The game changed target platforms five times, including the Genesis, 32X, nVidia, Saturn, and PC.

Q: What was the difference between the different platform versions of Sonic Xtreme for the 32X, Saturn, and PC?
A: Over its 3-year production cycle, Xtreme evolved significantly and split at one point into multiple versions developed within the same company. No versions were ever finished, so it's difficult to refer to any version as "official". The 32X version was so transitional due to the change in technology and platforms, so the most significant source of what would have defined this version would be Michael Kosaka's 32X design document. The Saturn had three versions along the way: One led by Ofer Alon and Christian Senn (see complete list of contributors), another led by Robert Morgan using POV, and the last led by Christina Coffin (Project Condor). To my knowledge, no playable versions exist of any of these versions. After their Saturn version, Ofer Alon and Christian Senn continued development for the PC version. All versions ended up being cancelled.

Q: How were the acts/zones structured?
A: There were different configurations throughout the project, but the main formula included two acts and a boss act per zone.

Q: What was the story of the game?
A: There were many storylines that were created to fit with the changes the project went through (target platform change provided advanced possibilities, new game features opened up new story possibilities, etc.). There was never "one" story for the game, really, for as the game developed, new iterations of the story were made. Browse through the Storylines section of the SXC to read the different storylines.

Q: How were the cut scenes to be used?
A: As an end or beginning of a level. The focus was on gameplay.

Q: Was the game going to have big or small bosses?
A: The bosses were going to be big. The reason for this was, it seemed cool, but more importantly, since moving in 3D for the first time for Sonic would be new for players, we wanted to make it easier for them to hit something.

Q: What Powerups were planned?
A: Powerups planned, included the following:

• Standard (1-up, Ring-up and Time-up)
• Shoes (Speed & Traction)
• Shields (see below)
• Rings (Snake, Twist & Homing)
• Bomb (H-Ball)

The powerups were to be contained in a rotating sphere, with Sonic having to spindash or land on one to get the power up.

Shields were based around a concept called “Elements”. Elements represented the six powers that Sonic could unlock. There was a hierarchy of power whereby each Element was stronger than the next with the last Element being stronger than the first, thus making a Circle of Power. Every other Element could be combined together to make one of two special “PowerShields”.

Elemental Circle of Power:

• Metal (cuts Rock)
• Rock (shields from Lightning)
• Lightning (electrifies Wind)
• Wind (extinguishes Fire)
• Fire (evaporates Water)
• Water (rusts Metal)

• (Metal – Lightning – Fire)
• (Rock – Wind – Water)

Q: Did the enemy’s color schemes have an effect on gameplay?
A: Yes. Example: Blue was a ‘weak’ enemy, Red was a ‘strong’ enemy.

Q: What are the Rings of Order, and what did they do?
A: The “Rings of Order” was part of a simple story generated for a news article in a magazine at a point when the real game story was in progress. The magazine needed something to print and the team wasn’t ready with a final story. The idea behind it leveraged the concept that there were magical rings, special rings, that coincided with the Chaos Emeralds that provided order to the Universe when kept together. Using this as a setup, any number of things could happen – not the least of which was Robotnik stealing them and Sonic trying to “restore order” by replacing them.

Q: How did the “World Rotation” concept work?
A: This was another concept created by Ofer Alon that opened up gameplay potential significantly. Sonic would hit certain ‘hotspots’, causing the world to rotate, shifting gravity for Sonic, allowing him to run on walls and ceilings. This gave him access to powerups/paths that were previously out of reach. To simpify world construction, 90-degree rotations were used.

Q: Was music ever created?
A: Yes. Chris Senn created a number of conceptual pieces of music, and Howard Drossin created some production music. Although only a small percentage of the music sounded "Sonic-like" in its traditional sense, they did evoke visuals and emotions in the minds of the composers.

Q: Were sound effects ever created?
A: No.

Q: Do any maps of the levels exist?
A: Yes. Paper maps exist (some of which are shared in the SXC), but due to Ofer’s wishes, actual in-game maps based on his engine cannot be shared.


