Sonic X-treme Misc.
[Sonic X-treme Part 3/3]
Just a bunch of miscellaneous Sonic X-treme development stuff I thought was cool but couldn't fit into something more concise like the 2 previous posts
It might not look like it, but that's a lot of polygons for 1996. At one point they actually intended to use some pretty interesting techniques for creating curved, non-standard, triangular polygons but the idea didn't stick
Love Floppy. So, important characters like Sonic and Metal were going to be model-based - fully rendered in 3D, whereas basic enemies like these guys were to be sprite-based and rendered in 2D (these two are called Chaz and Gabby btw)
I'm seeing: Minecraft parkour maps
Boss stages made by Christina Coffin. Coffin is awesome, and I don't wanna butcher any details on them so here's a quote from Sonic Retro:
"To create X-treme's boss arenas, Coffin drew inspiration from her passion for classic Sega games. In particular, the engine's distinctive circular boss arenas were inspired by the Core Guard System fight in Treasure's 1993 Mega Drive game Gunstar Heroes, which features a similar circular layout. Coffin also took inspiration from the rendering engine used in NiGHTS into Dreams in her contrasting-colored backlights to prevent Sonic from looking too flat, and by using similar horizon-fogging techniques to mask uneven horizon lines. She attributes rumors of X-treme using Sonic Team's engine to these similarities, definitively stating that she never used the NiGHTS engine, and clarifying that she and Yuji Naka did not see eye to eye during development."
"Coffin intended the Sonic in her engine to be represented by a fully 3D model, with Kunitake Aoki modeling the character during his work on Dynamite Deka. These and other boss engine models were implemented by Coffin to take advantage of what she calls a "quad bug", "where if you collapse opposite points of a Saturn quad you get a triangle with one edge that's collapsed in and smoothly concave in screenspace at the pixel level." Coffin utilized this to demonstrate how enemies could only be safely attacked from certain angles, and to more optimally render terrain hazards like spike pits."
Honestly, reading deeper into it, Coffin sounds like the absolute MVP of this project and the fact their talent and passion was wasted on this dogshit is appalling to me
Come on COMMA Sonic! COME ON COMMA SONIC! AAAHHHH!!!!
From an early trailer for the game. Firstly, a reflex lens is a physical thing, not a technique. The term they were looking for was super/ultra wide-angle lens, or - let's be honest- a fisheye lens. Secondly, you can clearly see they didn't properly crop out the application window border on any of this footage
From a later trailer. Strange angle to take but at least the game footage was properly cropped in this one. Sega of America and Nintendo of America were so weird and obnoxious about Sonic and Mario having some sort of rivalry. ngl it just gets on my nerves
And lastly, from an event called "Sega Rocks the House of Sonic Blues", held at the House of Blues, Sunset Blv. to coincide with E3 1996
Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats btw
Still got an appetite for Sonic X-Treme trivia or you just wanna check those trailers out for yourself? Check this
Big shout out to anyone that worked on this project, extra special shout out to Chris Senn for preserving all of this stuff, and Christina Coffin my heart goes out to you ✊
