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Sonic Xtreme Boss Footage Unearthed 17 Years Later

If you visit here a lot, you’ll likely know about Sonic Xtreme. The ill-fated Sega Saturn title went through a rocky development cycle before ultimately meeting its end not with a bang, but a whimper.

Still, it had its fair share of display around 1996 at venues such as E3 and to the press before hitting the end of the line. Thanks to some wonderful sleuthing by forum members Shoemanbundy and Andrew75, and spooie for finding and hosting the clip, we can now see one more bit of footage of the game, namely a boss fight, in action.

The clip in question comes from the mid-90s Canadian kid’s TV show, The Anti-Gravity Room. Beginning at the 3:44 mark, we can see the famous Metal Sonic boss fight in full action, and relatively clearly too.

Andrew75, who’s been researching Sonic Xtreme to create Project AXSX, also released a few other details about the boss after speaking with Christina Coffin, one of the devs on the original Xtreme project.

The L,R triggers were set up to rotate the camera around sonic.
You could also press a certain button on the Saturn controller to
‘lock the camera onto the boss’ so then all of your d-pad movement
would become relative to the boss character.

For example:
lock on mode controls:
left/right on d-pad lets you circle strafe left/right while facing the
boss (good for dodging projectile from mecha sonic)
up made you run towards the boss while the camera is still looking at
him.
down made you run away from the boss while the camera still looked at
him.

As you can imagine, fighting the boss with the camera in ‘lock on
mode’ is very useful to dodge harmful things from the boss, and makes
it feel more like a 1 on 1 fighting game which is what I wanted.
Having the unlocked camera mode, where the camera stays in 3rd person
view behind sonic is also useful as well, so it depends on player
preference and certain bosses (I had plans for another boss to spawn
smaller enemies around him that you would have to jump/spindash into
and they go back to fighting the main boss)

The rest of the segment is also interesting to watch as a reminder of what was hot and exciting back in 1996, including previews of Nintendo’s then-upcoming Nintendo 64 or a small bit of NiGHTS.

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20 Comments

  • Reply

    Yeah, I saw the video was showing something else, guys. That’s all on YouTube somehow linking to the wrong ID. It’s fixed.

    Thanks, Google+, you pile of rubbish.

  • Reply

    Nice, I saw the thread in the forum talking about this, didn’t know they’d find it. Good find.

  • Reply

    The game had a full-fledged LOCK-ON feature with major enemies? Eat your heart out, Ocarina of Time.

    • Reply

      Fanboy detected…

  • Reply

    Its actually been 17 years now!

    • Reply

      How does I maths I don’t know. :eng101:

  • Reply

    The video gave me a Sonic 3D Blast vibe but with more vibrant colors. Was that “dragon” a part of the Sonic game?

  • Reply

    Sonic X-Treme reminds me also Jazz Jackrabbit 3D,isn’t it?

    • Reply

      Unless Sonic had a gun i don’t see the resemblance
      Jazz 3D also has a playable Alpha you can download unlike X-Treme

      Man I miss Jazz Jackrabbit…I loved Jazz Jackrabbit 2 as a kid…one of my favorite games ever…I wish they would do Jazz Jackrabbit 3(with 2D gameplay like JJ2 not in 3D) 🙁

  • Reply

    That DOES look like a fun boss fight, at least for the day.

  • Reply

    Oh man, in 96 my favorite game was Nintendo 64 too! What a hip dude that Power Pod owner was.

    • Reply

      Um dude Nintendo 64 is a console not a game.

  • Reply

    Mr. Bones, boo yeah. Loved that game…hated icy lake.

  • Reply

    @ GoseiDragonX No the Dragon was from NiGHTS. Please watch the vid again and pay attention.

    God even the guy doing the interview says it looked good. Damn you Sega for flushing this game down the toilet you bastards.

    • Reply

      One thing Chris Senn always stressed since he started releasing some of his Sonic Xtreme dev stuff to the fans was that the boss engine operated smooth as silk and looked really good on the Saturn. Now we have a chance to see it in action in pretty good quality and see that he wasn’t kidding. The Saturn usually sucked at handling 3D, but they got it to sing there.

  • Reply

    This is great and all but still no one could find that footage of the fully 3D Sonic 3D Blast from the British TV show “Cybernet”? I’d do anything to find that footage again.

  • Reply

    I’ve always been in the minority; I think that, for the most part, Sonic X-Treme looked like it would be an absolute bore to play. But damn does that boss footage look good. I didn’t even know the Saturn could handle 3D graphics that well without exploding or something; it was designed mainly to play 2D games (with a 3D graphics chip thrown in as a panicked afterthought once the gaming market began to prefer 3D graphics). I mean, even the GOOD 3D Saturn games, like Panzer Dragoon Saga, run badly and look like crap. But… goddamn, Chris Senn wasn’t kidding, he got these bosses to flow like silk.

  • Reply

    “This is gonna be hot for the holidays!” – Epic prediction fail.

  • Reply

    Wow I used to watch YTV when I was growing up. I believe the host’s name is Phil? He also hosted The Zone on YTV which would air after school and he would pop in between shows and do VJ like stuff, except the kids cartoon equivalent of a VJ.

  • Reply

    Why does she say sonic is on all 6 platforms this year? What does she mean?

    Genesis
    Saturn
    Game Gear
    PC
    32X
    Sega CD?

    Am I missing something? Were there 6 games getting releases that year? Or did she just mean now that sonic is on the Saturn, he is on 6 platforms?

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