Sonic’s Lost History
GamesRadar has an extensive look at Sonic X-Treme—”The Greatest Sonic Game Never Made,” which met an untimely death as a half-assembled Sega Saturn sample.
Check the feature out if you’re a game history nerd like myself. You also owe it to the development team. Lead designer Christian Senn worked so hard on the game, it nearly killed him.
At first glance, Sonic X-Treme looks odd. Part of that has to do with the fact that it exists only as a handful of demo levels. The fish-eye camera is another reason. Though it looks supremely weird at first, you come to realise that the angle eliminates the ever-persistent problem of camera angles and blind jumps. The spherical style also somehow gives Sonic’s 3D world a nostalgic quality that’s long gone from the hedgehog’s games.
If you watch this Sonic X-Treme video and/or the others available on YouTube, you’ll notice that the person playing the game is actually, shucks, playing the game. Since entering the 3D realm, Sonic games have gotten a lot of flack for asking the players to to naught but push forward. The X-Treme tech demos might not blind us with speed and dazzling effects, but there’s far more exploration. If you fall off a ledge, it’s not the end of you; there’s something below waiting to be discovered. There are still loop-de-loops and moments of speed. In fact, Sonic X-Treme reflects what Sonic games were like during the Genesis heydays.
That’s probably a tall claim for an unfinished game, but it says something that Sonic X-Treme really looks like it would have “belonged.” Sonic is exploring Mobius, by the looks of it. Not a city, not a train station full of hairless primates (us). Why did humans enter the Sonic universe? When will they go away?
How would the Sonic franchise have differed if Sonic X-Treme wasn’t pushing up daises?
Tags: Sonic the Hedgehog
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