CHARACTER questions
[top] [general] [character] [people] [playable] [cancellation]

Q: What characters were planned?
A: Various characters were considered or planned at different points in development. These included Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik/Eggman, Tiara, Professor Gazeebo Boobowski, Nack/Fang, Chaos Elementals, Mips and an assortment of Archie Comic characters (Sally Acorn, etc.).

Q: Was Tiara inspired by Princess Sally of the Archie Comics fame?
A: No.

Q: Was Nack the Weasel (Fang the Sniper) ever planned?
A: A preliminary 3D model of Nack/Fang was created for “Project Condor”, using its “Boss” engine technology (rather than the PC “Fisheye” engine).

Q: What were the “Mips”, and what did they do?
A: Mips were the replacement for Flickies. Each zone had a unique design of Mip, with it’s own color and movement. The name “Mip” was dubbed by Michael Kosaka and is an abbreviation for a computer term “Million Instructions Per Second”.

Q: Was an Archie Comics tie-in ever considered?
A: Yes, but only for a brief period near the beginning of development.

Q: Was Sonic going to be a 3D character or a 2D sprite?
A: The idea of rendering a 3D model in real-time was scrapped in favor of a pre-rendered 2D sprite. Sonic existed in 3D, along with his animations, but was rendered to create the 2D sprites created by Ross Harris.


PEOPLE & COMPANY questions
[top] [general] [character] [people] [playable] [cancellation]

Q: Who worked on the game?
A: Many people contributed to development over the course of its 3-year cycle. The following internal development people contributed at one time or another to Sonic Xtreme (in alphabetical order):

• Adrian Stephens
• Alan Ackerman
• Andy Probert
• Aoki Kunitake
• Betty Cunningham
• Chris Ebert
• Christian Senn
• Christina Coffin
• Dave Sanner
• Dean Lester
• Dean Ruggles
• Don Goddard
• Fei Cheng
• Howard Drossin
• Jason Kuo
• Jeremy Cantor
• Manny Granillo
• Mark Kupper
• Michael Kosaka
• Mike Wallis
• Ofer Alon
• Peter Moraweic
• Richard Wheeler
• Robert Morgan
• Robert Steele
• Roger Hector
• Ross Harris
• Stieg Hedlund
• Tony Dezuniga
• Toshi Morita
• Yasuhara Hirokazu

• Peter Moraweic
• John Duggan
• Roger Hector

• Chris Ebert
• Christian Senn
• Jeremy Cantor
• Michael Kosaka
• Roger Hector
• Toshi Morita

• Chris Ebert
• Christian Senn
• Dean Lester
• Don Goddard
• Fei Cheng
• Mark Kupper
• Michael Kosaka
• Mike Wallis
• Ofer Alon
• Richard Wheeler
• Robert Morgan
• Roger Hector
• Toshi Morita
  
  
• Christina Coffin
• Manny Granillo
• Ross Harris
• Tony Dezuniga
  
  
• Alan Ackerman
• Andy Probert
• Betty Cunningham
• Dave Sanner
• Dean Ruggles
• Jason Kuo
• Robert Steele
• Stieg Hedlund
  
  
• Aoki Kunitake
• Howard Drossin
• Yasuhara Hirokazu

• Christian Senn
• Ofer Alon

• Christina Coffin
• Dean Ruggles
• Jamie Bible (Contract Programmer)
• Jason Kuo
• Mark Kupper
• Mike Wallis
• Richard Wheeler
• Yasuhara Hirokazu

Q: What was "Project Condor"?
A: By the end of the project there were two teams working on two versions of the game, one comprising Ofer Alon and Christian Senn (Saturn/PC) with the other led by Christina Coffin (Saturn), dubbed “Project Condor”. (see above for its members).

Q: Why were there so many different groups of people making one game?
A: There were a lot of people who contributed to the game. However, many factors were responsible for a large amount of change to the project throughout its development. Technology changes, target platform changes, lead programmer changes, and our team leader leaving combined with mounting pressure and attention from Sega (both in the US and in Japan) caused quite a bit of shuffle and change amongst the structure of the team and its members.

