Racing · Sports

Sonic Extreme

Released: —
Platforms: GameCube PlayStation 2 Xbox
Genres: Racing Sports
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Series: Sonic the Hedgehog
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Third person
Engine: RenderWare
Country: United States

About

Sonic Extreme was a prototype video game created by Vision Scape Interactive in May 2003. Proposed as a spin-off to Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, Sonic Extreme featured Sonic and Shadow riding hoverboards in a Green Hill Zone-themed open world, with gameplay likened to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. It featured three gameplay modes, which included searching for keys and Chaos Emeralds and fighting or racing another player. Vision Scape created the prototype while it made cutscenes for Sonic Heroes (2003); it was developed on the Xbox with intent to port it to the GameCube and PlayStation 2. The prototype was assembled using the RenderWare game engine and assets from prior Vision Scape and Sonic games.

Vision Scape showed Sonic Extreme to Sonic Team head Yuji Naka, who was impressed and asked for a software design description to be submitted to Sega. However, Sega never responded to Vision Scape after the document was turned in. While the game never came to fruition, it may have served as the basis for Sonic Team's Sonic Riders (2006), which features similar gameplay concepts. The Extreme prototype publicly surfaced in May 2011, when gameplay footage was uploaded to YouTube. Journalists reacted negatively and expressed relief it was never released.

Keywords

skateboarding
sonic

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

Sonic Extreme was an extreme sports video game in which the player controlled a character riding a hoverboard. It could have featured multiple playable characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, but the prototype only featured Sonic and Shadow. Polygon and Digital Trends compared its gameplay to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: the player was placed in an open world with rings, crates, boost pads, ramps, half-pipes, and rails, and could perform tricks to boost their score.

The prototype featured three game modes: "Mission", "Combat", and "Race". The "Mission" mode was single-player and involved exploring the environment to collect a key that gave access to a room with a Chaos Emerald. Collecting the emerald returned the player to the title screen. "Combat" was a split-screen multiplayer mode in which players would attack each other with weapons such as rocket launchers, mines, and grenades. "Race" pitted players against each other in a race to the end of a level.

Development

Sonic Extreme was developed by Vision Scape Interactive, a San Diego–based studio known for its work on the shoot 'em up SeaBlade for the Xbox and the skateboarding game Tech Deck Dude: Bare Knuckle Grind for Microsoft Windows. While developing Bare Knuckle Grind, Vision Scape decided to use its game engine—created using the RenderWare framework—in other skateboarding games. The first attempt was with a game based on the American animated television series Rocket Power that would have been published by THQ for the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, but this game was canceled due to THQ's financial problems. As a number of the staff had backgrounds in animation, Sega hired Vision Scape to produce cutscenes for Sonic Team's game Sonic Heroes (2003).

Vision Scape cofounder Matt McDonald decided to pitch a spinoff that used the Bare Knuckle Grind engine with the Sonic intellectual property (IP). The prototype was developed over the course of a week in May 2003 without Sega's knowledge. It was created on the Xbox because of Vision Scape's experience with the platform, with intent to port it to the GameCube and PlayStation 2. The team retooled Bare Knuckle Grind to resemble Sonic games; for example, the world was based on Green Hill Zone and included traditional Sonic elements such as rings and boost pads.