History VideoGame / SonicXTreme

In 2020, a few fans began ''Project SXU'': an attempt to remake what was seen of ''X-Treme'' in the UsefulNotes/{{Unity}} game engine to finally made playable the ''Sonic'' game that never was. The first demo released [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qZPZD8CRAw August 2020]], recreating two of the levels seen in the trailer. Additional information on this project can be found [[https://www.alphabetagamer.com/sonic-x-treme-unity-tech-demo/ here]].

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible (especially considering that X-treme was written in C language), and that Coffin was slandering him in an attempt to save face for failing to complete ''X-treme''. Chris Senn claimed that the team was not given a reason as to why they could no longer use the ''=NiGHTS='' engine, that Naka's threats were mere speculation on their part, and that if they were true, he understood Naka's desire to maintain control over Sonic Team technology and the Sonic franchise[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia; she subsequently left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible (especially considering that X-treme was written in C language), and that Coffin was slandering him in an attempt to save face for failing to complete ''X-treme''. Chris Senn claimed that the team was not given a reason as to why they could no longer use the ''NiGHTS'' engine, that Naka's threats were mere speculation on their part, and that if they were true, he understood Naka's desire to maintain control over Sonic Team technology and the Sonic franchise[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia; she subsequently left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible (especially considering that X-treme was written in C language), and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia; she subsequently left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

[[UnfortunateImplications saddssa]]

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible (espeically considering that Xtreme was written in C language), and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia; she subsequently left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible, and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia; she subsequently left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

During the move to Coffin's boss engine, Senn and Alon were all but removed from development from the game, though they continued to work on their engine, hoping to pitch it as a PC game, but that also never go the green light, and so their work fell to the wayside. And, like Coffin, Senn also ended up contracting pneumonia, being told by his doctor that he had only six months left to live; thanfully, he survived. With both teams crippled and all three original programmers out of order, the game was finally, truly cancelled.

So what led to the game's cancellation? Basically, the dev team was split into two (Team A and Team B). One team, headed by Chris Senn and Ofer Alon, would concentrate on platforming stages and the other, headed by Christina Coffin, on boss stages. Team A's engine for the platforming stages ran great on computers, but struggled on the Saturn's hardware. To remedy this, an outside company, called Point of View, was brought in to help with the porting process, however their attempts at porting it were as bad, if not worse than Senn and Alon's. The latter finally managed to get it working decently on the Saturn, but when it became time for a check-in about the game's progress was held with CEO Hayao Nakayama in March '96, Point of View ended up demo'ing the an extremely early and broken version to Nakayama, who demanded that all of their inferior work be scrapped and the entire game be done in the style of the boss stages. Despite Senn and Alon's attempts persuade him to look at their more finalized engine, Nakayama and other Sega executives were no longer listening. So the switch to the boss engine was made. And they [[ChristmasRushed wanted the game done by Christmas]] to compete with ''VideoGame/SuperMario64''.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible, and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if she kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

During the move to Coffin's boss engine, Senn and Alon were all but removed from development from the game, though they continued to work on their engine, hoping to pitch it as a PC game, but that also never go the green light, and so their work fell to the wayside. And, like Coffin, Senn also ended up contracting pneumonia and almost died. With both teams crippled and all three original programmers out of order, the game was finally, truly cancelled.

%%* PolygonCeiling: In some ways, the downfall of this game could be considered the first stumble in Sonic's long and troubled history with this.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Long story: Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they continued. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it to use with another game is impossible, and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if she kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Long story: Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they don't. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it is impossible, and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if she kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason[[note]]Long story: Christina Coffin claimed that Yuji Naka threw a tantrum and demanded that the project stop using his engine when he found out, threatening to quit if they don't. Naka himself claims that the engine is written tightly in SH-2 Assembly language and specialized only in that one game, that porting it is impossible, and that Coffin was slandering him for unknown reasons.[[/note]]. The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if she kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason, with Yuji Naka claiming that this move is impossible as [=NiGHTS=] is coded tightly in SH-2 assembly). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if she kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but one or more complications prevented this (there are conflicting reports as to the reason). The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if he kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

Team B's attempts to make the Christmas deadline lead them to try and use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but when Yuji Naka heard of this, he went bananas and threatened to quit Sega if Team B's engine wasn't scrapped entirely. The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made Christina Coffin contract pneumonia. Told by her doctor that she'd quite literally die within months if he kept working at her current pace, she left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

* TakeThat: [[https://youtu.be/ue-jo2qWiFA A live-action E3 promotional video]] features Mario and Luigi of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' fame worrying about Sonic's next title. It even ends with the tagline "Mario Who?", implying gamers will forget all about Mario.