Prior to POV involvement, there was (more or less) a single team with sub-teams working on different parts of the game (i.e. main game team, boss team, glue-screen team, etc.). However, once POV got involved and Ofer Alon was ousted as Lead Programmer, Ofer and Senn continued development for the Saturn on their own and POV continued development using most of STI's personnel. Eventually, Alon and Senn dedicated themselves to the PC version while Project Condor was formed to create a Saturn version.

Q: Do ex-members of STI still keep in contact?
A: Some do. Christian Senn keeps in touch with Yasuhara Hirokazu and Richard Wheeler, occasionally with Michael Kosaka, Ofer Alon, Aoki Kunitake and Mike Wallis, has worked again with Peter Morawiec and Adrian Stephens, and bumped into Roger Hector once. It’s likely that other team members have kept in touch with each other, too. It’s a small industry, and people usually run into each other again.

Q: Did Christian Senn and Chris Coffin nearly die while working on Xtreme?
A: Yes. Both people contracted separate sicknesses that nearly killed them while working on the game.

Q: What was STI like/What did you think of STI?
A: STI was, at first glance, the place where the Sonic games were made. It was also riddled with politics. There was a division internally. Japanese/Sonic Team on one side, “everyone else” on the other side.

Q: Was a group of designers locked up at the old STI location?
A: Yes, in fact it was a small team of people collectively known as "Project Condor". Provided with meals and cots, they were expected to finish the game by Christmas ’96!

Q: Was there a rivalry between SOA (Sega of America) and SOJ (Sega of Japan)?
A: My belief and impressions were and are that SOJ was the money-maker, and the SOJ arm that was the Sonic Team was the money-maker in America. I think the SOA corporate machine wasted so much money, on high salaries and poor business choices, that SOJ didn't respect SOA. I also think that SOJ understood the Japanese market, but did not understand the SOA game market... so mix all that together, and you have a big problem! I joined Sega (STI, specifically) when it was already falling. In the next 6 years it fell, crashed, bounced, crashed and settled when Sega broke up into tiny companies marking the end of Sega as a hallmark hardware publishing company.

Q: Thoughts on Yuji Naka?
A: Naka-san became known by many to be the father of Sonic. (I’d like to meet the mother and interview them both! j/k =P) It has been shared that Naka-san was extremely determined and pushed the team around him, even if his own programming wasn’t the most amazing. It was this drive that manuevered him politically to carry the spotlight of Sonic's success and his association with Sonic. He had strong beliefs that only his Japanese team should work on Sonic. When I presented him and the Sega executives with our original demo videos for Sonic Mars, he said to me simply, “good luck”. This simple statement, I think, summed up his attitude about our team.

Q: Why have so few people come forward to share their experiences about Sonic Xtreme?
A: Sonic Xtreme proved to be a painful, long-drawn out experience for most of the people who worked on it. Despite many well-intentioned efforts, the project failed, never to see the light of day. It is likely most people chose to put their unpleasant memories behind them and move on. To some who worked on the game, this project was their life; to others, just another game. It is thus understandable that most people would lack interest in sharing their experiences. It's important to note that what has been shared in regards to Xtreme constitutes opinions mixed with facts and samples, but in no way represents the "whole story" of Xtreme. It shall forever remain somewhat of a mystery, but perhaps we can all learn something from it.

Q: Any good, goofy STI stories?
A: I remember Richard Wheeler and I were in my office - both of us were over-stressed, over-taxed and got silly - like really silly. I had deluxepaint animator open with an enemy I'd rendered... and started making this goofy animation - like super silly with explosions and word bubbles and stress-relieving phrases plastered over every other frame... I added crazy mouth expressions on the enemy... then started flipping between the frames and making the noises I imagined the enemy making on each frame... we were both laughing hysterically... it was fun, ridiculous and a tiny relief from the mountain of pressure we felt.


PLAYABLE & ENGINE questions
[top] [general] [character] [people] [playable] [cancellation]

Q: Do you (kurisu) have any playable versions of Sonic Xtreme?
A: No.

