/vr/ - Retro Games

I think they realized sonic doesn't really work in 3d. Keeps running into things

>>6027196
Yeah but it would’ve been more like playing a sonic themed tomb raider than a sonic game. The Saturn just didn’t have the muscle for fast paced smooth 3D and the stuff that’s leaked shows this was a slow grid based platformer.

>>6027196
Reminder that Tiara Boobowski is Manga!Amy with Sally's no-nonsense attitude, making her the perfect girl for Sonic.

>>6027196
>took them several months of prototyping to realize americano characters have no place in sonic
>they added this in their place >>6027204
>first prototypes were slowpaced and methodical, with an occasional loop-de-loop or corkscrew setpiece because idk that's what sonic does
>barely changed for the better in later prototypes
no

>>6027204
>>6027228
Amy was going to be in X-treme too, and the SatAM characters were already in Spinball so there was precedent if they chose to do it.

>>6027196
The virtua fighter clone is great.

>>6027204
>Boobowski

>>6027228
Project Condor looked like it was actually going to be good and is closer to what the developers wanted ouf of the game. Too bad the entire thing hinged on Yuji Naka being such a big baby about it.

>>6027204
>Boobowski
...is that even a real name? Or...

>>6027259
She was going to have a father, Professor Gazebo Boobowski, who was shitcanned long before the game itself was canceled. I think Tiara herself was eventually removed by the time they made the final storyline for the PC version, but then again, she was advertised in magazines and even made background cameos in the Archie comic, so she was probably still going to make an appearance.

>>6027272
>Boy oh boy, I love Sanic Xtreme!
>My favorite character is Tits Boobow- TIARA, I MEANT TIARA, I SWEAR!

>>6027272
PC release I think was going to be a budget version they threw together so the Saturn assets wouldn't go to waste, if you consider that the final.

>>6027256
>Too bad the entire thing hinged on Yuji Naka being such a big baby about it.
If what this other guy has been posting is true, honestly it just looks like he was doing some late-term QC---sounds like it really was going to turn out lame regarding its setting.

Sanic Xtreme prototype was a little too similar to Bug!

>>6027204
But one of the designs doesnt feature boobowskis

>>6027196
Not in the way the prototypes were looking.
I think if they used
>Sonic World from Sonic Jam as a SM64-style hub
>2.5D levels like Pandemonium!
>special stages like Sonic 3D Saturn
It would have been a diverse but coherent 3D take on Sonic that didn't push the Saturn beyond what it was realistically capable.

>>6027196
Not really. Later prototypes looked at if they could have been okay in a Bug!esque way but the original style was super outdated by late 1996. The boss engine version had some promise but of course it got destroyed by Naka. Sega sure did love helping each other out.

>that feer when you stop those firthy gaijins flom shitting up youl flanchise
Begone gaijin scum

>>6027197
I don’t get this criticism. Shouldn’t Sonic be easier to do in 3D since the player can see the obstacles from much farther than in a side scroller?
If Sonic Adventure were all Sonic levels and they spent more time ironing out bugs, what exactly would be wrong with it?

>>6027196
Not really. From what I remember at the time, absolutely nobody was hyped for this and what little that shown to the press and public got ripped to shreds for how it was basically a grid based platformer with sonic slapped on it.

Sonic Xtreme E3 1996 promo (was basically put together at the last minute so they could have something to show off to the press, who were not impressed with what they saw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdBKq7o6RTE

>>6027510
>Windows task bar in plain view
I'll never get over this

>>6028349
Ofer Alons engine was made for Wintel ironically enough, and was planned to be ported to Saturn as Sega delivered them more abstraction libraries

>>6027204
>Tiara
>Boobowski
>-owski
It's like they distilled everything cringy about 90s America in one name, and without any self-awareness, gave it to a Sonic character.

>>6027510
This is terrible

So glad Xtreme was canned. Would've been the 2006 of the '90s and done more damage to the Saturn/Sega brand than not having any major Sonic games at all.

>>6028349
How come they didn't use SGI machines?

>>6028387
the engine was coded in x86 assembly, because that is what Ofer Alon was most familiar with. renders were obviously done on SGI hardware.

