Chris Mawson writes: "Shock waves reverberated through the retro gaming community last week when it was reported that an ASSEMBLERgames forum user, jollyroger, had got his hands on a never-seen-before build of one of the industry's most infamous games, the cancelled Sega Saturn title, Sonic X-treme.
Some 18 years after it was scrapped by Sega amidst in-fighting and budgetary concerns, this new [limited] footage of the game, running in the SSF Sega Saturn emulator, has been released on YouTube."
Gotta wonder why Starcraft: Ghost literally became a ghost.
One of the titles we missed covering. But our guess? Uneasiness between Platinum and Microsoft.
Platinum said they actually deserve a lot of the blame. Realistically both parties made mistakes. Platinum bit off more than they could chew at the time, and MS didn't quite understand how to just sit back and let the devs work their magic.
Hopefully the two can come together and try again because the game sounded really good.
If it was a single player game I think it would have had a better chance of coming out . Ms wanted it to be online co-op . Dragon games aren’t easy to make and making it co-op is even harder and to me that was the major factor of why it failed
Not sure where people are getting their info that MS 'wanted' it to be co-op. From it's first teaser it was shown to have some type of co-op feature. It was probably pitched to MS as a multiplayer co-op game and Kamiya has gone on record saying he bit off a bit more than he could chew. You can definitely see elements on what they wanted to do with Scalebound in Bayonetta 3.
https://www.gematsu.com/202...
@gangsta_red:
Largely because the game existed before MS wanted it. Another is that more if not all Xbox titles have been online coop. Lastly, in in-game continuity, it made no sense to have customized versions of the same character popping up for boss fights. At least, as a hyped feature of the game, I've never heard explanation for it.
Regardless of what a dev, who wants to do business with MS so likely isn't going to badmouth them, says. Of course they're going to share blame in what a client wanted, even if that one thing was the exact thing making the project "more than he could chew".
@godmars
"Largely because the game existed before MS wanted it."
Where are you getting this info from, because the story I've read is that Kamiya had the idea for a while and always wanted to make it but ultimately went with Bayonetta. He then pitched the idea to MS and then started to develop it. There may have been ideas for features from in other games that may have found there way to Scalbound, but Scalebound was not created beforehand.
"Another is that more if not all Xbox titles have been online coop."
That may be true for most MS games but that still doesn't mean it was mandated by MS for Platinum to do. And even if it was, Platinum agreed to do it, there wasn't a surprise by MS that they needed to add multiplayer halfway through development. That is not how third party development works, both parties agree through signed contracts beforehand what's expected with milestone deliverables.
"..it made no sense to have customized versions of the same character popping up for boss fights."
Not sure what you're not understanding, but there were customized versions of different players coming to help for boss fight. Maybe there was a mechanic to have characters equip different gear, the same type of features that is pretty standard found in multiple games of its type.
"Of course they're going to share blame in what a client wanted, even if that one thing was the exact thing making the project "more than he could chew"."
Kamiyah has never held back his opinions, he's been extremely outspoken in the past. Enough years has gone by for him to have told even a fraction of what you think might have happened and still not him or anyone from Platinum, from recent employees to any ex employee has said anything of what you are claiming.
John takes a look at his favourite demos from this year's SAGE, with Sonic Z-Treme and Sonic Chaos just two of the highlights.
SonicRetro’s member JollyRoger has been working at recreating Sonic X-Treme on the PC, and has recently released a new version of his project.
Is this the same game that was meant to be on Saturn?
I recall reading about the development of it a few years ago. All I'm going to say about it is that I'm surprised the devs remained sane.
Sega screwed those guys over big style.
Kinda cool, but mostly unplayable.
"running" might be a tad optimistic! :P
holy sh$$
they got the game running on the saturn....praise the homebrew community!!
I still think Sega should jump all over this and look to make the game a downloadable total on one or all the next gen consoles as I think it would do well if sold at the right price.