Q: Why hasn’t a playable version of the PC game been shared?
A: Although Sega owns the rights and materials for everything related to the game, Ofer Alon was responsible for coding the real-time engine and editor for Sonic Xtreme. When asked if he was willing to share it, he made it clear he believed it would have been unethical to share code that Sega owned. Out of respect for him and for Sega, the PC version has never been shared.

Q: What languages were used to code the game?
A: In C, C++, and Assembly

Q: What equipment was used to make the game?
A: PC, Macintosh, Amiga and SGI’s were the systems used to take advantage of various software, including: 2D programs like Deluxepaint Animator and Photoshop, 3D programs like Imagine, Studio MAX, Alias/Wavefront and possibly Strata3D.

Q: Was the NiGHTS engine used?
A: No. This was discussed at one point, but never became a reality. The Boss engine Christina Coffin created provided a similar look, albeit simpified, to the NiGHTS engine, but the actual engine was never shared or used.

Q: What was the reason for the ‘Fisheye Lens’?
A: Christian Senn and Ofer Alon had struggled to come up with an answer to the problem that plagued all side-scrolling games – how do you provide the player with enough space to react when moving quickly to the left or to the right? Ofer created the Fisheye effect which, when applied after rendering, warped the display of the 3D world to appear spherical via a complicated algorithm. Although it might take a player some getting used to, it yielded a sweeping view around Sonic providing the player with extra screens of view above and to the sides of Sonic and supplied more reaction time for the player.

Q: Was the PC version a “finished product”?
A: Yes and No. Ofer’s engine was ready for game production, but with only four worlds created by Christian Senn that were 60% done at best, it would most-likely have taken the two of them another 6 months to complete a “finished” PC product.

Q: If Ofer made such an amazing editor, why didn't the game get done quicker?
A: Ofer's engine took a year to create. That may seem like a long time, but if you look at what it could do, the functionality was amazing, as was its power. It took me a long time to get comfortable with the tools, partially because they were constantly evolving and changing - but also because my imagination didn't fit into the tool's capabilities for some time. I really respected his mind and ability, so if we were at odds in opinion about game direction, many times I would defer to his choice... which made it hard for me to generate a vision for the game (to be creative you either have no rules or you have certain restrictions... and I didn't know what the restrictions were because I relied on him to develop them with th engine). Was my imagination free to think of whatever I thought was the coolest? No. Was my imagination ready to do this by the time the game was canceled? Yes. By that time, I knew the engine and editor Ofer had developed, and was able to be creative comfortably and execute ideas quickly. Too bad it was too late!

Q: Why didn't more people learn Ofer's editor?
A: By the end of the project, many had learned the fundamentals of the editors most basic functions. But, while the editor was being developed, only Richard Wheeler and myself really learned the editor backwards and forwards (myself moreso since I worked so closely with Ofer). The editor was changing all the time, with new features and functionality, new ways of doing things, etc. so it was difficult to teach it for awhile. Right about the time when POV got involved was when a great many more people got involved to use it. This was also the time when Ofer and I worked privately to continue development on our own, and his old editor was used by the POV group (which included most of the art staff at STI). The newer editor introduced dynamically animating paths (you only see a tiny bit of this in the PC videos), and POV could not replicate the fish-eye lens of the older version. Ofer and I worked with his new editor until we got a final rejection for our efforts when the PC division didn't choose to fund our game (Nakayama-san killed any chance of that with his comments about how poor the game was - when the poor game he saw was not Ofer's new, much more advanced and polished engine). At that point, there was no point for anyone to learn it... and Project Condor worked away to cancellation as well.

Q: What did the game builds look like early on in Sonic Xtreme?
A: The builds for Xtreme were not as distinctive as you might expect. They were partial bits of new elements, but never a "complete" presentation, with the exception of the original Sonic Demos, Coffin's Boss Engine Demo, and numerous builds by Ofer featuring World Display, Sonic Interaction, World Construction, World Rotation, Fish-Eye Lens, Dynamic Spline Paths, and more. Don Goddard created a demo early on in the 32X days, but this demonstrated the display of a large number of animating sprites on-screen at once with basic movement.