So what led to the game's cancellation? Basically, the dev team was split into two (Team A and Team B). One team would concentrate on platforming stages and the other on boss stages. Team A's engine for the platforming stages ran great on computers, but struggled on the Saturn's hardware. They managed to get it working decently, but the team members who were supposed to demo it were just seconds late to a meeting held with CEO Hayao Nakayama in March '96. Team A ended up demo'ing the beta version to Nakayama, who demanded that all of their inferior work be scrapped and the entire game be done in the style of the boss stages. And to [[ChristmasRushed get the game done by Christmas]] to compete with ''VideoGame/SuperMario64''.

Team B's attempts to make this happen lead them to use code from the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' to ease development, but when Yuji Naka heard of this, he went bananas and threatened to quit Sega if Team B's engine wasn't scrapped entirely. The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made the project head, Chris Senn, contract pneumonia. Told by his doctor that he'd quite literally die within months if he kept working at his current pace, he left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

[[JustForFun/TheOneWith The one which]] didn't see the light of day through its FishEyeLens.

Team B's attempts to make this happen either compelled them to use the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]''. When Yuji Naka heard of this he went bananas and threatened to quit Sega if Team B's engine wasn't scrapped entirely. The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made the project head, Chris Senn, contract pneumonia. Told by his doctor that he'd quite literally die within months if he kept working at his current pace, he left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

If you ever wondered why Creator/{{Sega}} never made a mainline [[Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] game for the entire lifespan of the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn, the answer is that they did. [[{{Vaporware}} It was just never finished.]]

The one which didn't see the light of day through its FishEyeLens.

As a sidenote, this game was at one point meant as a tie-in for [[https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/02/the-sonic-the-hedgehog-movie-that-never-got-made/ a proposed live-action film]] called ''Sonic the Hedgehog: Wonders of the World''. The plot of the movie would have involved Sonic and Robotnik escaping from ''Sonic X-treme'' [[RefugeeFromTVLand into the real world]]. Additionally, ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'''s ChristmasEpisode was originally meant to be titled "An X-Tremely Sonic Christmas" in order to promote the new game as well, with it being renamed "WesternAnimation/SonicChristmasBlast" after the game's cancellation.

Depending on who you ask, Team B's attempts to make this happen either compelled them to use the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' or create content that looked very similar to it; regardless, Yuji Naka saw this version of the game, went bananas and threatened to quit Sega if Team B's engine wasn't scrapped entirely. The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made the project head, Chris Senn, contract pneumonia. Told by his doctor that he'd quite literally die within months if he kept working at his current pace, he left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

''Sonic X-treme'''s failure to show up on shelves has been largely pointed to as one of the reasons why the Sega Saturn was a commercial failure: the Saturn was already lacking entries in many of the prominent series that brought Sega success in Western regions, so the lack of a new mainline installment in their biggest franchise left the Saturn without ''the'' guaranteed KillerApp. This wasn't helped by the fact that rivals Nintendo and Sony had brought to the table [[VideoGame/SuperMario64 their own]] [[VideoGame/CrashBandicoot1996 3D platformer offerings]] for their respective consoles earlier that year. The ''Sonic'' series wouldn't receive a 3D installment until Sega got Sonic Team to [[VideoGame/SonicAdventure revamp the series]] for the UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast. Meanwhile, the game's cancellation is blamed for why developer STI [[CreatorKiller dissolved shortly afterwards]].

Depending on who you ask, Team B's attempts to make this happen either compelled them to steal the engine from ''[=NiGHTS=]'' or create content that looked very similar to it; regardless, Yuji Naka saw this version of the game, went bananas and threatened to quit Sega if Team B's engine wasn't scrapped entirely. The stress of having to complete a game from absolute scratch in only a few months made the project head, Chris Senn, contract pneumonia. Told by his doctor that he'd quite literally die within months if he kept working at his current pace, he left the project and the game as a whole was cancelled. With no 3D Sonic to speak of, Sega decided to port over ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'' (known in the West as ''[[MarketBasedTitle Sonic 3D Blast]]'') in its stead.

* TopDownView: When Knuckles was planned to be playable, his gameplay would've a top-down maze like Pac-Man, as [[http://web.archive.org/web/20090221101640/http://www.senntient.com/projects/xtreme/KnucklesTest.html shown here]].

The one that didn't see the light of day through its FishEyeLens.