>>6027368
Naka makes TrooFrarMan look like a fucking genius

>>6027510
They honestly should have just not even bothered. This doesn't even fucking look like a promotional video.

>>6027510
>Bargain bin Van Halen having a jam session in the background
>Windows task bar
>Sonic running around the same two levels
>He just goes through rings
>2 minutes of nothing
Mind you, this was supposed to be the bold new entry after Sonic & Knuckles.

>>6027256
Fun fact I think that screenshot is faked

>>6027196
>Could it have been good, /vr/?
Eh. I was never too impressed with most of the footage that's been available. On the other hand this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IOd0mQ-uXE
actually makes the game look neat in a psychedelic kind of way. If the game was more like this from the start it definitely would have turned more heads during development, even if the final game would have likely just been okay at best. Definitely would have been remembered for how unique it was, at least.

The thing is, it's Sonic, so the odds of it being good are statistically really low if you look at overall ratio of Good Sonic Games : Gay Ass Shitty Sonic Games throughout the franchise's existence

>>6028743
This is nauseating.

>>6029159
Hey kids, want to buy a retro spice kit?

It would have been a masterpiece.

>>6028756
The majority of Sonic games are good. Learn to think for yourself instead of confusing memes for reality.

>>6029837

Like a true intellectual, understanding the nuances of holding right. Pic related, average Sonic fan

>>6029843
>le meme autism man
spoken like a true youtube-raised zoomer

>>6029843
Is this the redesign for the Jim Carrey movie?

>>6027196
I'm still mad about this game today.
Fuck you Sega FUCK YOU!

>>6029837
>The majority of Sonic games are good.
Yikes

>>6027256
>Project Condor looked like it was actually going to be good
It was a techdemo with no actual levels or any ideas for level design or even how the game should work beyond "platformer in 3d". And at that point they were, like, 2 months before deadline.

>Too bad the entire thing hinged on Yuji Naka being such a big baby about it.

That was just because they wanted to have an engine, ANY ENGINE, so they can actually start making the game on it, because Sega shot their ideas down repeatedly.

The game hinged on the fact that they had no concept of a game, they just asked a bunch of tech demo creators, who had no experience with 3d, nor a working game engine, to "make a 3d sonic game for this platform with woefully underpowered 3d hardware".

It would've sucked either way, unless they pushed the deadline to 1997.

>>6027362
>The boss engine version had some promise but of course it got destroyed by Naka.

The boss engine worked fine, it was just not that much fun. In fact the SOJ CEOs told them to then axe the fisheye thing and use the boss engine, which meant throwing out half a year of work and starting from scratch.

Naka did not destroy that, all he did was not allow them to use the nights engine. Which they needed because they just had their engine axed, and they didn't have time to make a new engine and make a new game with it.

>>6027467
It would be great

You're not wrong

>>6027467
>Shouldn’t Sonic be easier to do in 3D

No, because part of the thing that made Sonic good was that it had very complex physics calculation for velocity and momentum, which greatly affected how you jumped. The slope direction you stood on further affected this.
Adding a third dimension to this makes all of these variables harder to understand and harder to take advantage of for the player. Camera placement makes this even further complicated, and half the time you can't correctly estimate exactly where you are in the air, which makes all the air juggling damn difficult if not impossible. There's a reason they added things like the homing attack, or allowing you to dash through rings, it made the air controls safer and less annoying.

Furthermore, the large speeds you expect from a Sonic game requires large visible areas updating at a high framerate, and the Saturn just couldn't do that. Sonic Jam was okay, but half the time you couldn't see where you were jumping, and it wasn't faster than SM64... or had any Sonic game features in it anyway.

>If Sonic Adventure were all Sonic levels and they spent more time ironing out bugs, what exactly would be wrong with it?

The last 3d sonic game I played was Generations and that one still suffered from the same issues that Sonic Adventure had: poor controls, bad camera, awful collision detection. And other than the 2d parts, you couldn't really "explore" levels since it was mostly just the difference of having 3 different interlocking lanes or rails you can run through.

>>6028743
>Not demonstrating this footage specifically to SEGA
What the fuck were they thinking

>>6027197
>Keeps running into things
that happened in 2d also. 3d is better because you see what is in front