If we were to do this project again we would definitely want to approach things in a much more careful, step-by-step approach. Unfortunately back then, there were so many factors contributing to the stormy process and ultimate cancellation we experienced.

Q: What is a game "build"?
A: A game build is presentation of code that is usually playable. Many game builds are created throughout the course of a game. There are different types of builds, too, such as playable builds (to demonstrate playability), viewable builds (to demonstrate visuals), technology builds (to showcase specific technology), and so on. Builds typically are part of milestone deliverables to show progress to development executives or game publisher executives. This way, the team that is working can get paid for their work, and the executives have a chance to provide feedback, request changes, etc.


CANCELLATION questions
[top] [general] [character] [people] [playable] [cancellation]

Q: Why was the game cancelled?
A: Sonic Xtreme underwent many changes and difficulties that would have tested even the most seasoned game industry veterans. Lack of experience, poor business decisions, ego, politics, over-ambition, bad timing, poor communication... these were some of the ingredients that ultimately spelled disaster for the game. Bringing Sonic into 3D for the first time was a huge challenge – not only for gameplay, but from a technology standpoint as well. This made the job of defining what the game should be more difficult, but doubly so as the technology and platforms changed. In the first year and a half the team went through three programmers, causing the game’s technology to basically restart each time. Problems like this took a toll on the budget and created more pressure for the entire team down the line. Ironically, it was only near the end that Ofer Alon’s engine was ready for full production when Sega had to stop funding and cancel the project.

Q: Was the company named ‘POV’ involved in development?
A: Somewhere between six and eight months prior to the project’s cancellation, management had investigated outside options to help insure completion of the game. They chose a company called ‘POV’. The effort was led by the Technical Director Robert Morgan, one of the original founders of POV, without the knowledge of Ofer Alon (or Christian Senn). When ready, management brought both Ofer and Senn into an office and unveiled their new plan to finish the game. The plan included removing Ofer as technical lead of the project and shifting technical control over to Robert Morgan, who would lead POV. Management presented POV’s efforts on-screen which included a computer monitor with an animating Sonic sprite fixed on-screen, a ground plane with a checkerboard texture on it, and a shaded sphere floating in the sky – without interaction of any kind. In stark contrast was Ofer’s editor and engine with real-time world construction, moving sprites (Sonic, rings, enemies) with behavior, triggers and physics – with direct playability from the player. It astounded both Ofer and Senn that management would make this decision without discussing it with them first. It was even more surprising that the decision was to move forward with this POV technology. Management explained that the plan was to use POV's technology to simply port Ofer’s PC development to the Saturn. Unfortunately, this trivialized the complexity of Ofer's technology and proved there was a very different understanding of what was involved to port the existing technology.

Q: What happened when the PC version was shown to Nakayama-san?
A: Nakayama-san never saw Ofer and Chris’ PC version of the game. What he did see was an old, outdated version of Ofer’s engine ported through POV that outraged Nakayama-san. He couldn't believe how games were made at the company; how anyone got anything done. He did, however, respond favorably to Christina Coffin's boss engine demonstration and told management to "make the rest of the game like that". This paved the way for Project Condor, most-certainly terminated POV's involvement, and most-likely ruined the chances of the PC version from ever getting accepted.

Q: Why did SOA’s PC division turn down Xtreme?
A: The official reasons are not known, but some possibilities may have included a lack of budget for such a title for the PC (i.e. no money allocated for a project like it), or total expenses for the project might have been required to be absorbed into the PC group's budget (which they could definitely not afford). Another possibility may have simply been that by Nakayama-san rejecting POV's technology (which ported only a small portion of Ofer's technology), he was effectively rejecting everything related to it - including the much more sophisticated PC version Ofer was coding. Politically-speaking, it may have been impossible for the PC group to accept the project (when a head of Sega says “this SUCKS” it’s tough to go against this “decision”).