Unreleased Sonic Saturn Developer Speaks
Chris Senn, a former employee of the Sega Technical Institute, has opened up a specialized forum to discuss the creation of Sonic X-Treme, the Sonic the Hedgehog title for the Sega Saturn that was cancelled mid-development for various reasons. Senn served various roles in the development of the game, including music composer, art director and coordinator, and toward the end of the project, co-lead designer.
"I've received so many emails asking for information, pictures, playable versions, etc. that I just couldn't keep up. This is my way of trying to give back to the community," Senn said in an introductory forums post. "I spent 3 years pouring my heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears into the game. I started as an artist and worked my way to designing, leading the design and coordinating part of the team. Many problems occurred on the project. I was young, very ambitious and a perfectionist. I was a part of a large team that started small and grew to 30+ people... This game was canned almost 10 years ago, so I won't remember as much as I'd like."
Senn has been sporadically sharing some of the media he has saved, including very early concept animation, design sketches for a female hedgehog protagnoist named Tiara Boobowski (no, seriously), and even Senn's proposed cover art for the game. The total sum of his work will be released later, he says, in a massive online document called the "Sonic Xtreme Compendium," or SXC for short.
Anyone curious about the development of this lost Sonic chapter can join in the discussion on Senn's official forums, though reader beware: many of the threads contained therein are authored by a number of amateurs discussing their plans to "finish the game" via limited, open-source game creation software. Yeah, you do that, kids.
Comments
Twitchy, snide remarks to young people with a dream to complete projects are unwarranted and below you.
Posted by: Jason Scott | February 12, 2006 8:32 PM
so you'll a former employee
of sega.
I'm a game programmer
can you tell me how I can
make or get saturn game with the protection code that can play on any regular saturn
without a mod chip?
Posted by: andrew | January 26, 2007 10:44 AM
Well first off. The official Sonic Team was quite angry that some Amerikan yahoo's made a game from there Saturn Nights code. In short there is no Sonic Xtreme at all. Just remember that when the original Sonic was being made it was in Amerika with Nipponese developers :)
Posted by: RegalSin | November 19, 2008 8:51 PM
Seriously, RegalSin is by far the most annoying weeaboo ever to be a part of the Sonic fandom, these "American Yahoos" as you call them were the ONLY reason Sega was ever successful to begin with, Sonic never took off in Japan, neither did the Mega Drive, you have Tom Kalinske and Sega of America to thank for the success of Sonic and Sega as a whole because if Tom hadn't packaged Sonic with the Genesis in the US, Sonic would've NEVER beaten Mario in Sales and the Mega Drive would've stayed as an underdog and nothing more than a minor fly in Nintendo's shoulder.
Yuji Naka is an idiot who enjoys crediting himself for creating a game that was in fact a big effort by not only Sonic TEAM but Sega as a whole (including SOA)
He destroyed Sonic Xtreme due to his selfish ego and subsequentely destroyed the Saturn, if he didn't want Americans messing with Sonic he should've made a Sonic game himself instead of messing around with Genderless Fairies and Anime Firefighters
Then, come the Dreamcast, he destroys Sonic by changing EVERYTHING about the series (Music, Art, Characthers, Feel, etc...)
Thus generating a rift between Sonic fans (Old School vs New School) that persists to this day.
Posted by: John | February 26, 2010 9:18 AM
The above comment was not made by me.
Sonic xtreme was never an official SEGA game to begin with. Yuji Nanka just did not want anybody to use his code.
That is all.
He along with Senn killed the Sega cd with the realease of Sonic 2.
Posted by: Real_RegalSin | March 9, 2010 8:06 AM